Harry Potter sucks

[Lith]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the series quite abit- but the fact is that it's quite the standard Joseph Campbell plot. The hero orphaned, a wise old mentor, an evil foe, the comedy side kick. etc, throw in all the unicorns, castles and dragons, and tell me who hasn't written about them.

Isn't Joseph Campbell's point that all stories contain these elements? That makes it impossible not to have a Joseph Campbell plot.

Potter does exert a strange pull on non-readers. My cousin (in his late twenties now) saw Chamber of Secrets and instantly bought all the books and read them in two weeks, and his family said he never read anything up to that point, and to this day the Potter books are all he reads, and he's re-read them several times.

On "unconscious plagiarism"- I was perusing the scant sf selection at our supermarket one day, and saw a Star Trek title that was eerily similar to a story I had been working on since I was 15 (I was probably 22 at the time). I was a little dismayed at being beaten to the punch, but at the same time extremely pleased that such an idea was worthy of publication.

As for the debate at hand, I still hold that enduring popularity is more indefinable than anything else, and that we simply cannot tell what will stand the test of time.

[Mithridelle]

I, personally love the books, but that's just me. Really, people can hate the book or love them - it all a matter of personal opinion. The thing that makes us unique. What I can't stand is people bagging HP (or any other series for that matter) when it is totally obvious that they haven't even tried reading them - then going so far as to start up protest groups that burn the book! (Sorry, have the fanatical Laura Mallory on my mind)