Mon 23 Jul 2007
A few years ago I read the first half of the first Harry Potter book and kind of felt enh about it and upon setting it down halfway through simply never returned. Since then I’ve come to learn that basically everyone I know has read and loves these books. It’s not that I disliked it or that I thought it was silly – seriously, no casting stones from my Princess House mansion on the silly tip – it just didn’t grab me and shake me around the same way as The Golden Compass or Uglies or, I dunno, Terry Pratchett.
Now that the series is over I have come to realize that to some degree I am missing the boat on a massively experienced, shared cultural phenomenon.
Somewhere in our house, between us, The Boyf and I have several but not all of the books. I’ve watched the first movie and remember it fairly well though I don’t really recall the particulars of the climax. Do I have to reread it? Should I? Is it vital? I’m pretty sure we have the second book someplace around here and even if we don’t I can lay hands directly on Azkaban (or however it’s spelled) and start there if need be. Given that I have an idea of what happened in the second book – though largely from the Sluggy Freelance parody of it – do I need to read that one?
Basically, here’s the deal: friends and strangers, lovers of HP, is the first book skippable? Second? Or am I cutting myself off at the knees by skipping any one of them?
To a large extent the enjoyment of the series is witnessing the evolution of the characters and their relationships, not to mention the charming details of the Hogwarts world, so to skip any of the books entirely is to miss out on a reasonably large chunk of that. Trite but true – it’s not so much what happens, as how and why it happens.
That being said, Rowling is a bit lazy, reinforcing the same character traits and magical thingies over and over again, so if you’re in a hurry, you could well skip 100-odd pages out of the middle of any of the books and not miss much.
It didn’t move me like His Dark Materials or Pratchett’s better works, but it’s a competent epic with some complex characters and scathing social commentary.
Just out of curiousity, what was it about Uglies that did it for you? I agree, they’re good books with pointed themes, but I wouldn’t call ‘em superlative in any way.
I had a tremendous number of questions and curiosities about the world of Uglies – what are other cities like, what makes the Rangers be OK with Smokies but not Tally’s city, etc. – and the way in which he gets the importance of fitting in and the self-centered inner life of the sixteen-year-old was really authentic. I don’t really know why, they just totally snapped up my attention.
I started the 7th book today, and to catch myself up (bad memory), I reviewed the Cliff Notes-like info on wikipedia. Look under Harry Potter to find the summaries of the 7 books – there’s enough detail to catch you up, if you really don’t want to read them all.
Here’s the thing: books 1 and 2 will take an adult reader no time at all, so you might as well read them. They set up some stuff that’s good to have as background, and they are, in their way, charming as hell.
My niece left the annual family vacation a day early this year so she could be home at midnight to pick up the latest Harry volume. And she read it in something less than 12 hours — all of its nearly 800 pages.
So, at the risk of sounding culturally obsolescent, I suspect you’d not be cutting yourself off at the knees if you skipped all of them.
It may well be a shared cultural phenomenon (so is NASCAR), but I gotta think His Dark Materials is far superior, if less lucrative. (There, I DO sound culturally obsolescent!!!)
I skipped the first book (having seen the movie) and I don’t feel it did any harm.
Well, I skipped the 7th book (at least for now) and went straight for the spoilers. I did read all 6 previous books, but each time a new one was published it was longer and longer between when it came out and when I got around to it. I’d say you could probably skip the first two – but then the 3rd is my favorite anyway.
I agree that HDM is much better, though.
Another reason to be a fan of the series:
In any event, my enjoyment of the books is enhanced by the knowledge that it also drives the fundamentalist right nuts.
7 – Just an FYI, I have read that the spoiler sites aren’t to be trusted even for their spoilers and that the book itself didn’t match up very well to the claimed spoilers.
8 – so true! Another excellent reason.
I am skipping book 1 but not 2. I have decided.
Well, yeah, I did read a lot of foilers, but I read three spoilers that were fairly reasonable and believable, and then a friend of mine who’d read the first 200 pages while staying with us filled me in on who had died, and from that, I knew which spoiler was the real one. (And it’s still being confirmed by the discussion I’ve come across since.) So I’m not in a real hurry to read the book, especially since I’m too busy to read it right now anyway. I’ll get around to it, definitely, but the spoiler has helped sate my need-to-know-NOW! in the meantime.
I think I’m a heretic here:
Frankly, I would recommend _reading_ the first three. After that, there’s a lot of skimming to be done. Rowling’s commercial success meant that no editor had chutzpah enough to make her write a tight story. I only made it through the remaining books by learning to skip huge sections of them (much like Stephen King.) I think Rowling has some talent, but every good writer would be made better by a good editor.
Mushi – not a heretic! I was pretty stunned by the size of Book 4. As I have become fond of saying, “and the British doorstop industry never recovered.”
I’m currently about 1/4 of the way into HP5. Thus far I’ve found HP2 to be much more engaging than HP1, HP3 one of the best YA books I’ve ever read (no His Dark Materials, but very, very good) and HP4 caused me to cry out at one point and shocked by the end. HP5 thus far? Sort of meh. I’m enjoying it but I’m also sort of ready to just see a lot of asses get kicked. Is that wrong of me? A blurb about the videogame of the film of 5 (how’s that for judging a book by the poster of the cover?) tells me I probably will and yet I am restless for it anyway. Some asses just need kicking in that world.
Also, I am probably more of a heretic for this short confession: I don’t like Dumbledore. I’ll have more thoughts when I’m done with the series, though. I want to give everyone a chance to do their thing before I settle my thoughts.