The Harry Potter Trilogy

3.5* - I re-read the book to find out whether it still holds up now that I'm an adult. It doesn't, not entirely. While I admit it's a magical book (pun intended) I have big problems with the world building because it's sloppy and without a thought.

I've read crazy fantasy books with many paralel universes, crazy creatures and stunning original magic systems but they all made sense within their worlds. Harry Potter and the wizards don't, though. It doesn't make sense muggles don't know about them. It doesn't make sense wizards laugh at muggles' inventions while at the same time use many of them.

In addition this is indeed purely kids' book. While it's kind of refreshing that this series grew up with its readers, it's also very annoying for somebody like me, who enjoys adult books, to plough through first three/four books in the series ‘til I get to the better stuff.

Writing style is very good, though. Especially the sarcasm in the first few chapters is exactly as if written by me. Characters sometimes speak very weirdly and definitely not as 11 yo kids. It might be a translation problem but I doubt it.

All in all there are better series out there, imho. But HP was very important for my generation when we were kids. I have to admit I may not be such a bookworm if I hadn't read it 14 years ago and for that it has my thanks.

Hey, I read Harry Potter before he was famous. I don't know why I said that...just being annoyingly pretentious I guess. I'm weird like that.

Anyway, it was a warm summer's day in 2000 when I picked up this boxset of the first four books of the HP series. Even though I wasn't the target audience for these books I nevertheless found it good enough to invest the time to read them all.

Now that the series has ended I can ask myself what was so great about the Potter books? They certainly aren't the best fantasy books ever written. They definitely aren't the best children's books ever written. Yet author J.K Rowling hit the motherlode here.

I think it's due to the cyclical interest in fantasy and the public's tendency to jump on the bandwagon of something popular. Hey, anything that gets kids reading again is okay by me.