Is it strange that no book has ever taken a hold of my imagination and life like Harry Potter has? I'm two years into college, have taken 7 literature classes, am always reading a different book, and nothing has bested Harry Potter for me.
I'm not even baiting; why do I like Harry Potter so much? Is it nostalgia? Is it the feel-good vibe that the story gives off? Is it because I didn't have any friends growing up when I transferred schools?
I know everyone likes to shit on it because it's a literal children's book, but I can't do that for some reason. It feels like so much more to me for some reason.
Why has this book made me feel the way I do? Why do I feel the urge to reread it every year?
try this guy. he might be more suited to your intellect than some of the proper literature you arent connecting with
>>8033124
Fuck off.
>>8033111
>>8033111
Everyone has that nostalgia for a children's book that makes that book almost untouchable. For me it's Where the Wild Things Are but I know people also feel the same about Tintin or The Little Prince.
However, if it's your favourite book of all time or if you struggle to tackle anything outside of your comfort zone (but have a curiosity for literature), then you probably really need to broaden those horizons, m8.
>>8033127
Look, it's baby's first time on 4chan. :D
>>8033111
Trips of truth.
It's partly nostalgia, and partly that there is content in Harry Potter. Loling, even though she seems to have forgotten recently, studied and was inspired by classics and made a work that progresses in tone from the children's shenanigans of the first two into forays with death, politics, and Christian allegory in the last few.
One could do much worse than Harry Potter.
>>8033155
It'll probably always have that special place for you because nostalgia just rolls like that (and, in fairness, the book was immensely successful with adults as well as children so many people will understand why you feel the way you do), but the more you read the more likely you will find literature that will become newer favourites.
I read it when i was 18 and i like it. How the fuck is that nostalgia
>>8033111
Harry Potter is first and foremost shit (from an adult perspective). You can see it in the first and second books. It was never meant to be more than kid friendly safe fantasy. You can see how Rowling later on realized that her story was catching and she actually had to make a proper mythos.
I say don't question it. There is enough in life to make you feel shit. Even if something as retarded as Harry Potter makes you happy then go for it.
I think we all have our favourite thing that would be rightly ridiculed by the people here or in a wider circle too.
>>8033111
It's most definitely nostalgia. Everyone has childhood books that they love and may later chose to ignore the flaws in. Nothing wrong with that, though I've personally never cared for Harry Potter.
oh man harry potter. I was 8 when this book came out and the only people I ever knew who read it were girls. this one chick did a presentation on in in grade 4 and I saw the cover and was like "wtf he's a witch, that's so gay". so I only associated girls with Harry Potter thus rendering it gay as fuck . that year my dad gave me the hobbit and I smashed through LOTR. thinking harry potter was for girls wasn't an issue until middle schooligans and highschool where I first encountered males who read it. they were made fun of viciously. so many people got bullied for reading harry potter by me. lol god if love life.
>>8033204
fuck you auto correct lmao. gonna get me made fun of. I hate life
>>8033111
>reread it every year
Youre holding to your past. Let go. Open youre head. A knife will do.
>>8033204
>>8033111
I get the same feeling about HP Lovecraft. I read Lovecraft in middle school and I get super nostalgic about him.
Also try killing yourself. That gives you a new perspective of things.
"En las cercanías de la muerte se aprecia el supremo valor de la vida".
>>8033111
>Is it nostalgia? Is it the feel-good vibe that the story gives off?
Both.
>>8033124
This faggot doesn't come no where close. Besides lacking humour, I think the big difference is that his books reads like listening to teens bitching about their problems, while in HP Harry deals with his teen shit AND more.
>>8033179
You have patrician taste
Harry Potter isfun__and Rowling did a great job with the world building. It's simply an entertaining series of books, no shame liking it despite what some insecure pseudo-intellectuals on this board may say.
>>8033127
Why? It's a sincere recommendation. John Green is at exactly the same level as Harry Potter.
They made for better movies than books, although it's a shame that Spielberg didn't make the first few as planned.
>>8035374
pffhahahaha
For me Harry Potter was everything. The day i turned 11 i literally prayed to god (and i've never believed in a god) that i'd get a letter from Hogwarts. The book series really made the world magical.
harry potter is popular because Rowling uses a newly-discovered technique called "series writing". it's "newly-discovered" insofar as the general public wasn't aware of it even a few years ago.
it's something some authors have naturally stumbled upon though. catch-22 was written entirely using the technique and it appears in ulysses as well, though there's no concrete proof for that one.
anyway, here's what it is:
>What is a series? Let us first say what a series is not: it is not an interrelated series of books in the same genre that have a lot of the same characters. (It is related to that, but we don’t have to worry about that right now.)
>Series here is defined as: The repetition and variation of a narrative element so that the repetition and variation creates meaning.
>You may have heard repetition and variation applied to art in general: the use of melody in music, the architectural pattern.
>Repetition and variation of a narrative element—what is that? A narrative element is anything that can be identified in a reader’s mind as something discrete, for example, a person, a place, a thing, a relationship or a phrase. In fact, the repetitions and variations of series are how a person becomes a character, how a place becomes a setting, how a thing or object becomes a symbol, how a relationship becomes a dynamic, and how a repeated phrase becomes a key to the philosophy of the work.
>Repetition and variation of a narrative element creates meaning. The repetitions and variations of each series form individual narrative arcs.
>>8036170
here is the series grid for Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix.
>>8036170
here is the series grid for Catch-22.
I have nostalgia for several mangas that I started reading more than a decade ago and that I'm still following, and not many literary works really excite me as much as seeing new chapters of them. I'm not about to say they're on the same level, though. I probably don't even enjoy them quite as much as great novels and poems.
Oldfag here
Never read a single page of Harry Potter or watched any of the films. I assume OP's predicament is purely due to nostalgia.
My ex-gf was a lot younger than me and grew up with Harry Potter and worshipped it like so many others of her age seem to do.
Its just a kids book. I have always despised everything about the series even though I don't know why and have never read them.
>>8036189
Btw these mangas are Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, Berserk, Akagi, Kaiji, and whatever Naoki Urasawa happens to be working on (right now it's Billy Bat). Reading new chapters of them is always a treat for me
i don't see how rowling's books are any different in their way to create the setting than any other books which share heroes and places (detective or adventure series for instance)
now, if you want to read something about repeated phrases, here you are :3
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.
So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
>>8036195
Maybe you shouldn't be dating little girls
grr, forgot to say it was meant to >>8036170
>>8036202
>He doesn't date little girls
>>8036202
Maybe dating 20 year olds with huge tits when you are in your 30s isn't so bad
>>8036198
I'll also say that all of these have been declining in quality except for Hunter x Hunter, which somehow just keeps getting better and better
Logical reason you didn't read A Cadmean Victory?
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11446957/1/A-Cadmean-Victory
>>8036225
Here is the series grid for Finnegans Wake.
>>8036225
i'm the person you responded to, pic related is an entire book on it.
uploaded it for you. you need calibre or a similar program to open epubs. click "slow download" on speedyshare.
http://pastebin.com/Vv2PWgQS
>>8033111
The world is so attractive because a lot more is possible but there are fairly well defined rules and the the books engender this feeling in you because they are well written enough for children's books to convey they feeling that you had when learning to read but poorly written enough that there is nothing to challenge you, that creates a double-whammy of regression basically.
I enjoyed them as well for these reasons (I started reading them when I was 18 and I distinctly remember the sensation they gave me of being five years old again) but after the last film the scales fell from my eyes and I realised what pablum it was. I wish that she had had the wit to realise what was good about them and kept them as children's books that they miht have remained a perfectly legitimate island of nostalgia in an often genuinely cruel world, but alas she experienced her own hype and falsely realised that her talent and her work was significant for anything other than generating money. Now she erodes her real achievements daily with ridiculous pronunciamento.
>>8033186
I like to think that her skill as a writer developed parallel to the development of her characters into adolescence and adulthood, which has a bit of charm to it. Similar to how the actors grew up as the characters they were portraying grew.
>>8036195
The sad thing is, they're truly enjoyable and you'll never be able to experience it because of your bias. It's not challenging material. But it's like a Pixar film. Anyone can find enjoyment in it. Except for those whose perceive their lives have been influenced in a negative way by them. Like the kids who got severely punished for reading them by their fundamentalist parents. Which is, hilariously, a theme in the book.
>>8033111
I'm gonna diagnose your problem as a bad case of nostalgia. I didn't read HP until the winter of 2014. While I certainly enjoyed the series as a whole it's really not revolutionary. Before that I had only read some Hemingway and now I've read about 25% of the /lit/ top recommendations. There's nothing wrong with reading it, especially if you enjoyed it as a kid, but don't fool yourself into thinking its a masterpiece of literature. anyway here's me at Wizarding World in Orlando, FL
>>8037030
It's obviously not a literary masterpiece but it IS one of the best books in the last 20 years.
did you faggots really read a book about a male witch?
>>8037077
Infinite Jest came out in 1996.
>>8037086
That's really cool, anon. See I'm always learning.
>>8037091
cut the 'tude, son
>>8037096
We can be friends if you want.
>>8037100
gaaay
>>8037108
rude
>>8033111
STRECHED
>>8033111
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now only read J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>8038136
I finished reading it last night and I don't remember a single instance of "stretched his legs".
I assume this is a meme and/or copypasta.
>>8038254
It is, and there isn't a single "stretched his legs" in the book. You can download a pdf and see for yourself.
>>8038254
>>8038284
There's one at the beginning, but the book has a lot of cliches similar to that one, which is what Bloom meant to say (he probably misremembered because he doesn't actually care about the book). Here's a particularly egregious excerpt someone posted a while back. There are at least five cliches in it, so see if you can spot them all (if you can't, it means you're an eternapleb):
In years to come, Harry would never quite remember how he had managed to get through his exams when he half expected Voldemort to come bursting through the door at any moment. Yet the days crept by, and there could be no doubt that Fluffy was still alive and well behind the locked door.
It was sweltering hot, especially in the large classroom where they did their written papers. They had been given special, new quills for the exams, which had been bewitched with an AntiCheating spell.
They had practical exams as well. Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tapdance across a desk. Professor McGonagall watched them turn a mouse into a snuffbox -- points were given for how pretty the snuffbox was, but taken away if it had whiskers. Snape made them all nervous, breathing down their necks while they tried to remember how to make a Forgetfulness potion.
>All this Harry Potter nostalgia
>Parents couldn't afford them, and so I got second-hand copies of The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy instead
Cried like a bitch at the time, but now I'm grateful.
I mean, imagine growing up with shit taste.
>>8038284
>there isn't a single "stretched his legs" in the book
literally on the first pages
>He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.
>>8036170
Isn't this what Agatha Christie used, too?
>>8036170
So she invented repetitiveness? Fuck that shit.
>>8040067
>in years to come
>never quite remember
>managed to get through
>half expected
>bursting through the door
>there could be no doubt
>alive and well
>breathing down their necks
The last five are the worst.
>>8040073
youre such a ron, anon
If you like H.P., read Gaskun's stuff.
It's juvanile but imaginative. I'm on book 5 and there's some shit here I really wasn't expecting.
>>8041483
googled "gaskun" and just got a whole lot of weird deviantart shit
I preferred RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden books, but I look back at them as moralizing turds with really captivating battle scenes.
Never really understood why so many people cream themselves over Rowlings work. They were mediocre to me when I was into shitty fantasy.
Also, found LOTR books to be boring af. At least Harry Potter books had endless stream of random references per page. Read and liked some Moorcock in recent years and he's spoken about being the opposite of Tolkien.
It's nice that HP got so many ppl into reading, but most of those ppl go on to have shit taste in their adult lives too.
>>8041465
Don't forget about "the days crept by" and "sweltering hot".
>>8038136
>>8036229
This wasn't made by Joyce, it was made by one of the russian modernists
>>8041491
Try googling: gaskun 4chan
>>8041652
Which one?
>>8033111
It's because Harry Potter, unlike the great books, is fantasy. Not fantasy in the sense of the genre, but fantasy in the sense that it's about the reader fantasizing about it. Do you ever wonder why no one writes fanfics of classic literature? It's not just because fanfiction is "for children" or something, it's because there's no desire to insert oneself into the great stories. books like Harry Potter are, for better or for worse, about the readers inserting themselves into the story. It's why everything revolves around Harry, despite him being pretty unexceptional. Some characters love him, some characters hate him, but everyone is thinking about him all the time. He's a proxy for the reader. "I may not be the smartest or strongest or the prettiest, but I am the main character."
>>8042276
There's nothing wrong with cliches, there is something wrong with nothing but cliches.
One can have a cliched writing style if he can make up for it by the ideas he explores, but Rowling does none of that. There's nothing of substance in HP, they're just "enjoyable." Nothing about them remains in the reader, it doesn't give them insight into courage, or sacrifice, or tragedy, or justice, or any of the things you get from reading Homer or Shakespeare or Hemingway. It teaches people nothing but blandness. The reason Rowling resonates with readers but Dostoevsky doesn't is not because Dostoevsky lacks something Rowling captures, but precisely because Dostoevsky captures something Rowling doesn't. To someone who grew up eating fast food a well-cooked meal is completely unappealing. Is there any reason we should expect it would be different with literature?
So if I'm expected to eat up Rowling's bland writing then the least she can do is not use cliches.
>>8033111
My childhood was Lord of the Rings and Beowulf. Fuck off, you dumb shit.
>>8036206
rekt
>>8043254
Fuck beowulf
>>8043120
Makes sense, Rowling is the Goddess of Pandering, especially nowadays.
>>8033124
Kek
Classic /lit/
OP it might ne nostalgia, but Rowling did make Harry Potter very accessible.
I remember reading the first book in second grade, and I was absolutely engrossed. It just might be what you like, though.
I can't go a day without someone calling Enders Game shit, but I've read it three times by now, cover to cover. If we really knew why we liked it, we would be writing our own books
>>8036253
I'm not that guy, but shit man, thanks for the posts and the link
I am wholeheartedly invested in this now
>>8037096
>son
not dude? what are you, dumb?
who /real nigga/ here?
>>8041465
Those are phrases. Half of those are just parts of a regular sentence.
>>8045548
I always laughed a little when I saw this in the library as a kid. It looked like he had a pot on his head.
>>8045548
First semi-decent book I ever remembered reading and I abhorred it then
>>8033204
>not realizing as a young faggot that if you read HP and were nice to girls and talked about it with them, your adolescent years would have been way better with girls clamoring for your dick
>>8045548
This book is laughably easy to read to when compared to Harry Potter and that's embarrassing.
>>8033204
>I only associated girls with Harry Potter thus rendering it gay as fuck
girls are gay
>>8047529
I like girls desu.
But I've never had a girlfriend and I'm lonely and Hary Potter makes me feel like I have friends.
>>8033111
no there are a lot of base morons in the world
Why is this fucking thread still up
>>8047657
Because it's not a bait thread and I'm genuinely interested in what people on this board have to say on the topic. Thanks for the bump.
>>8036170
Seems like Infinite Jest definitely does this with various people, objects, and locations.
It's a great series. Nearly everything about it. It's just well written. Perhaps it's the fact that you're viewing the world through children's eyes where anything could happen but it actually IS a world where anything could happen. And while the characters deal with spoopy happenings and go on perilous adventures, you watch them safely from an adult perspective, knowing everything will be alright and just enjoy the ride. Even though there's not really a sense of danger, you can't help but be invested in these characters and you want to know what happens to them the next year.
>>8047678
sorry, I saged :(
>>8036200
William McGonagall
>>8043254
You can read lord of the rings AND harry potter.
