In wishing that JKRowling would shut the fuck about her new novel?

[ExitPursuedByABear]

For days now the media has been awash with interviews about her new 'adult' book. Every time I turn on the radio or the tv, there she is, giving another bloody interview. She has said she thought about publishing it under a pseudonym but decided to go public. You know what JKR, anonymous would have been a good idea.

I mean, the Harry Potter books are a good yarn but hardly great literature so I am not exactly champing at the bit to get my teeth into her 'adult' offering.

And apparently it contains swearing .

She has called her fictional middle class village with the adjacent sink estate Pagford.

[OatyBeatie]

Coming very late to the thread so I guess all this has been said anyway, but I love the fact that she pays all her taxes gladly, and that she does other good things with some of her surplus money.

And also, although she doesn't need to maximise her own profits, she is presumably in a contract with her profit-conscious publisher that requires her to do a prescribed about of book promotion, so she doesn't have the choice of being a total wallflower.

And, who knows, perhaps she managed to use her leverage in the contract to pressure her publisher to invest as much of the profit as poss in unknown writers on their books.

Don't really like her writing, but she created a wonderful world, that was an escapist paradise for my older son -- until it was dragged into the tawdry real world by being hyped and merchandised to hell and back.

[OatyBeatie]

(Certainly agree with nooka's third paragraph, though. And once the potter movies were underway I thought the books became very much poorer.)

[Curtsey]

Nooooo! That's for Stephen Fry alone to do. HP is about ferreting yourself away and entering the world on your own - there's a reason so many kids came up with their own batty prononciations of 'Hermione'

As for being gripped - gosh, can only speak for myself, but I remember a thundery night in the summer of 2005 when the door to my student flat was almost hammered down by my (ENGLISH LIT LECTURER) friend who was demanding to be let in so that we could 'be traumatised over the ending together!' Needless to say I had to kick her out and block my ears. I was several chapters behind her - in the cave with Harry and Dumbledore.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

When did I ever say I thought it was easy to do? I don't. I think it's difficult. And I don't think she is particularly a master at doing it.

[nooka]

Hi Orange, yes I have. I'm a bit of a completer finisher that way, and I don't think they are bad, just not particularly good.

I have a general rule that books only get to stay in the house if I think they are going to be reread (I am a serious bookworm and run out of space on a regular basis, and it looks like my children are the same way). The last HP I got from the library and I've never really felt inclined to buy it, but I've not yet thrown out the series because my children might want to read them some day. Not sure it's going to happen though.

[hackmum]

So, to sum up the argument against JKR so far:

1. She's written some popular children's books which not everyone likes.
   
2. She's done some publicity interviews for her new novel.
   
3. She's allowed her publishers to put an embargo on reviews appearing before the novel is published.
   

They should shoot her now.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

I don't think she should be shot and nor does anyone else. I have no bad feelings towards her, but I do not think she is a very good writer. This is allowed. Neither do I think it is easy to be a good writer, neither do I think I could do better. In fact it's precisely because I don't think I could write a novel that I would consider any good that I don't have any desire to do so.

[flippinada]

Think you've got it in one hackmum.

[ExitPursuedByJKR]

I just thought the whole media thing around her new novel was a bit OTT, that's all.

Not suggesting anyone be shot.

[Hulababy]

Curtsey - Stephen Fry is sooo good on the HP audios! DD has them all now and we have listened to them on long journeys or holidays with long car trips - eve DH has enjoyed them. he reads them so well.

I have to disagree - the HP books are excellent children's books and can be enjoyed by adults also. There is no getting away from the fact that the HP books were very good and were extremely popular. That cannot be denied surely - she is the best selling author after all.

I don't blame JKR from protecting her books and the HP brand from the media rounds - sounds like fantastic business sense if you ask me. Good on her if you ask me.

FWIW I heard two interviews of her new book - and def no more than any other author/celeb with a new book out - tbh to not appear and give interviews would make very little business sense.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

Straw man with gun.

[Hulababy]

To be fair - NO book grips me when reading it out loud to others. DH is the same. reading out loud has a very different purpose. It is the listening to a book that does that - be it being read to or reading in your head to yourself.

I read outloud most days - work in an infant school - and it is very easy to get side tracked when reading out loud ime. It just isn;t the same at all. I know DH had this same issue when he did bedtime stories with DD.

[Hulababy]

As for "poor writing" - well that means different things to different people. People simply have different tastes.

There are critics for many of the well know writers, in both adult and children's literature - Austin, Brontes, Dickens, Blyton, Dahl, .... and yes JKR. No one can please everyone. I guess authors just hpe to please a majority - and let's face it - on book sales JKR obviously achieved that. Yes, some people may not like her writing but obviously many people do. And her books were already very popular way before the films were made and came out.

[EdgarAllanPond]

plenty of crap writing in Bronte books.

what was Wuthering Heights all about eh?

still a classic.

plenty of George Eliot is a bit bloody dull.

still classics.

I greatly enjoyed reading the HP books, and although even at the time i knew it was a bit like 'worst witch' (which i bloody loved) it was still unputdownable.

and JK loves MC people - The Weasleys are the last word in worthy MC-ness with their child-shaming hand me downs and middle-ranking academic/civil service jobs.

the gin may have been flowing in Edgar Cottage.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

I used to find her sentences very clunky and difficult to read aloud smoothly in a way I never did with Anne fine, Catherine storr, lemony snicket, or others. And I did used to balk at reading hermione continually screeching squealing and squeaking.

Anne fine's characters, to give just one example, have quite complicated feelings and aren't usually Good or Bad, which I prefer.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

The fact that you can't easily say what wuthering heights was 'all about' is part of why it is a better book.

[EdgarAllanPond]

if you say so nit

i would say the author couldn't get it together and was writing in intermittent surges of brilliance.

bit like Shirley...

[Hulababy]

TOSN - but it is all still personal opinion isn't it? In your opinion JKR and the HP books are badly written; for others they are not. Just like for every other book out there. There is no one book that is the perfectly written book for everyone. It just doesn't exist.

[EdgarAllanPond]

my Dad read us TP books - eg Weird Sisters. much better than SF, he's too knowing.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

Untrue. Repetitious vocabulary and incorrectly structured sentences are objectively bad, for example.

[Curtsey]

But that?s the thing about classic books, Nit, The thousands/millions of people who have read and loved them can?t be objective about them. Of course the HP books are far from perfect. I agree with many of the criticisms of the work I?ve read here and elsewhere (in need of editing, Hermione squeaking, blah blah). But for all that I don?t care, because for me and millions of others, they just have something special that?s hard to define. We love the books we do in spite of their flaws, not because of them. For whatever reason, we experience an emotional reaction. I think that?s kind of wonderful, actually. But if you don?t feel that emotional reaction (and plenty don?t, with HP, particularly those who came to it after it became globally giant + films etc.), you don?t feel it. I don?t feel it with Terry Pratchett?s work, for example. I have tried, and I think the books seem really clever and fun ? but they?re not for me.

Wordfactory has already made this point, and more articulately than I can, so I won?t go on. That said?.I was a bit shocked to hear you label it above thread as some kind of pernicious McLiterature that?s harmful for kids because it doesn?t challenge them, or because all of the characters are either Good or Bad. I think of Snape, Slughorn, Aunt Petunia, Remus Lupin...And one of the many crushing life-lessons that Harry has to come to terms with is that his own dad was, frankly, a bullying shit. Death? My friend?s kid withdrew into himself for days on end after he?d finished reading the part where Dobby dies. This is writing that affects.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

But I can think a book is well written and not 'love' it. I don't 'love ' wuthering heights, in fact.

I don't think mcdonalds is actually pernicious. I think it's food that would be nourishing and stop a person starving and it is better than not eating any food. I do not think it is damaging in itself, though I know some do. But neither do I claim it is 'great' food or that its chefs are geniuses just because some people really really like it.

[nooka]

Yes for me that's the issue with HP, not that it's a bit ordinary, no problem with that at all. Not that it's so successful, or that many many people love the world either. My only complaint is really with the critics who have lauded it in a way I find quite inexplicable. I do wonder with some of them whether they simply haven't read very much great children's fantasy so their basis for comparison is skewed.

[marfisa]

Right, I still maintain that the hype was silly. But I may have accidentally bought a copy and then neglected my house and DC to finish the whole thing in 48 hours.

And I loved it. She knows how to tell a story.

[Curtsey]

Nooka, when you consider that the lit critics who have hailed the Potter books work for, amongst others, the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker, the Irish Times, you've got to seriously HOPE that they've read plenty of great children's fantasy. Not a guarantee, of course, but I found the New Yorker articles in particular were insightful in their placing of Potter in the canon.

Marfisa that's interesting, glad you enjoyed it. No plans to read it myself anytime soon, have to get through the stack on my locker first...