I have decided that since the Harry Potter craze has died down, and along with it my automatic disdain for its popularity, that I should give the series an honest read-through. I have a lot of friends who have enjoyed it, and as a bibliophile, I'm honor bound to give it a chance. Is there really something magical about Harry and his adventures, or are the books merely the Pokemon of the fantasy genre?
Well, so far, it's leaning towards the latter. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is an entertaining read, full of somewhat interesting characters and a simple, straightforward plot. Admittedly, it is a book geared towards middle schoolers, and I have to forgive its simple style as I'm not really the intended audience. Still, I have found nothing in the first book that causes it to stand above the crowd.
On a more technical note, I have to dock Mrs. Rowling some points for portraying a giant squid, a deep sea saltwater creature, as basking in the shallows of a lake, which is a body of freshwater. I understand that Mrs. Rowling is not a marine biologist and neither are her readers, but I'm certain that some gregarious squid-loving sixth grader read that and exclaimed, just like I did, "That's not right!"
I've read this somewhere before, quite likely on bash.org, that replacing "wand" with "wang" in the Harry Potter books makes them hilarious. I have to report 100% success with this experiment, and I leave you with this moment of wang-zen: