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I really don't like Harry Potter

July 20, 2007 By pia

Overheard on the Upper West Side: Are you sure you’ll feel good enough to go out tomorrow? You sound windy. I have never heard “windy” used in that context and was left with endless thoughts on what it could be.

If you read me through Google reader or an RSS feed, I take posts down. I edit endlessly on occasion, usually when I have something much more pressing to do. They stay cached in Google. I don’t find myself to be endlessly fascinating. I probably take down the best posts. I’m also going through a “who cares what I think” period which is death for a blogger.

Who cares if I don’t think that Harry Potter or for that matter Oprah made the world read again? I can’t imagine life without books but I’m older and thus old fashioned.

It makes me sad that I want to write about how the whole Harry Potter thing is a crock, but feel I will be demonized That kids who like to read other genres are actually at a disadvantage because Harry is so stressed, fawned on and read.

Sara Gruen just got a five million dollar book contract because she relates well to animals and writes half decently.

Animals? We care more about pets than people. I have nothing against animals and hope to have some pets when I move.

I gave up on the Stephanie Plum books after the second or third as they all began to feel like one, but I will take a female bounty hunter over any animal.

I like the animals I read about to have two legs and not be cavemen. Or fantasy creatures. There’s something reasurring to read about human foibles. I am partial to good mysteries because they explore the human condition so well. Good memoirs and good fiction do the same thing. Good is of course subjective.

I think we have lost something basic in our zeal to embrace the Internet era. We have lost the face to face encounters that are basic to our need to grow. We have lost true solitude that can also be necessary to regroup and face the world again.

Our choice of reading materials shows that disconnect. We don’t care enough to read about basic human interactions. Instead we chose fantasy and animals.

I can’t be held to a schedule this summer but I will have an interview with a woman who wrote a memoir I really like this coming week or the next.

Filed Under: books, New York Voyeur Tagged With: ramblings

« A letter from my father on my 16th birthday.
I was a teen age rebel and uh, oh yeah, adopted »

Comments

  1. Loquacious Curmudgeon says

    July 20, 2007 at 8:41 pm

    For what it’s worth, I love the Harry Potter series, though certainly not to the exclusion of other books, and I would never think of demonizing you for disliking them. Yeah, there are probably those who would. To heck with ’em.

  2. Traveling Chica says

    July 20, 2007 at 10:52 pm

    I don’t read the HP books. Personally, I think it’s been taken a bit too far…

  3. Damien says

    July 21, 2007 at 2:41 am

    Rowlings is dull and boring and contrived. HOWEVER, she has sold so many books because:

    1) She had a vision to write about

    and

    2) She made the time to go into her “other world” and bring it back to us in words.

    You gotta respect that. I know I can’t do that with 2 screaming kids under 5 and a 9 year old (and a full time teacing job and and and . . .)

  4. Bone says

    July 21, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    I’ve never read any of the HP books, nor had any desire to.

    Rowlings story is inspiring though, especially in this day and time, knowing that something like that can happen for a writer.

  5. cooper says

    July 21, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    I haven’t read the last few Harry Potter books. Not enchanted with them. May read the last. I already googled the ending.

    No schedule…ah…those were the days.

  6. sir jorge says

    July 22, 2007 at 1:03 am

    I never liked the series. I took a class in college that made it required reading, and I hated every minute of having to read through that book.

    There is so much better literature out there, and yet this is the top seller.

    Nice to see that people are reading again, but if that means they are reading trash instead of say…Noam Chomsky or something more important, it’s all for nothing.

  7. Pisces Iscariot says

    July 22, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    What I dispise about the HP than is
    a. they reinforce all of the old class stereotypes
    b. they are a product of Word grammar check
    Ultimately there is very creativity involved, there is no stretching of he imagination.

  8. Donald Douglas says

    July 22, 2007 at 1:10 pm

    I care about basic human interactions! I’m reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I just finished Atlas Shrugged.

    My kid’s reading the Deathly Hallows – which I think is great! He reads a lot of different things, and he’s learning.

    As for the internet, if we can count faceless engagement as meaningful, then people can have fulfillment. Online communication cannot take the place of social and family ties, but at least we read about the lives and interests of others, like Courting Destiny’s Pia!

  9. TonyG says

    July 23, 2007 at 9:52 am

    I’ll forever wonder if she ended the series on her own, or simply because the kid who plays Harry in the movies is like 25 now 🙂

  10. Doug says

    July 23, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    This is odd, I was trying to comment on another post that disappeared. You should find a way to put back the line about “I was a sweet girl but not a good one.”

    I’m a Potter Agnostic.

  11. Jonathan says

    July 23, 2007 at 3:23 pm

    Observation : Harry Potter made the world buy books again.

    Result : there are millions of unread Harry Potter books all over the western world.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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