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> > It's interesting to note how ravenous the publisher and the public are for the next book; usually there is a period of a year between when an author completes a book and when it first hits shelves.
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> I don't understand the instant elevation of the HP series to "all-time classic" status, and the disproportionate amount of public enthusiasm for the books.
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> I mean, they're fairly good books, the sort of thing I read when I've got a cold and really don't want to have to think too much. They're like episodes of Star Trek - instantly identifiable character archetypes, straightforward story arc, and with a good dollop of fantasy thrown in to fire your imagination.

Well, this description applies to a *ton* of accepted literary classics. It's hard to identify exactly what makes a classic stand out from the rest, given that you can usually extend this same description to mediocre books or appallingly bad ones. There *are* fantasy classics which have incredibly unique characters and storyline -- two that spring to mind immediately are Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" trilogy and George Macdonald Fraser's "The Princess and the Goblins", which would both be on my top ten "you can't say you know good fantasy if you've never read these" book list. However, this doesn't mean that books which use archetypes are of less literary value. The quality of the writing is what makes Rowling's work stand out, to me. This is true of many classic works -- if you gave a dry summary of the plot and characters, sure, the book would appear indistinguishable from the mountains of dross which are pumped out by publishers annually.

> But it's all a little *too* obvious. To paraphrase Richard E. Grant, the thing about good writing is that you feel like if you lived in the same circumstances as the people in the story, you'd definitely be best friends with them. I can see that people would experience this with the Harry Potter books - but J.K. Rowling isn't very subtle in her approach. To be fair, they are children's books after all, and the blatant hooks and heavily-telegraphed twists are probably spot on for keeping a child with a 10-second attention span glued to the book.

I'd take issue with two points here. First, Richard E. Grant is just plain wrong, SO HA. Now that I've got *that* devastating riposte out of the way, onwards to my main point. A good children's book should be as subtle as a good adult's book. It's a mistake to think that because something's aimed at children, it should be dumber than usual -- actually I thought Rowling's writing is well above the level of the average modern children's book for subtlety. Could you give examples of some of these blatant hooks and heavily-telegraphed twists? I can't think of any, offhand. Then again, maybe I have a ten-second attention span too. That's always a possibility.


> Bo"Mind you, I don't get why LOTR is so popular, either - straightforward fantasy tale broken up by pages and pages of DULL."urne

Ok, this doesn't answer the "why is it popular" question, but I should just point out that things only become straightforward after they've been extensively copied in 85% of the genre they created for the last fifty years. At the time, it was pretty damn original. Although, yes, pages and pages of DULL. I agree with that part.

> (and seeing as I've probably dug the hole too deep to climb out - didn't anyone else think that "The Two Towers" was a bit over the top to be really good, and that the battle for Helm's Deep was more like Zulu than anything else?)

Well, it's an epic battle. Any epic battle is going to resemble any other epic battle to some degree. There's only so much you can do to vary the basic plot of "huge bunch of guys whack chunks out of huge bunch of other guys, rinse, cycle and repeat." As with the issue of what makes good writing, it's not the broader originality that counts so much as the smaller details and general quality of the work.

Brunnen-"late for work because of writing this post, so I'm stopping right now"G