Didn't they have a big football-stadium-esque screen for the fans to watch the underwater event, at least? I think we've all learned that you need to ignore the utterly baffling points in her books when they're not directly related to the storyline.

Two foreign schools spend an entire year at Hogwarts to participate in a three event tournament that could have been done over a weekend? Uh, sure.

Those schools choose their single wizard participant AFTER they arive at Hogwarts, forcing the rest of them to stay for an entire year? Uh, sure.

Quiddich, as a sport, makes absolutely no sense? Uh, sure.

Wait, the scoring in Quiddich is cumulative, not based on your game-to-game record, which makes it make even less sense? Uh, well, ok, we're getting out there now, but sure.

Not only does the audience watch a lake and a hedge for an hour, but they enjoy it? Great.

I remember liking The Goblet of Fire. The Chamber of Secrets if the book I liked the least.

I am really glad that someone else is addressing how retarded the game of Quidditch is. Why is anyone on the team wasting time trying to score goals? Wouldn't everyone be helping their seeker find the snitch? It sounds like a game the neighborhood kids and I would have made up in the second grade, but then abandoned during our first game, as it makes no sense.

That beign said, even though the game is retarded and the outcome is usually an inevitable win for Gryffindor, I still find reading about these matches to be exciting. Why, I am 7.

The thing is, unless you suspend disbelief, the whole series doesn't work. So, if you're going to believe in magic, hippogriffs, and the fact that Ron STILL doesn't realize that he has a crush on Hermione, you might as well go the whole way, and forget about silly little things like logic and the rules of sports. ...Though staring at a forest for an hour is quite similar to watching golf, is it not?

PS. Props for using the Canadian cover on your post... which is not a "dead-tree counterpart" at all. Maybe Scholastic will get their act together and go recycled for Book 7. Though I doubt it.

I'm aware of Raincoast's awesome environmental approach, which is one of the reasons I used the Canadian cover. I've read all 6 books so far, but I haven't purchased one copy yet.

As for suspending disbelief, I think there's a difference between suspending my disbelief of magic, etc. and of careless writing. And while I've enjoyed many books w/ logical flaws and careless mistakes, I think the Potter books have been getting worse and worse in that regard. It's hard for me to not get fustrated when Rowling justifies writing 800 page books based on flimsy plot devices. I actually mind the adolescent melodrama less, since I can see how children would really enjoy those parts.

You know, I should go back and read some of the fantasy series I read when I was younger and see if they still hold up. These include the Incarnations of Immortality series (Piers Anthony), The Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper), and the Narnias (C.S. Lewis). Let alone the first six Dragonlance books and the first six Eye of the World (Robert Jordan) books. I reread Lord of the Rings in 2001 and found it to be even better than when I had read it in 5th grade. As for series that weren't around when I was a child, I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series two years ago and thought it was great.

I actually just reread the whole Narnia series in quick succession. The first Narnia book's pacing felt like the opposite of a Harry Potter storyline. In Harry Potter, the stories seem like they'd only last for a few weeks, but they end up taking a whole year. In the first Narnia book the story felt like it should have taken a very long time, but then all of the sudden there was a war and everything was over. Also Jesus died for your sins.

In re-reading the Narnia books, they seemed awful... especially at the beginning of the series. I didn't mind the God stuff, that was kind of amusing. The plotlines, however, jumped forward amazingly quickly with no explanation as to why or how. In this sense, I prefer the Harry Potter style where the plot has gaping holes on the periphery, but at least the main thurst of the story seems to progress in a fairly intelligable manner.

In defense of Narnia, however, the books do get better as the series moves forward. The last book is pretty neat, even though it deals with a bunch of walking corpses ala Sixth Sense.

I'm now making my way through the old Alice in Wonderland books too... these are considerably worse than the Narnia books and I wouldn't recommend anyone trying to struggle your way through them. I don't know why writers in the olden days thought that children were too stupid to read books that were well paced and otherwise interesting. There was an entire Alice in Wonderland book that just detailed all the people who came to one big party. There wasn't even a plot, just listing people at the party and what they ate. Ugh.

I thought the only Alice books worth reading were the original and Through the Looking Glass -- in fact, I didn't know that there were more. These are all Lewis Carrol?

As for Narnia, I remember really liking the Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Magician's Nephew. I remember the last one being very trippy.

raise your hand if you're not gay!

sorry, folks. put those hands down.

how about oz books? I recall reading an endless stream of various adventures in oz that, in retrospect, probably rivalled dune sequels in their banality. but i haven't reread them lately.
i've just finished the first two of the his dark materials novels, and they are thus far quite satisfying, and not too cheaty. in particular I liked the ambiguity of goodness or evilness of characters except for the main one. This didn't really carry through in the second novel but it's still a good read.

Oz books! I meant Oz books, not wonderland. Sorry... Oz books are horrible.

wonderland is actually a totally different thing, since you bring it up. Have you ever seen my "annotated alice"? It details every single thing caroll was parodying - you probably know that every song corresponds to a popular song or rhyme of the day, but I think the characters are parodies too. Like 19th century political cartoons, almost all of the source material has completely faded from public consciousness. If history repeats, the simpsons will make absolutely no sense in 100 years.

As for suspending disbelief, I think there’s a difference between suspending my disbelief of magic, etc. and of careless writing. And while I’ve enjoyed many books w/ logical flaws and careless mistakes, I think the Potter books have been getting worse and worse in that regard.

I love the Potter books, but I have to agree with this. After the first movie, I went back and read the first book more critically and noticed a bunch of stuff I didn't intellectualize at first. Like the bit about him defeating Professor Quirrell because love was in his skin. WTF? And by now, I think Rowling is just too famous to edit (cf. Neil Stephenson). I'm not sure what it is that makes writing so compelling that you don't notice when it's deeply flawed. But if I figure it out, I will write a slew of bestsellers.

I still think the Potter books hold up better than Dragonlance, or anything by Piers Anthony or whatshername, Anne McCaffrey. But probably not as well as Narnia or His Dark Materials.

Aw, you had to drag Stephenson into this. May a single word of his never be struck!

Piers Anthony wrote a lot a crap (most of Xanth), but the Incarnations of Immortality seemed rather clever when I first read them. In the first book, a mortal human takes on the job of Death (Thanatos), and in the second we learn all about Time (Chronos), and in the third Nature (Gaia), etc. etc. The sixth and seventh books are about God and Satan. Maybe not the best prose, but it was very iconoclastic for me at the time. Just as His Dark Materials would've been if I'd read them back then.

Dragonlance: perfect for my 13 year old soul, but I don't expect to reread them again. I'm too attuned to D&D crap these days.

In that case, I won't tell you what I think about the length of IJ. ;}

The Annotated Alice is wonderful. I have a copy of it in my apartment as well as the Annotated Lolita. Both awesome.

I've always wanted to go back and reread the Narnia series. The new movie gave me impetus a few months back, but, like Doorframe, I believe that it won't hold up.

One of my most favorite sci-fi series is Arthur Clarke's Rama books. I wonder now if I liked them because I was in high school and couldn't necessarily pick out the gaping holes. It's not a really well known series and I imagine it's that way because it sucks when read as an adult.

Rama was all right when I read it in college. The first book didn't have any plot, just a ship that went by earth. The end. I don't think the second book had any plot either, but the third one was interesting. You know, with god and all. They probably didn't need books one and two.

I read the first Rama a few years ago and liked it. Never did pick up the second. Now I'm waiting for David Fincher's adaptation to come out.

You know, i read the Rama books fairly recently. I have to say that they sucked. The first one was decent, but the sequels kept going on and on and on without anything happening. And then at the end, when everything's revealed, you go: WTF? That was it? That's what i spent 1000 pages of crappy reading to find out?

And then you find out that all the sequels aren't even really written by Clarke. He's the 'author' just to sell more copies.

You notice a marked difference between the first book and the two sequels. The first book is more of a hard scifi book. Whereas the sequels are very character driven, but i think very poorly done. By the end, you just stop caring.

So, what i'm saying is - don't bother with the sequels.