It's time for a PSA by Andee Browne

[kjpepper]

Riffing off a semi related rant by extrajoker, I'd just like to express a personal peeve and make a request: If you want me to read something, for the love of god don't make any comparisons to Harry Potter. This has happened to me quite a bit in the past month, and I will tell you frankly that if Harry Potter is mentioned anywhere in the conversation you have immediately lost my interest, and I will not read your book. At least until someone else recommends it.

I personally rather like Harry Potter. I own all of it, and harbor a certain smugness about having discovered it before it got shit + fan popular. (Though I'm not smug enough collect the British editions - I prefer the illustrations in the American ones.) I also recognize it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread - there's a world of better written, more engaging fantasy out there. Unfortunately, just about everyone who has made the error I cite above isn't as balanced in their opinions, and their comparisons usually come from either a place of haughty disdain (OMG HARRY POTTER IS CRAP LOOKIT ME BE ALL COOL AND COUNTERCULTURAL BY THINKING SO!) or complete ignorance (HARRY POTTER IS SO COOL JK ROWLING IS THE GREATEST WRITER IN THE WORLD ZOMG). Seriously, I'm sick of all of it. Hell even booksellers do it, as if people won't buy the book unless "If you like Harry Potter Read this!!!" is scrawled across the dust jacket. Either way, people, stop being lazy, leave Harry at Hogwarts where he belongs, and explain why I should read the book using the book text as your primary source of evidence. If I'm interested, I'll read it. If I'm not, too bad, and dragging poor overexposed Harry into your argument isn't going to help you convince me.

Comments

[icarusremade.livejournal.com]

Heh. We have a guy who comes into our bookstore wearing a t-shirt that says, "Proud to Be Harry Potter's Biggest Fan," with an obviously custom-printed pic on it. Oh, and he's in his thirties.

But I can kind of understand why booksellers would use the Potter thing, at least for kids. It's hard enough to get the youngins to read these days, and lots of kids also immediately discount most things they haven't heard of before. I've had lots of parents say to me over the years, "At least this gets them to read." Thus, the Potter pitch could make a big difference--I've noticed how a lot of recently popular kids' series have been fantasy ones(e.g. Spiderwick) since Potter, though maybe it was that way before, too.

Read Terry Goodkind. Best fantasy I've ever read, and it only gets better with each book. :)

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Truly, Harry Potter is the new LotR in that respect. If I should wish to recommend anything to you, rest assured that I will not compare it to Harry Potter unless the comparison is relevant.

Though if you never have, I strongly recommend the Lord of the Rings. It's an amazingly good book.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

Have it, read it. While the story is great, I feel like Tolkien spent way too much time wanking himself with exposition. I tend to prefer the movies, if only because a five page description was conveyed in a single camera pan. :)

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

I doubt that he would have described it with that term, but Tolkien actually agreed with you. He wrote lots of stuff about Hobbits and their history and culture that he didn't use in the books, because he was pretty sure that no one else found it as interesting as he did.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

k, that's funny.

[birkwelch.livejournal.com]

Apropos of nothing: please answer one of the great (and by great, I mean utterly insignificant but kind of annoying in that tiny voice in the back of my brain way) mysteries of my life: what does the 'Z' in ZOMG stand for?

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