I'm just not that into Harry Potter

But for the sake of my daughters, I'm finishing the series anyway

Hi friends,

This week I finally started reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. In case you didn’t know, it’s the seventh book—the final book—in the Harry Potter series. Both of my daughters have been nagging begging me to finish reading the series for literally years. We’ve connected over so many stories since they were young. And we still are! As my daughter Julia said, “it feels as though we’re discovering these books together.” It’s a special bond that the three of us have! But when it comes to Harry Potter, I’ve been dragging my feet because, to be honest, I’m just not that into it.

Both of my girls read all of the Harry Potter books when they were very young, beginning, I believe, with a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that we found at a yard sale. My oldest, Julia, found the first two books and wanted to read them, so we brought them home. Back then, Harry Potter was just beginning to become the pop culture phenomenon that it is today. Not long after that there was a bit of a stir in the Christian community about whether the books were “appropriate” for Christian kids, given that they were stories about a school of “witchcraft and wizardry.” But I wasn’t concerned. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a fantasy world, removed from reality, and the stories are classic tales of the battle between good and evil.

So my girls read them. And they loved them. They added the series to their personal libraries, with book money provided by parents and grandparents. Once all the books were published, they started rereading the entire series every year! And now, both of them have multiple editions of at least a few titles in the series. I confess, I am partly to blame for this. I can’t resist giving my kids books for Christmas, and for my oldest daughter, that was often the illustrated editions of the Harry Potter books. And now, married and with children of their own, my daughters celebrate “Hogsmeade Day” in October every year, getting together to make Harry Potter-inspired treats, with the movies playing in the background (which Samantha calls the “junk food version” of Harry Potter).

So, yeah. They love Harry Potter. And naturally, they’ve wanted me to love it too. But…even when my girls were just discovering them and were itching for the next volume to be released, I was just not interested. And I didn’t think it mattered. But, once my girls were old enough to truly value this connection we have over books, they couldn’t bear for that to not include Harry Potter. So, in 2013, I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was not impressed. The second one wasn’t much better. The third wasn’t terrible. But still, were it not for my daughters, I would not have continued the series.

It’s not that I hate them. I’m just…indifferent. I used to think that it was because the writing really isn’t that good (OMG with all the adverbs in the first book). Then I wondered if it was because I had seen the movies first and found them to be dull and boring (except number 3). Or maybe I was prejudiced against them because of just how popular they were, though I don’t really think that’s it. They have just been really hard for me to get through. Reading them is like the literary version of wading through mud. With the longer ones, I used the audio books to help get me through. They’re much better as audio books!

But it’s not like I’ve never read and enjoyed a slow read before. So maybe it’s not Harry Potter (adverbs notwithstanding) that’s the problem. Maybe it’s me. Maybe Harry Potter isn’t my thing because it’s not fantasy enough. Harry Potter, more than being a story about a young hero tasked with vanquishing a powerful villain, is a story about school and teachers and bullies and awful relatives set in a fantasy version of the real world. And that’s fine, but I’ve always preferred my fantasy stories to be more otherwordly. Take me away from the world of hallways, books, and fitting in, and set me in an unfamiliar realm full of magic and mythical creatures, where the heroes must travel through dangerous wilds, battle ferocious beasts, and—perhaps most challenging of all—overcome their doubts and weaknesses in order to vanquish the villain and save the world (or a small part of it).

If a fantasy story is set in the real world, I’d rather it be a version in which the magic feels like it naturally belongs, or in which everything—both the magical and the mundane—is a bit wacky. Matilda. James and the Giant Peach. Coraline. These stories do ridiculousness right.

In Harry Potter, the characters are colorful and the villains positively wretched (my personal favorite being Delores Umbridge). At times they almost seem too colorful, too caricatured. Wacky. This would work well, except that it’s set in an alternate version of the real world where only the magic side gets to be ridiculous. The only exception seems to be the Dursleys, Harry Potter’s awful non-magical relatives and legal guardians, whose awfulness is so ridiculous as to almost seem satirical. I suspect that this is intentional, but there is a stubborn part of my brain that simply refuses to find it believable.

Fortunately, my daughters and I can still connect over these stories even if we don’t share the same appreciation for them. So that is why I’m finally finishing the series.

It’s only taken me eleven years.

***

P.S. I’m keeping an open mind about The Deathly Hallows. I’m only a few chapters in, but so far it’s not so bad.

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Some of my (and my daughters’) favorite fantasy books:

• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

• The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

• The Wind on Fire trilogy by William Nicholson

• The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

• Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

• The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

From the sketchbook, a Lord of the Rings inspired goblin