→ November 14, 2014
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The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I have an omnibus post up for Insiders covering the Cuddyer signing, the Gose/Travis trade, and more, plus I held my regular Klawchat Thursday afternoon. Over at Paste I have a review of the hit Japanese game Machi Koro, a family-friendly deckbuilder that all three of us enjoyed.

We spent half of our vacation visiting The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios before moving over to Disneyworld, our first trip to the former , prompted by our trip through all seven books this year during our evening reading time. The two parts of Harry Potter World, Diagon Alley in Universal Studios and Hogsmeade in Universal’s Islands of Adventure, look exactly like you’d want them to look. The designs are spot on, especially in Diagon Alley, and you’ll feel like you’re walking around a movie set. Universal’s attention to detail around both areas was amazing, which makes it a little easier for you to fail to realize that twenty-dollar bills are flying out of your pockets the whole time.

There are four main rides in the two areas; my daughter tried one with me, I went on two alone, and we skipped the fourth (a roller-coaster that goes upside down, a dealbreaker for me). The Escape from Gringott’s ride in Diagon Alley is the newest one, and I thought the most impressive – it’s a 3-D ride where you’re in motion down a track that knocks you around a bit but isn’t terribly rough, and never goes all that fast. It’s the visuals and the illusion that sell it, which I won’t spoil here. There’s also new footage featuring most of the main actors from the films, adding to the realism of the ride (at least for kids who want to feel like they’re really in the story), which hews to the part of the seventh book where our heroes are going after the Horcrux in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. The waits were about 45-60 minutes while we were there, but there’s a single rider line if, like me, you can’t convince your daughter to try it.

Hogsmeade has the other three rides, including Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey as well as The Flight of the Hippogriff. The Forbidden Journey is a dark ride within Hogwarts that borrows the parabolic screen concept from Disney’s Soarin ride but puts riders in a vehicle that rotates vertically, so at one point you’re looking down at a steep drop while at other points you’re nearly prone. The story within the ride is unique and draws on several different books within the series, putting riders on a Quidditch pitch, in the Forbidden Forest, and in the Chamber of Secrets at different points, all with more new footage from actors playing the central characters. (While I’m sure they were all compensated well for their time, I imagine they wouldn’t participate if they were eager to leave the roles behind.) The Flight of the Hippogriff is a small roller-coaster, similar to Goofy’s Barnstormer ride at the Magic Kingdom but a little longer with tighter turns, running about 75 seconds in total; my daughter was iffy on it, although I think she didn’t like the fact that we rode after sunset and she couldn’t see any of what was coming.

While not technically a ride, the Hogwarts Express train that allows you to move between the two Harry Potter areas (if you have a combination ticket for both theme parks) is also fun and extremely well executed, with compartments that seat six and show a little outdoor footage on the exterior window. It’s a different film in each direction, and you even get some shadows behind the compartment door and a few familiar voices too.

Next stop: Platform 9 3/4.

A video posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

The food at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was somewhat disappointing, unfortunately – a valiant effort that fell short on execution. The butterbeer is the main attraction, and it’s good for about half a glass. The beverage itself tastes a lot like cream soda, but is topped with a creamy foam that tastes strongly of butterscotch, and there’s definitely the impression of dairy even if there isn’t any actual milk involved. It’s just too sweet to finish, and the one time I did more or less do that, I regretted it. The frozen version is even sweeter (your taste buds are dulled by cold, so frozen desserts need more sugar), and you lose some of those buttery notes in the regular drink. I never tried the pumpkin juice because it contains artifical sweeteners.

The two main restaurants are The Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade and the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley, both quickservice restaurants that serve a decent number of options of mostly British pub fare. The Three Broomsticks was a tick better in our books, although neither was any great shakes. I liked their cornish pasties with side salad, but that plate alone (at $8.99) wouldn’t be a whole meal for an adult. The fish and chips were adequate, clearly just fried but not made from particularly good fish. The toad-in-the-hole (bangers served in a Yorkshire pudding-style dumpling) at the Leaky Cauldron was really disappointing – the sausage itself tasted fine but was overcooked, and the whole thing seemed to have been prepared the day before and half-heartedly nuked to order, although my daughter inhaled the minted peas (not mushy or grey) on the plate. The best thing I had to eat in either area was the ice cream at Florean Fortescue’s, where they have some non-traditional flavors like butterbeer, earl grey with lavender (really good, kind of subtle and not perfumy or floral at all), and sticky toffee pudding (could have used a little more toffee flavor).

And then you have the shops, basically giant vacuums that aim directly at your wallet as you walk by. My daughter saved up for months, including birthday money, and bought herself Hogwarts robes ($105), Hermione’s wand ($45 for the interactive model that activates some effects in the parks), a Head Girl pin (only $10), a stuffed Hedwig (I don’t even remember), and a bunch of things in the stationary store – a quill, a bottle of ink, a Gryffindor journal, and so on. We managed to limit the damage she could do in the candy stores (including Honeydukes), at least. But you’re primarily there to look and shop, with a few rides in between. My wife also picked up a Hedwig backpack which I mocked until I noticed how many women stopped and complimented her on it, so perhaps that’s the next best thing to walking around with a baby or a puppy.

The Diagon Alley area even includes a little dark corridor for Knockturn Alley, with one shop, Borgin and Burkes, selling slightly more sinister items for those of you on Team Voldemort. That was also the one place where we encountered a park employee who was truly in character, a young woman in darker garb who lurked in the alley and decided to tease my daughter, who was wearing a cat-ear headband and a shirt with a cat on it, by meowing and hissing at her while following us for a few minutes. She eventually asked if she could take my daughter home to be her kitten. I think my daughter was half-amused and half-worried, but my wife and I thought it was great. I wish more employees were in character – not named characters, which would be impossible, but playing typical denizens of the wizarding community to get the kids (and the grown-up kids, of which there were many) more into the feel of the setting.

The twin theme parks at Universal Studios are both massive beyond the Harry Potter sections, but there wasn’t a lot there that appealed to my daughter – a few rides in the Dr. Seuss area, a bit in Jurassic Park, but that’s about it. We probably could have done all of Harry Potter World in one full day if we’d arrived when the parks opened, and two days proved more than enough, probably just leading us to spend more money than we’d wanted to in the first place. I doubt we’ll go back until my daughter is willing to go on the two big Harry Potter rides she wouldn’t try this trip – it’s not worth spending all of that money to get into the parks just so we can spend even more at the shops, especially now that we’ve been there once and seen the scenery, which at the end of the trip was the best part of all.

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→ August 21, 2011
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two.

I’m mixed on the final installment in the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two. On the one hand, it was pretty true to the book, including a number of key sequences, plot points, and quotes, without feeling terribly rushed about it. On the other hand, it doesn’t stand well on its own – it is very clearly the second half of a film, not a complete film in its own right – and the pacing that worked fine on the printed page proved very uneven on the screen.

Harry has to jump through specific hoops to get to the final, climactic battle with Voldemort, and J.K. Rowling made sure to get several of his friends in on the action in that melee, although for some reason Ginny was barely present in this half of the movie. Some of those hoops don’t translate terribly well to the screen, or just lacked the necessary contest of the books, but the film jumps back and forth between action scenes and Harry’s more cerebral quests, creating pacing issues but also keeping the film from becoming incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the story. (That is, those are the good guys, those are the bad guys, they’re fighting. Everyone can grasp that much.) The battle sequences often seemed cut off by the need to get Harry back on screen, though, meaning it didn’t have the same intensity as part one, which remains the best of the eight films if we view these two parts separately.

The staccato cuts also mean that none of the actors beyond Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) gets to stretch out much, meaning we get more mugging and less acting from some outstanding performers. Helena Bonham-Carter looks certifiable as Bellatrix Lestrange but is largely left making faces at everyone, while Alan Rickman – as central to the success of the films as anyone outside of the three main characters – might end up hoping for a Judi Dench exemption if he wanted a Best Supporting actor nomination. I wrote in my review of part one that Rupert Grint and Emma Watson had shown substantial growth as actors, but here they’re reduced to bit players, and the development of their relationship earns little screen time and scarcely any explanation.

The movie looks amazing, both in scenery and in special effects, with the initial attack by the Death Eaters on Hogwarts the effects highlight of the series. (That scene was preceded by a necessary yet too-short return for Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall.) Rowling has always been one of my favorite authors for the depth of her descriptions, and the films have lived up to the prose in sights and sounds, including some of the more difficult settings like the goblin bank Gringott’s.

But that Gringott’s scene encapsulates why I found this second half somewhat unsatisfying. It looked the part. Everyone involved in the scene did his or her job. But there was so much time spent on setup and so little on the climax of the scene that even though you saw them escape (and do quite a bit of damage along the way), the escape doesn’t stick with you as much as the setup does. I can tell you how it looked, and the tension of the scene before the betrayal, but what happened after that didn’t have the same power.

I mentioned half-jokingly the possibility of Alan Rickman getting an Oscar nomination for his role as Severus Snape, one of the meatiest roles outside of the big three across the series. The films themselves were not Oscar-worthy, but knowing the Academy’s penchant for honoring successful series as they close, I did wonder if they’d throw one nomination at someone in the film just to acknowledge the series’ existence. (That is, something beyond a technical award or an award for costumes or design.) Rickman would be my choice, since Daniel Radcliffe would have a difficult time cracking the competitive Best Actor field. Helena Bonham-Carter was convincingly crazy, but she’s barely in the movie and her part was too thin to be award material. Then again, they nominate so many films for Best Picture that perhaps the academy will shoehorn Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two into that category as they did with Toy Story 3: we hope you feel like it’s an honor to be nominated, because we have no intention of actually giving you the award.

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→ December 20, 2010
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One – the seventh Potter film, covering the first half of the final book of the series– is by far the best Harry Potter movie yet, with better acting, better effects, and, most importantly, much better pacing so there’s no more feeling that we’re racing through the story (while hitting as many fun details as possible) to get to the ending before the 180-minute mark.

The pacing results from the overdue decision to split any of the Potter books into two movies, rather than to pack one of Rowling’s detail-dense stories into a fairly short movie. Five of the six previous screenplays took the same tack: Try to make the movie look as much as possible as the depiction in Rowling’s text, adding in the most fun or memorable details, while skimping on back story and compressing or omitting key plot points. The exception was the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Y Tu Mamá También director Alfonso Cuarón, who went after the spirit of the book rather than just another faithful yet rote translation. The Gothic look and more rational pacing produced a film that was watchable even if you weren’t immersed in the Potter mythology with imagery that stuck with me long after the film was over.

Deathly Hallows Part One takes its time getting through what is still a dense 400-odd pages of text, assuming that by now you know the back story, ripping through a very tight, effective, emotional intro sequence to set up the almost immediate jump into action-film territory – and there is a lot of action in the movie. There are several major fight and/or chase sequences, and since you know Harry can’t die in this film (there’s a Part Two already on the schedule, which is sort of a clue), developing true tension when he’s in peril comes down to timing on the parts of both the director and the actors. The more natural pacing of the film also helped, as I could sink more into the story as opposed the arm’s-length perspective of the earlier films, where things happened so quickly and without explanation that my investment in the underlying plot was never very deep.

The stars of this film, as in the book, are Harry, Ron, and Hermione, getting their greatest chance to stretch out as actors and succeeding across the board. The acting in the earlier films in the series was often paint-by-numbers – parts were handed out based on appearances, or the fun of having a big star appear in a role, with the actual performances secondary. Rupert Grint (Ron) was probably the best actor of the young troika at the start, but Emma Watson has made the most strides as an actress from start to finish, to the point where she’s able to carry a few scenes in this film.

(Unrelated to the film, I’ve been very impressed with how Watson has handled herself and her career over the last few months, setting an example for taking control of your life and your work that more young women, famous or not, could follow. Watson has made an aggressive move into the fashion arena and attached herself to a bleeding-edge cause, fair-trade clothing – an uncontroversial affiliation, but one that’s several steps beyond where the public consciousness is on fair-trade anything right now. Given the vicissitudes of the film industry and the short times in the limelight for many young actors and actresses, this looks like a savvy business move to extend her personal brand and increase her own control over her career.

And then there’s the hair. I can’t remember the last time a non-insanity-induced change in hairstyle produced such a reaction – Jennifer Aniston on Friends? – but Watson’s decision to cut off her locks in favor of a pixie cut seems like more than just standard-issue rebellion, but a retaking of her own image distinct from that of the only character she’s played on the big screen to date. Again, there’s control at work; Watson described doing it on the sly, but as a planned, thoughtful move, as opposed to, say, showing up in an airport barbershop and shaving her own head. It helps to be cute enough to pull off such a short haircut, but as a way to transform her image on the fly and make positive headlines for something unrelated to the Potter film – although I’m sure Warner Brothers was thrilled for the added bit of publicity around the time of the film’s release – looks to me like a shrewd maneuver that establishes her as her own boss while promoting her careers in film and in fashion.

The risk of pigeonholing is huge for the handful of actors who played the kids in the Potter films – this Collider interview with Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) gets at that issue as well – and the only practical solution is for the actors to take control of and develop their own brands independent of the characters to whom they’re so closely tied. It looks like Watson is doing so aggressively and intelligently, staking out territory for herself beyond acting; tying herself to a good, underplayed social issue; and stating unequivocally that her image is hers, not Warner Brothers’ or Hermione Granger’s or anyone else’s. In a world where young actresses and celebrities typically make headlines for bad or even self-destructive behavior, I worry about being able to show my daughter positive role models beyond those in our immediate circle – women who still bring the natural appeal of celebrity but are also smart, successful, and responsible. So far, at least, it looks like Watson is on her way to becoming that kind of person, and if that helps her achieve her own career goals, it’s just a virtuous circle where everyone benefits.

That said, I’m guessing that, like Watson’s father, I will someday be quite upset when my own daughter decides to cut off her curls.)

Daniel Radcliffe had settled comfortably into the Harry role a few films ago, and despite the fact that he’s front and center for almost the entire film, he has very little latitude within the role – he’s usually being chased, being attacked, or attacking someone else. He gets a bit of comic relief up front when various Order of the Phoenix members take Polyjuice Potion to resemble him, and there’s a fun (and apparently improvised) scene where he dances with Hermione to relieve the tension after a spat with Ron. Rumor has it that the Harry/Voldemort confrontation is even larger in Part Two than it was in the book, so I’m hopeful we’ll get to see more of Radcliffe’s range when he’s not under assault.

That comic relief I mentioned is necessary in a film that’s dark and foreboding and filled with action and mayhem, as well as two deaths of named characters. They don’t feel forced, but comfortable, similar to the scene in Prisoner of Azbakan when the Weasley twins intercept Harry while he’s wearing his invisibility cloak. (And this would be a fine time to point out that the actors playing the twins, James and Oliver Phelps, have been criminally underutilized throughout the series of films. Oliver, playing George, has a hilarious moment in this most recent film where he doesn’t speak a word, but just stands against a kitchen counter with a cup of coffee in hand.) That relatively seamless quality has been lacking throughout the series; often it would seem like a joke was inserted because it was a highlight of the book and the screenwriter couldn’t omit it even if it didn’t flow with what preceded and followed it.

The scenery in the film is remarkable, both indoors and out. I was sure they’d shot some of the film in New Zealand given how much it reminded me of parts of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Wikipedia (which we know is never wrong) says it was all shot in the United Kingdom; if someone in London is paying attention, they’ll use footage from the film in future U.K. Tourism adverts, because many of the landscape shots are breathtaking. The Ministry of Magic, which you’ve seen before, remains one of the crowing achievements of Harry Potter set design with its mix of mundane (seemingly century-old elevators) and magical. The Malfoy mansion represents the best in abanoned-property chic, dark, desolate, and appropriately eerie. Even the Lovegood shack is – as so much in the films has been – strikingly like Rowling’s descriptions.

As a part one of two, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One ends without full resolution, but doesn’t seem the least bit unfinished, nor does its status has half of a greater whole hang over the film in any way. There’s a gradual crescendo that will certainly accelerate in Part Two, but the longer format means we get more meaning, more detail, better dialogue, and more chance for several actors – notably Grint and Watson – to stretch out. I’ve watched the first six Potter movies out of a sort of obligation, but the success of this film has me avidly looking forward to the finale.

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→ March 13, 2008
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Harry Potter and the two-part finale.

The final Harry Potter book will be
split into two films, with the first to be released in 2010. So at least one of the books will receive enough time for a proper film treatment.

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→ February 21, 2008
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film).

If you haven’t read the book, I can’t imagine how confusing the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie would be. Even ignoring the standard “they left my favorite bit out” complaints – I have one too – the movie left out so much of the why from the book that I would imagine a number of viewers reached the final sequence in the Ministry of Magic wondering, “Who are they, and why are they there?”

In that regard, HP5 was reminiscent of the the first film, which had a similar pacing and lack of tension problem. In trying to pack the movie with lots of interesting details from the books, the screenplays for the two films felt frantic, with short scenes and jarring transitions that rob the films of the tension that’s critical to understanding the importance of the final scenes. Without the book as a guide, an HP5 viewer won’t know what the Order of the Phoenix is or why it exists, or what the importance is of that glass bulb (it’s mentioned just once prior to the Ministry scenes), while building plot points like Voldemort’s intrusions into Harry’s mind are given short shrift. At the same time, some subplots were omitted or cut down to the point of irrelevance from the book. The students’ rebellion against Umbridge was dropped to a single scene, which meant that my favorite line from the entire series – “It unscrews the other way” – was dropped. The Harry-Cho storyline is absurdly compressed and would have been best omitted in its emasculated form.

While the screenplay gets the bulk of the blame for this mess, someone else, likely the studio, is to blame for the short running time of only 128 minutes prior to the credits. The two-disc DVD edition contains about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, most of which would have at least helped give some body to and slow the pacing of the main film had they been included. (There is also a hilariously weird scene of Emma Thompson, sadly wasted in a minimal role in the film proper, making a mess of her meal at the welcome feast. There’s also a cute behind-the-scenes look hosted by Natalie Tena (Tonks), who is rather fetching in her lavender wig.) There’s little question that the substantial audience of readers who go to see the films will tolerate a 150-minute movie if it’s good enough, and there’s no reason why the studio couldn’t flesh it out with a “director’s cut” that runs as long as three hours. What we may have here, however, is the manifestation of the old saw about the Chicago Cubs: If the revenues are going to be huge no matter how mediocre the product, why spend more on the product and cut into profits?

The film had some high points. The special effects continue to improve; the Floo network transitions are quick and realistic, and the scenes in the Ministry foyer were very impressive. Tena was also thoroughly underutilized as Nymphadora Tonks, both because she’s adorable but also because the character gives Harry another person in his orbit who clearly cares for him. The young ladies continue to get cuter, although Evanna Lynch is too cute to be playing Luna Lovegood and the space-cadet voice was a bit cloying. And the sequence in the Ministry of Magic worked reasonably well because it’s supposed to be frenetic, although again, it could have been longer. It’s a shame that the writers, the director, and the studio are wasting such rich, vivid material; I wonder if twenty or thirty years hence, someone else will decide to “update” the series with a more serious attempt to bring the books to life.

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→ July 22, 2007
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows full review.

So I’ll do my best to review this one without spoilers, although if you still intend to read the book, you may want to stop here to be safe.

Even after a good night’s sleep, I still think this book was the best of the series. When I evaluate a book, I focus on three things: plot, prose, and characters. I’ve always thought Rowling excelled at prose – more on that in a moment – which propelled the first two books through some fairly simple plots and characters that were a little one-dimensional. Whether it was part of a plan or just Rowling’s growth as a writer, her plots became significantly more involved, with multiple subplots and a number of additional characters getting more screen time. And her characters really started to develop in the third and fourth books, with most of the central characters becoming three-dimensional by books five and six. Deathly Hallows didn’t disappoint in any of these three criteria, although I did find it odd that the character who develops the most is one who’s already dead when the book opens.

Rowling’s prose has come under a little criticism recently, although it’s possible that this has been going on all along and I just missed it. (To see what I mean, Google “Rowling clunky prose” and see how many hits come up – it’s almost as if one writer used that phrase a few years ago and every blogger on the Internet has picked it up.) The CNN.com review said “Rowling has attracted much criticism for her often clunky prose;” I couldn’t disagree more: Rowling’s prose is straightforward and descriptive, evoking images in a way that no other writer I’ve encountered is able to do. When I read a well-written book, I “see” the action in the book, almost like a movie playing in my mind as I read. The clearer the movie, the better the prose must be, and I have never run into an author who produces such incredibly well-defined images with her prose. That doesn’t necessarily mean she spends the most time on describing the scenery – I’m pretty sure Charles Dickens has that title sewn up – but that she strikes a perfect balance between descriptive text and active text. I understand that J.R.R. Tolkien’s works are more literary, but for readability, Rowling destroys Tolkien, who hails from the Dickensian tradition of giving us too fine a level of detail. Clunky prose gets in the way, slowing you down, throwing you off of the story, whereas good prose lets the story stand for itself. A good story is like fresh fish or a high-quality steak: You don’t foul that kind of food up with a heavy sauce or with overrich side dishes or with less-than-fresh ingredients, so why foul a good story up with prose that gets in the way? You want clunky prose, go read James Joyce or Henry James – if you can stomach it. I’ll stick with Rowling’s because it gets the job done.

I don’t want to talk too much about the plot for fear of introducing spoilers, but I’ll speak a little in generalities. In the context of the entire series, I don’t think Rowling could have done much better. The resolutions for the main characters worked for me, although I echo one commenter’s post on the prior thread about the epilogue being a bit too sparse; the deaths Rowling promised/threatened were reasonable, and clearly a few of the “good guys” had to die for the plot to have any semblance of believability, even within the fictional world.

The action sequences were some of Rowling’s best, with none of the muddled details and running about that made book five my least favorite in the series (due to the entire sequence at the Ministry of Magic towards the book’s end). What really worked for me in book seven, however, was the way Rowling uses a couple of major anecdotes and a few recurring characters to give both the global view of what’s going on in the wizarding world and the local view of what’s going on with Harry in the search for the Horcruxes.

She also works heavily with a few major themes – including the related themes of disillusionment and of faith – making this probably the deepest of the seven novels. Harry learns some unsettling details about Dumbledore’s past while he’s struggling to formulate a plan for locating the missing Horcruxes, leading him to wonder about the wisdom of continuing to carry out the mission Dumbledore assigned to him before his death. Harry’s relations with Ron and Hermione and the relationship between those two vacillate for much of the work as the quest goes less than smoothly and the three spend an inordinate amount of time together in uncomfortable conditions. I’ll be honest – I’m not reading these books for their deeper meaning, and while I thought I sensed some allegory about faith and trust, I was too busy enjoying the story to worry about any of that.

The seventh book’s character development is middle-of-the-pack for the series, in part because the three major characters were already pretty well developed by the end of the sixth book. Ron does end up maturing during the seventh book, but the point where he loses faith in Harry wasn’t much of a surprise and I felt like I’d seen it in an earlier book. Harry himself shows some growth towards the end of the seventh book, although this was a necessary element for the plot to reach its denouement. The character who develops the most is Albus Dumbledore, who dies at the end of book six, but whose character and background were never fleshed out previous to this book, with him serving as more of a benefactor and protector than as a full-fledged character. What you see in the back half of book six is a taste of what Rowling offers on Dumbledore in book seven. We also get some more insight into Snape’s character, but like that of Dumbledore, it’s by flashback, rather than by the characters developing as a result of the action and dialogue in the book’s present. The fact that the Big Three don’t develop much, and that the necessary direction of the plot means we don’t get to see as much of the better secondary characters (the various Weasleys, Luna, and Neville), made the lack of character development and the very heavy focus on Harry and Hermione the one big disappointment for me, although I’m obviously very invested in those characters and still ended up completely engrossed in their actions.

As I mentioned at the top, if a book has good plot, clean prose, and compelling characters, I’m in. I’ve been hooked on Harry since book one and if anything, I’m disappointed that the series is over, and the characters I know so well have seen their stories come to a close. (I did spend today in my typical post-Potter melancholy, which always hits me after I finish one of the books for the first time.) But before I let the subject drop, let me throw one story at you about what that first Harry Potter did for me.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Rowling’s work from people (including Harold Bloom and A.S. Byatt) who say that because the Potter novels aren’t real literature, they’re not going to lead people to read the classics or to otherwise up the quality of their reading materials. I can only speak to my own experience, but for me, that is absolute bollocks. I was a bookworm when I was younger, but my tastes were typical teenaged-boy – science fiction with a strong dose of countercultural books like Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and any number of books by Vonnegut. The “great books” forced on me in high school bored me to tears, and as soon as I got free of those requirements, I stopped reading them altogether (which isn’t to say I read everything that was assigned to me, either). When I got into my 20s, I more or less stopped reading fiction for pleasure, period, reading nonfiction when I wanted a book for a long flight.

In the fall of 2000, my wife picked up the first two Harry Potter books, tore through the first one, and gave me the old, “You have to read this!” line. So I took it on a business trip to California and started it on the plane ride home – and I was hooked. In 2001, I read the next two books, but also found myself getting back into the reading habit; I discovered P.G. Wodehouse and started perusing used book stores for the first time in a few years. I read Goblet of Fire in January of 2002, and ended up reading 75 books that year, including Moby Dick, Silas Marner, and The Sound and the Fury. Since I read that first Harry Potter book, I’ve read over 300 books, hitting Tolstoy, James, Dostoevsky, two Brontës, Fielding, Hemingway, more Faulkner, Stendhal, Hardy, Nabokov, Morrison, Eliot, Foster, Defoe, Proust, Flaubert, and the entire catalogs of Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The universal statement that the Harry Potter novels will not lead anyone to read the classics is wrong. J.K. Rowling reminded me that I love to read, and I will forever be grateful to her for that.

Indeed, I think that the criticism of Rowling’s work is a bit of literary snobbery, a reflection of the dismay that the exclusivity once offered to those who put the time into reading “great books” is losing currency in a world where great storytelling trumps metaphor and symbolism and all of the other things that our English professors told us were important without ever telling us why. Reading the classics has become its own reward, rather than a prerequisite for graduating from Eton before moving on to Oxford and then a job in the City, and our definition of “classics” is likely to change as well, with verbose authors like Richardson and Trollope sliding from view while new voices emerge from outside the Western canon. I won’t deny that there is tripe to be found in the fiction section of every bookstore in the United States, but lumping Rowling’s output with that tripe is unfair to her and to those of us who have loved her work to the point that it kindled – or rekindled – a love affair with the novel.

UPDATE: JC Bradbury weighs in on the Potter book – and its possible effect on baseball attendance over the weekend – on the Sabernomics blog.

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