Rereading Harry Potter as an adult and finding it difficult

[Dasisr]

Obsessed with Harry Potter as a teenager but finding it a difficult read as an adult. How badly he is treated by the Dursleys. How deprived of love he was and in later books how he was kept away from his friends/family. All the death of loved ones he had to witness. Honestly finding it tough to get through. AIBU or anyone else the same?

Clumsily written books don’t normally sell well…(with the exception of Fifty Shades of Shite)

I like Harry Potter and I love JKR but as an adult I'm not super into reading kids books anymore.

The bathroom postdated the Chamber of Secrets. In one of the grimmest unnecessary post-series revelations by Rowling, wizards "simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence". Not sure that's any better though.

A they are kids books , not meant for adults
B they are very formulaic from what very little i've read of them

Perhaps you should read them before you comment on them.

I guess when I first read the books in the 90s/00s I didn't even question the prevailing narrative that chubby/overweight automatically went hand in hand with generally a bit feckless/unfortunate.

There's also a lot of pure disgust aimed at Dudley and Uncle Vernon's weight. I was also entirely wrapped up in this assumption at that time (as a teenager who lived in absolute terror of being fat) so if never occurred to me to question it until I was an adult.

I don't know if it's my age, or a cultural shift, but it seems as though weight is less intrinsincly linked to personal attributes these days. ie Dudley could be a disgusting bully without being obese, Neville could be a bit feckless without being chubby, Harry could even pile on the pounds once he started being fed properly and still be a hero (in fact, he went from half starved to Hogwarts feasts, so I'm not quite sure how he stayed "skinny" throughout the whole series?) I honestly don't think many people, including JKR, were really questioning this at the time.

these comments tho guyyyyyssssss hahaha

I don't know if it's my age, or a cultural shift, but it seems as though weight is less intrinsincly linked to personal attributes these days.

But it's not intrinsically so in the books either. As pp have pointed out, there are other chubby or overweight characters in the books who are not negatively viewed at all.

Dudley's horrible personal characteristics aren't to do with his weight, but both his personal characteristics and his weight are a result of the way he is brought up and treated by his parents. Dumbledore later says (paraphrasing) that the Dursleys inflicted more damage on Dudley than they did on Harry. But Dudley also has the beginnings of a character arc when he says he doesn't think Harry is a waste of space when they part ways.

Neville was never feckless

FFS , she wrote some amazing books. Stories that kids and adults love and will for generations. Some of the most read books in history. JKR is not responsible for the societal view on weight. I've also heard people complaining that the female characters are not promoted enough. That it's not feminist.
The fecking book is called "Harry and the Philosopher's Stone". It's a book. The main character is a boy. Gahhhh!

Yes he was! He needed a remembrall to keep track of everything he kept on forgetting, but then he lost that when he completely ballsed up his first time ever on a broom (his grandma had never let him touch a broom before because he was so accident prone). And he couldn't hold onto poor Trevor for more than 5 minutes.

(Fwiw I'm a massive Neville fan! And of course he did show great strength of character even from when he tried to stop Harry, Ron and Hermione from sneaking out to stop "Snape" getting the Stone. But he was shown several times to be a bit useless).

Neville wasn't feckless.

tbh I always assumed he had dyspraxia, though maybe it was just his past trauma & living with his strict grandmother.

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Maybe I'm forgetting some? The only other overweight characters I think of just now:

Mrs Wesley. Pleasantly plump, mumsy figure, obviously firmly a "goodie". But sometimes referred to as "dumpy".

Horace Slughorn. Pompous, weak. Grown fat from too many years stuffing down crystallised pineapple from suck-up students.

Crabbe and Goyle. Gorilla-like, stupid, oafish henchmen. See also Millicent Bullstrode who has a "large, square build" and who is a bully.

Delores Umbridge. Small and squat, like a toad.

(Hagrid? Is he overweight, or just half giant?)

It's not that being fat makes them unfortunate/unpleasant, or vice versa, it's just that the two things nearly always seem to go hand in hand.

No, of course I couldn't. Where do I suggest that I could?

There are lots of reasons why Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, but the quality of the prose really isn't one of them.

For the sake of my blood pressure I'm not going to click on that. I think Stuart Lee is a nasty piece of work. I used to find him funny, but his routines are all the same. He just sounds so contemptuous of everything and everybody (including the Harry Potter books, I'm assuming).

Jeffrey Archer, Dan Brown, Barbara Cartland, Enid Blyton... The world of publishing is full of big-selling authors whose feel for storytelling is much more advanced than their feel for prose.

Some people are definitely mixing fact and fiction in regards to talking about health and safety etc

That's true. Readers in general are far more forgiving of bad prose than bad plotting.

No when I read the books as a child I was aware being locked in a cupboard or repeated murder attempts weren’t ideal

Lots of would be best selling authors here too, who knew MN was so full of literary talent

Are you saying that no one is allowed to criticise anything unless they could do it the same or better?

"I don't much like that house I've just viewed - not allowed to say that unless I am a builder"
"Not keen on those M&S T-shirts - not allowed to say that unless I'm a clothes designer".

That’s why its a worldwide best seller 😂

Wow, do you really believe you can't have an opinion on a book you've read unless you've written one that's sold as many copies?

There are lots of reasons why Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, but the quality of the prose really isn't one of them.

There are lots of reasons why Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, but the quality of the prose really isn't one of them.

True, because most people don't read children's books (or indeed adults' books!) looking for immaculately-crafted prose. The story, the characters and the world-building are the main attractions in HP. The prose is appropriate to the book and its intended audience (and to many who were a lot older than its intended audience).