Harry Potter---The good, the bad, the bizarre, the silly.

The Good

The first three Harry Potter (news - web sites) (hardback version) books are well made, legibly typeset, and pleasingly written. Thus, they are very much a full body pleasuring experience---a nice contrast the multitude of chintzy, cheezy, cheapo children's crap books.

The fourth book continues this tradition: it's reasonably lively, easy to read, and never especially tiresome or tedious.

Plus, most booksellers are selling it at a pretty steep discount, so it's a fairly cheap buy right now.

The Bad

The postively worst thing about it is that I really must complain about its length. I prefer to scorn complaining about book length, but Harry Potter IV is too long for too little. Although I praise the "feel" of the book, I must condemn the heft.

For all its bulk, it's suprisingly light in content. Indeed, the entire book could reasonably be done away with. I rather shudder to imagine the remaining three books.

For the excitement generated, one might have hoped for much more than a mere "more of the same" book. Okay, it's not just more of the same, it's a lot of more of the same. An awful lot. (Did I mention that it is very long?)

The Bizarre

Of course, given the level of excitement and fulsome praise, one might expect much more from the entire Harry Potter series. I certainly did. I'm afraid, however, that the Potter craze is only a slighly more upscale and justified version of the Pokemon craze.

I am perplexed by the joy with which parents, educators, and editorialists contemplate the Potter craze. I suppose they are simply relieved that Potter is better, to whatever slight degree, than the preceding objects of crazes. But surely, its prime value should be in weaning kids onto better things, or off crazes, or both. Alas, I see no evidence of a craze exit strategy (indeed, quite the contrary).

The Silly

The Anti-Potter hype is far sillier than the Pro-Potter hype. Indeed, everything I've read against the evils of Potterdom falls in the category of "praising with stupid damns". For example, the claim that the Potter books promote Wicca reveals a profound ignorance of both Wicca and the Potter books: Harry Potter is no more Wiccan than Frosty the Snowman is Catholic.

But what tops it all is the article claiming that Harry Potter Takes Drugs! (Due, of course, to the strong pressure exerted by their "beloved" Professor Snape.)

Wormwood! It's that nasty gateway drug wormwood!

(The author notes that he, in fact, taste tested a very small bit of wormwood and will testify that if something is as "bitter as wormwood", then it is damn bitter indeed.)