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JK Rowling - Harry Potter books [split topic]

Started by Thomas, June 09, 2020, 01:09:13 PM

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Thomas

I liked Harry Potter. I get its appeal for kids. As somebody mentioned earlier, there was something exciting about imagining a life away from your real, boring school, living instead at a remote castle in the mist with sentient paintings and magic lessons and moving staircases. It was entirely alien. When I was reading the books as a child, I didn't know what a 'four-poster bed' was, so I just pictured bunk beds. I never got round to reading the last book - I was over it by then - but I remember the third being great. And the novels meant that by the age of 10 myself and my friends were happily reading 800-page books. That doesn't mean I have some soppy attachment to Rowling going forward, of course.

It's like Star Wars, really. You've got the stories, but there's also a huge expansive world to imagine and play with. A sprawling canon, with opposing factions and pretty locations and a detailed history. Perfect for escapism (plus action figures and games). In Star Wars, everyone secretly comes from some posh lineage. It's all princesses and elite heroes - so Harry Potter isn't alone in that oft-criticised respect.

I mean, it's hardly Doctor Who, but I get it.


Buelligan

The problem for me was, if you've read reasonably widely as a child.  Some Tolkein, some Alan Garner, Ursula le Guin and so on, JK Rowling is like watching Disney when you're looking for Grimm.  It's a pale plastic plagiarism.

Chollis

Quote from: Thomas on June 09, 2020, 01:09:13 PM
I liked Harry Potter. I get its appeal for kids. As somebody mentioned earlier, there was something exciting about imagining a life away from your real, boring school, living instead at a remote castle in the mist with sentient paintings and magic lessons and moving staircases. It was entirely alien. When I was reading the books as a child, I didn't know what a 'four-poster bed' was, so I just pictured bunk beds. I never got round to reading the last book - I was over it by then - but I remember the third being great. And the novels meant that by the age of 10 myself and my friends were happily reading 800-page books.

It's like Star Wars, really. You've got the stories, but there's also a huge expansive world to imagine and play with. A sprawling canon, with opposing factions and pretty locations and a detailed history. Perfect for escapism (plus action figures and games). In Star Wars, everyone secretly comes from some posh lineage. It's all princesses and elite heroes - so Harry Potter isn't alone in that oft-criticised respect.

I mean, it's hardly Doctor Who, but I get it.

Agree with this. I was 7 when the first book came out and 11 for the first film which probably helped. I still have a soft spot for it even if the author is a wanker.

bgmnts

I'm definitely buying Pascale la Cigale! Thanks Buelligan.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Buelligan on June 09, 2020, 12:54:12 PM
I used to run the village library here, unpaid like.  The books the children liked were mostly stuff about planets and space.  Other books enjoyed included La tortue qui respirait par les fesses, Pascale la Cigale and La légende de Momotaro

Obviously, I can suggest more if it helps but I get the sense that you're not really that interested.

No, as I surmised you most likely don't read children's stories for leisure. My post was intended to highlight the flatulent ignorance of disregarding art of any kind on first glance.

Which shouldn't be mistaken as me thinking you were wrong in reaching your conclusions. I agree with some of what you state, albeit from the eyes of an adult.  There are elements of value in the series which you decided to obscure through your approach. A child without prior experience will not care about whether it is derivative but whether it is effective.

Quote from: Buelligan on June 09, 2020, 01:13:55 PM
The problem for me was, if you've read reasonably widely as a child.  Some Tolkein, some Alan Garner, Ursula le Guin and so on, JK Rowling is like watching Disney when you're looking for Grimm.  It's a pale plastic plagiarism.

I'm not sure about that, I think the books are quite good (except for the last one) and that Rowling really nailed it in her creation of an immersive world. I remember the Harry Potter universe being a much more compelling universe for escapism than most other fantasy or YA novels.

It's not the books' fault that society decided a successful children's book author should be a pompous opinion-haver simply due to the fact that she lucked into being incredibly rich.

king_tubby

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on June 09, 2020, 01:00:55 PM
I won't disagree that the source material is excellent, but my performance (honed in front of an exclusive live audience every night for 18 months) has truly elevated the prose as written.

Can relate.

jobotic

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 09, 2020, 12:58:33 PM
I Want My Hat Back is a masterpiece

What is a hat?

Okay thank you anyway.





Two of the best lines in children's literature.

Zetetic

Quote from: Thomas on June 09, 2020, 01:09:13 PM
It's like Star Wars, really. You've got the stories, but there's also a huge expansive world to imagine and play with.
I think this excessively generous to Star Wars' world-building, even if this is part of the appeal of Harry Potter (combined with it managing the magical realism/urban fantasy-type stuff in a fairly compelling, if ultimately not very deep, fashion).

People did write the EU (although much of this was sufficiently terrible that most works that can keep away from it do so) but the world of the films is pretty tiny, which is why you end up with things like this: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Willrow_Hood


chveik

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on June 09, 2020, 01:22:22 PM
I'm not sure about that, I think the books are quite good (except for the last one) and that Rowling really nailed it in her creation of an immersive world. I remember the Harry Potter universe being a much more compelling universe for escapism than most other fantasy or YA novels.

It's not the books' fault that society decided a successful children's book author should be a pompous opinion-haver simply due to the fact that she lucked into being incredibly rich.

this really. they're not plagiaristic. and how could you tell if you've only read a few pages anyway? it's madness

Thomas

Quote from: Buelligan on June 09, 2020, 01:13:55 PM
The problem for me was, if you've read reasonably widely as a child.  Some Tolkein, some Alan Garner, Ursula le Guin and so on, JK Rowling is like watching Disney when you're looking for Grimm.  It's a pale plastic plagiarism.

I don't think anyone I knew at school had read any of those - myself included. They certainly weren't on the curriculum. At home I read some Dahls (#cancelled) and the Harry Potters, but none of the names you mention.

Part of the appeal of Harry Potter as opposed to, say, Lord of the Rings, was that Harry Potter was half-set in the real world. You could picture the opening scenes taking place on your own street. Everybody like to imagine that they'd receive a letter from Hogwarts on their eleventh birthday. Wizards and castles and monsters - but also the mundanity of train stations and city centres and the prospect of secret alleyways that nobody else can see.

I think there's good stuff even if it's derivative (isn't everything?) and the author has some rubbish opinions.

Mango Chimes

I pitied the children slurping the thin gruel of Dahl as I nourished myself on a banquet of Voltaire.

Gruel, I assumed; I did not stoop to taint my advanced palate with its moribund flavours.

The third Harry Potter film was good.

Endicott

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on June 09, 2020, 01:21:01 PM
No, as I surmised you most likely don't read children's stories for leisure.

Do you know many adults who do read children's stories for leisure? (and I don't mean, reading to their children, I mean, reading for their own pleasure)

Ferris

Quote from: jobotic on June 09, 2020, 01:24:39 PM
What is a hat?

Okay thank you anyway.





Two of the best lines in children's literature.

Split off the young kids books into its own thread in case anyone is interested (and to avoid diverting this thread)

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=80717.new#new

Sin Agog

Quote from: Endicott on June 09, 2020, 01:36:31 PM
Do you know many adults who do read children's stories for leisure? (and I don't mean, reading to their children, I mean, reading for their own pleasure)

I read quite a few as gentle literary palate-cleansers.  Things like Edith Nesbitt's Five Children & It books, The Velveteen Rabbit, Tove Jansson's strange, solipsistic creations from her little Finnish island, early 20th century writings by people like Padraic Colum and Richard Jefferies still under that Victorian Romantic thrall, and tons of dark European fairytales about Baba Yaga, seven-league boots and whatnot.  There's often a chatty, conversational style that helps get me back into reading in dry patches, coupled with a total awe of nature (I still find the oft-cut chapter of The Wind in The Willows, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, with its eerie moonlight vigil by the river banks filled with old-world allusions to Pan and other receding gods, one of the best pieces of writing going).  Also my favourite book of all time, The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62268.The_Singing_Creek_Where_the_Willows_Grow), a completely unique but fascinating piece of nature writing scrawled in her own autodidact patois on scraps of butcher paper, was written by a six-year-old girl (went on a pilgrimage to her grave a few years back- it's not too far from Marx's). It made me see everything, even potatoes (each of which she gave some Shakespearean name), as imbued with its own inner-life again- something I'd forgotten. Comparatively, Harry Potter is a bit of a dry wank, but I was always going to think that.

Dahl still seems to work on kids, especially The Twits, because it's erratic and anarchic in exactly the same way many children are.  There's very little of that soapboxing shit that children are subjected to from adults who use them as living self-esteem tools in a world that makes them feel powerless.

Mister Six

Quote from: Buelligan on June 09, 2020, 01:13:55 PM
The problem for me was, if you've read reasonably widely as a child.  Some Tolkein, some Alan Garner, Ursula le Guin and so on, JK Rowling is like watching Disney when you're looking for Grimm.  It's a pale plastic plagiarism.

That's a lot to take from the first few pages of the book.

Has anyone actually accused Rowling of plagiarism? There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and gets an owl" from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic comic, but even Gaiman has said it was just coincidence.

Other than that, I've no idea what it is Harry Potter is supposed to be derivative of, and I'm pretty widely read myself.

popcorn

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:29:10 PM
There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and get an owl"

She actually stole it from my actual real life.

Buelligan

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on June 09, 2020, 01:21:01 PM
No, as I surmised you most likely don't read children's stories for leisure. My post was intended to highlight the flatulent ignorance of disregarding art of any kind on first glance.

Which shouldn't be mistaken as me thinking you were wrong in reaching your conclusions. I agree with some of what you state, albeit from the eyes of an adult.  There are elements of value in the series which you decided to obscure through your approach. A child without prior experience will not care about whether it is derivative but whether it is effective.

One can only speak from ones own experience.  I was a child.  I had read Tolkien, Garner, le Guin and so on and wanted more.  I read some HP and was offended by its twee Blytonesque diddums  chitchat.  It felt like some ghastly twat had squatted over a genre I particularly loved, I too was a bullied geek that escaped into books, and put a Waitrose right in the middle of Middle Earth.  I saw it as both derivative and unimaginative.  As I said, Disney for your Grimm.

Mister Six

Seriously, derivative and plagiaristic of what?

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:29:10 PM
That's a lot to take from the first few pages of the book.

Has anyone actually accused Rowling of plagiarism? There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and gets an owl" from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic comic, but even Gaiman has said it was just coincidence.

Other than that, I've no idea what it is Harry Potter is supposed to be derivative of, and I'm pretty widely read myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(film)

QuoteNoah Hathaway as Harry Potter Jr.
Michael Moriarty as Harry Potter Sr.
Shelley Hack as Anne Potter
Jenny Beck as Wendy Anne Potter
Sonny Bono as Peter Dickinson
Phil Fondacaro as Malcolm Malory and Torok the Troll
Anne Lockhart as Young Eunice St. Clair
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Jeanette Cooper
Gary Sandy as Barry Tabor
June Lockhart as Eunice St. Clair
Georgio Armani as himself.

bgmnts

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:29:10 PM
That's a lot to take from the first few pages of the book.

Has anyone actually accused Rowling of plagiarism? There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and gets an owl" from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic comic, but even Gaiman has said it was just coincidence.

Other than that, I've no idea what it is Harry Potter is supposed to be derivative of, and I'm pretty widely read myself.

Its Troll isn't it? The main character is called Harry Potter.

Edit - bugger.

Buelligan

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:33:32 PM
Seriously, derivative and plagiaristic of what?

I'd have to go back and reread it to tell you.  It was a very long time ago.  I'm just telling you what I thought.  And that's what I thought.  If it helps, I can still remember the bookshop.  The opening of the book, the reading and the disgust and disappointment.  Like a child promised ice cream and receiving lard.

Sin Agog

Kinda feel like my post was split into the wrong thread.  I wasn't exactly recommending reading material for young children.  Guess it had even less to do with J.K.R.'s diarrhetic online Pollocks, though.

Pdine

I don't like the x for cunts formulation, but HP really is The Worst Witch for etc

king_tubby

Quote from: Mister Six on June 09, 2020, 02:29:10 PM
That's a lot to take from the first few pages of the book.

Has anyone actually accused Rowling of plagiarism? There were some claims she'd nicked the idea of "speccy British kid learns he's a wizard and gets an owl" from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic comic, but even Gaiman has said it was just coincidence.

Other than that, I've no idea what it is Harry Potter is supposed to be derivative of, and I'm pretty widely read myself.

It bares more than a passing resemblance to The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy.

idunnosomename

this comes up occasionally, how shit J.K.'s world building was and how Eurocentric and racist it is



https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps/status/1234558864575602688

so the UK has its own school while the whole of the middle east shares one but it doesnt have a name. same for China.

and most of Africa shares one and of course it's in a fucking cave



bgmnts

Jesus, couldnt even be arsed to name some of them.

QuoteRayne Hale Sparkles | she/her
@raynehale
·
2 Mar
Replying to
@TerribleMaps
this pretty much represents how Brits view the world 🤷🏻‍♀️

And thats the impact.

idunnosomename

it's pretty funny as well how the names are basically google translate. like Castelobruxo is portuguese for "Castle wizard" but can only really be read as "castle that is also actually a wizard"

chveik

the map isn't in the books though, it's all part of the stuff her shitbrains made up afterwards

popcorn

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 09, 2020, 03:03:47 PM
it's pretty funny as well how the names are basically google translate. like Castelobruxo is portuguese for "Castle wizard" but can only really be read as "castle that is also actually a wizard"

Yes, the Japanese is MAGIC PLACE