I think it’s great that a single mother on the dole became a billionaire through that most unlikely of means, the writing of children’s books.
It’s also great that the Harry Potter series is not patronizing or sweet and that magic, not moralizing, is its theme.
I’m happy that the Harry Potter books “encourage children to read” and delighted that they irritate the Religious Wrong.
Further, I commend the town of Sandwich for celebrating the release of the last book with a day’s worth of events, starting at 10 am and ending, of course, at midnight.
Given all of this, I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t read more than one or maybe two of the Potter books all the way through.
The basic plotline – Harry’s nefarious enemies threaten his life, but nevertheless, Harry saves the day and learns a little more about his past as a result – bored me after a while.
I also became bored after about book three with the introduction of yet more predictably weird characters, especially the non-human ones, and the predictable deux-ex-machina solutions to Harry’s problems: a potion that lets him breathe under water, a device that lets one go backwards in time, etc. Not to disrespect J.K. Rowling, but Disney, not to mention the brothers Grimm, came up with a similar formula a long time ago.
In the future, though, it’ll be interesting to see if the children who grew up with these books consider them merely entertaining or among those rare written works which can actually be life-altering.
It’s beyond my imagination to envision how this could be, but in the world of Harry Potter, anything is possible.