to think that the Harry Potter are timeless literature and the films are woefully miscast?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Inflammatory title to draw you in. I hope. I just fancied some HP chat.

I'm re-watching the films at the moment. Is it me or is there something old-ladyish about Alan Rickman's mouth? I realize I am thinking about this far too hard, and I know it's practically forbidden to speak ill of him on MN. But every time I see those films, I'm disappointed again that he just isn't as sexy as his voice.

I also think the Burrow looks all wrong to me. I love what they do with the reeds in the scene where Bellatrix taunts Harry and he and Ginny run after her. But I imagined the Burrow being rural and farmland-ish, with an overgrown garden around it - not plonked down in the middle of a marsh. Am I right?

What's your favourite bit of the films/books?

Judi Dench?

I was going to suggest Gambon but wanted to pick a woman!

Wonder what Daniel Radcliffe would make if it if he started recording them now?

I think someone who is not in the films otherwise it feels weird.

I would like to hear how someone like fiona Bruce reads such things

Jayne, I was thinking of eg Suchet reading the Poirots.

Can't believe that someone seriously suggested that JFK was in the same sort of league as Dickens! The success of HP was predominantly a marketing phenomena. I doubt very much that they will still be read in a generation or two. Not sure they will be rebooted either, mainly because JFK keeps such absolute control.

No you're right. JKR (I'm assuming you mean) has positively encouraged thousands of children to read. Dickens has probably discouraged nearly as many.
David Copperfield is the only book I have ever give up within the first chapter as a child.

There is definitely a type of snobbery when it comes to books like the HPs.

We have all the HP audiobooks and love them. Love the way SF reads them. They've gotten us through some very long car journeys at times. Even dh, my parents and my pils have enjoyed them at various times.
It's one thing I definitely wouldnt change.

Serendipitously, I have just spent 2 weeks in Dickens' birthplace with a group of teenage language students.

Did they ooh and ahhhhh and get all un-cool despite being as cool as fuck in the Dickens museum? Or at the Harry Potter studio tour?

G'wan, which one?

JKR is a wonderful storyteller. She's not a great writer, I think she could have, and would have, done much better after 1 and 2 had the pressure of deadlines, publishers, fame and film studios not been breathing down her neck. It is both hugely satisfying and then slightly disappointing to see a 5 inch monster of a book, and then plough through it to find it is no "better" than The Chamber of Secrets (which is perfect in every way)

Dh is severely dyslexic and would not have been able to read the books. He has them in the car for school runs and long journeys! He listened to them after he watched the films and I was so pleased, because he never understood why I was so dissappointed with the films (especially the travesty that is goblet of fire).

Personally don't mind Steven Fry reading them.

JKR's achievement is not in the quality of her prose (which in places is shocking) but in having created a fully realised world. Of course it was patched together from her own childhood reading - I can see the Worst Witch, Malory Towers, and Diana Wynne Jones without having to squint very hard - and the chosen one theme is a staple of literature going back to the Quest Mythsof the Greeks. What is more, there are huge internal contradictions, of which the most irksome to me, bizarrely, is the changing nature in almost every book of how people in the wizarding world travel. It just smacks of "Ooh I thought of another one!" and irritates me out of all proportion. Nonetheless, it is a world of great charm and appeal, and I am more than happy to do the whole willing suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy both books and films.

In terms of impact on a generation's reading, I don't think it is inappropriate to compare her to Dickens. There was a huge amount of hype and public expectation around the publication of new instalments of his books. I am a big Dickens fan, chose to write one of my undergraduate dissertations on him, yet still get weary when re-reading Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend and wish that he'd been more ruthlessly edited in places, as I do with Books 5-7 of HP.

My favourite is the Prisoner of Azkaban. It is still tightly edited, a children's book, and has good control of both the peril and the emotion. It is also the most hopeful in some ways, in that both Remus and Sirius give Harry a glimpse of what it might be to have a loving parent. JKR sets things up nicely for later on as well though: having had PoA showing Remus being the kind, effective teacher of magic to protect Harry (out of love for Harry's father) 3 books later we get Snape teaching Harry, with very different methods but, it transpires, out of very similar motives. The ideas are all there: just a shame they're often expressed in terribly clunky English.

Neville Longbottom. Just him. So amaze.

But Dickens is a terrible writer. Truly, shit. Plus, it's not like Dickens wasn't marketed to the hilt, is it? He was a massive one for self-promotion. I doubt his work would be so popular if he hadn't been. It's very turgid.

I am so glad I am not alone in not worshipping at the alter of Austen and Dickens.

They make very good costume dramas.

The Dark Is Rising is utterly brilliant. I still remember reading the last one and sobbing into my pillow, I must have been nine or ten. I just couldn't believe how powerful the ending was, it haunts me to this day. I have re read many times.

I think Dickens is a mixed bag (from the limited amount I've read). I think he suffers from fact some of his books were meant to be read as serials but trying to read them all in one go is too much.

I do worship at the altar of JA though

alis - very much not alone. I like Austen a lot, and she's a great writer IMO, but it's only Persuasion I'd read for pleasure. Dickens I just think is rubbish. My mum claims this is a genetic prejudice - apparently there was a Victorian father in the family who insisted on reading them out loud every day and all his descendents have hated it ever since.

I find him a creepy writer, too keen on slavering over vulnerable women and children.

I liked Oliver Twist but can't remember what else I've read.

I love JA and would read them all for pleasure. Repeatedly

With regards to 'JFK' I think she has many strengths and many weaknesses. I think the first few HPs are well written but the last few not so much. Although must admit I didn't get distracted by the bad writing until book 7 (liberal use of adverbs in dialogue attribution for one thing). I liked the Casual Vacancy but thought some of the writing was a bit heavy handed.

JKR, I think, suffered as a writer from her own success - after the massive success of the first books in the series, I think the usual writer/editor-publisher relationship changed, and subsequent books weren't edited as tightly as they might have been. As far as she was concerned, the bigger the books, and the more detailed the world-building, the happier her fans were (and of course she was right). And when a writer is such an astonishing money-spinner for a publisher, there isn't the usual motive for trimming them back.

And in the later part of the series, she had developed a very close online relationship with her obsessive fans and fan-fic writers, who always wanted more detail and backstory - she was even using online fan resources to check her own timelines etc by the end of the series. I think the cumulative effect was increasingly bloated writing.

I'm something of a Dickens-loather myself. I can see he's an astonishingly prolific and inventive writer, but the cartoonishness of his characters and his mawkishness irritate me. But Austen is a flawless writer. To reduce her to the mother of chick-lit is outrageous!

Talcum her writing is good, though she could have done with using shorter sentences.

But Emma, Pride and Prejudice...pure chicklit of her time.

The Bronte's were far more interesting writers.

Watching DHPt1: Dobby has just died. I have read it, heard it on audio and watched it several times, but it is still so sad :(

Re. Dickens -. I don't like the books. I don't enjoy them at all. Have read some, but can't even face reading the rest.
I do, however, enjoy Austen and have read all 6 many times, for pleasure.

I'm torn between saying I don't think Austen is chicklit, and standing up for chicklit (because I think a lot of good writing gets dumped in that category and belittled).

I like chicklit anyway tbh; I do think some books are dismissed for being of that genre, even if people haven't even read them. But for me, there is nothing wrong with a bit of light reading.

I'm not saying chicklit is bad across the board, no genre is. Except maybe erotic fiction . But the whole "works of literature" label seems to remove the books themselves from a genre. They're just "literature" apparently. Which isn't the case.