Why Harry Potter is Worth Reading
I'm not sure how I managed it but I avoided everything Harry Potter (and I do mean everything: books, movies, posters, fan clubs) until just this last winter, when I bought all seven books at once and set out to read them. I read the first five in quick succession in a little under 6 weeks and now I'm taking a break. Maybe because I know there are only two left, maybe because it was time to fill my mind with things other than Hogwarts and Harry, or maybe I just grew tired of the whole thing.
A met a friend for coffee and when he saw what I was reading his reaction was, I think I can quote verbatim, "why read Harry Potter when there are so many better things to read?" Now, I'm well acquainted with literary snobs. I'm surrounded by them, related to them, am a recovering snob myself. I won't name names, but I know people who will refuse a book simply because it was on Oprah's book club or chosen as a Starbucks book. So I wasn't really shamed by my friend's comment, but it did make me curious.
Considering that reading itself is so private (so what does it matter who else read the book and when?) I wonder what it is about my coffee shop friend, and about my anti-Oprah Book Club book friends, or myself for waiting until all the hoopla around Harry Potter (mostly) died down before reading, that makes it so easy to pass judgment on a book based on popularity?
Which, as a writing teacher, brings me to an even more pressing question: what makes a good story a good story? Certainly not audience size. The Twilight Series made readers out of thousands and yet Pulitzer Prize winner Tinkers had only sold about 7,000 copies at the time of the award. Yep, I'm passing judgment on Twilight but I can, see, because I read the entire series. The writing and editing was kind of painful but the story was good. So what does that say for the craft of writing?
The thing with Harry Potter is that it has the popular appeal in topic and in story that Twilight has but each book in the Harry Potter series is also incredibly well crafted. Harry Potter might just be the intersection of mass appeal and really good writing that happens so rarely and takes most authors years of writing and publishing to accomplish. Note: Eat, Pray, Love was Elizabeth Gilbert's fourth book. The Road was Cormac McCarthy's tenth.
So we won't get answers to these questions that will satisfy, well, probably anyone, but we can at least read. Read, have our own experiences with the text, and maybe (if we choose) share that experience with others. I think one of the reasons I recommend books or ask for recommendations is so that I can have that shared experience. I want absolutely everyone to read Wide Sargasso Sea but at the right time in their lives, on their terms, so that they might have the same moving experience that I did with the text. And I think that's what makes Harry Potter worth reading, albeit if it's done on your own time on your own terms, whether you're 10 or 62. There's a real chance to be moved by the Harry Potter story in some way, large or small, and maybe that's why we all read? To escape, to be moved, to be changed by something as simple and as powerful as words on paper.
A met a friend for coffee and when he saw what I was reading his reaction was, I think I can quote verbatim, "why read Harry Potter when there are so many better things to read?" Now, I'm well acquainted with literary snobs. I'm surrounded by them, related to them, am a recovering snob myself. I won't name names, but I know people who will refuse a book simply because it was on Oprah's book club or chosen as a Starbucks book. So I wasn't really shamed by my friend's comment, but it did make me curious.
Considering that reading itself is so private (so what does it matter who else read the book and when?) I wonder what it is about my coffee shop friend, and about my anti-Oprah Book Club book friends, or myself for waiting until all the hoopla around Harry Potter (mostly) died down before reading, that makes it so easy to pass judgment on a book based on popularity?
Which, as a writing teacher, brings me to an even more pressing question: what makes a good story a good story? Certainly not audience size. The Twilight Series made readers out of thousands and yet Pulitzer Prize winner Tinkers had only sold about 7,000 copies at the time of the award. Yep, I'm passing judgment on Twilight but I can, see, because I read the entire series. The writing and editing was kind of painful but the story was good. So what does that say for the craft of writing?
The thing with Harry Potter is that it has the popular appeal in topic and in story that Twilight has but each book in the Harry Potter series is also incredibly well crafted. Harry Potter might just be the intersection of mass appeal and really good writing that happens so rarely and takes most authors years of writing and publishing to accomplish. Note: Eat, Pray, Love was Elizabeth Gilbert's fourth book. The Road was Cormac McCarthy's tenth.
So we won't get answers to these questions that will satisfy, well, probably anyone, but we can at least read. Read, have our own experiences with the text, and maybe (if we choose) share that experience with others. I think one of the reasons I recommend books or ask for recommendations is so that I can have that shared experience. I want absolutely everyone to read Wide Sargasso Sea but at the right time in their lives, on their terms, so that they might have the same moving experience that I did with the text. And I think that's what makes Harry Potter worth reading, albeit if it's done on your own time on your own terms, whether you're 10 or 62. There's a real chance to be moved by the Harry Potter story in some way, large or small, and maybe that's why we all read? To escape, to be moved, to be changed by something as simple and as powerful as words on paper.
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