h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First of all, I must admit I haven't read the books. This is probably the fault of the translators of the books. They translated Dumbledore with Perkamentus and Hogwart's school for wichcraft and wizardry with Zweinstein. All right, so I could have read them in English, but I didn't feel like it. Eventually I saw the movie. I taught it to be a bit childish. The FX on the other hand were superb.
Well, I'm straying from the subject. The books may be really really good, but is a book worth such a hype?

"Is a book worth such a hype?"

If you ask me, we shoud be encouraging reading, so a book would be worth more hype than a film or TV show.

There's book v film discussions elsewhere on h2g2 (see A681699), but it was generally acknowledged that the film was the poorer version (but isn't it always?)

Incidentally, the original book didn't get hyped, but gained its popularity via word-of-mouth. Pretty darned impressive.

Absolutely nothing is worth _that_ much hype, but the books _are_ very good and well worth reading, in my opinion. There's nothing absolutely amazing and revolutionary about them but as entertainment and readability go, they're great.
I've just seen the second film, which was a lot of fun.

Obviously this is entirely a matter of opinion. I think the Harry Potter books *are* really that great.

I only read them because my daughter was reading them and I wanted to know what it was all about. I was surprised that she was managing to read such big books and was so enthusiastic about them. I have found all of them difficult to put down. I have usually been unable to predict the plot. The characters are well rounded, which is especially unusual in children's fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed the film too, although it was comparatively lightweight.

One of the best things about the books is that the author already knows everything about the characters, their history and their future. Does that make sense? I mean that she already knows what's going to happen. She's not making it up as she goes along. It means the plots all come together in a satisfactory way, and there is a feeling that the story is heading somewhere.

The books have been getting steadily darker and more adult. Whereas The Philosophers Stone was definitely a childrens book which may appeal to adults, the Goblet of Fire seemed to be aimed at an older group, while still remaining accessible to children.

I find the stories helpful in explaining things to my children. There are some useful instances of general teen angst stuff, jealousy, the dangers of racism etc. as well as the obvious Good v Evil theme.

So I loved them, and I know many other adults who loved them too, but everybody's different.

By the way, I'm currently reading Goblet of Fire, so my memory is still very fresh.

I've just noticed that last line Bob. You've seen Chamber of Secrets?

Please tell me more. How was it? Still close to the book? What about the spiders and stuff. They're saying the quidditch game is better this time. What did you think? Details. I need details.

The quidditch game was about the same, as far as I could see. They managed to remove the cartoon appearance of Harry that I noticed during the game in Philosopher's Stone.
The spiders were suitably shuddering, although I thought I spotted a few with more than 8 legs...
They meddled extensively with the dialogue, pulled whole chunks of material that weren't strictly necessary, but the overall effect was good and the atmosphere of the books was retained.
On it's own merits, I would judge the film to be good, although it necessarily skipped many of the details that entertain so much in the books.
Just to confirm, are we happy with plot spoilers in this thread?

They're saying Quidditch has been greatly improved, because the original one was awful. I hope this is the case...

As for if it's _that_ good - yes, it is. The books are fantastic fun to read and enjoy. The films aren't as good as they're supposed to be, but they are still very good films. The books are waayy better though.

Sorry to be a poop, but I think they're vastly over-rated, samey, clunky, plodding, poor dialogue, poor characterisation (and getting worse as she tries to showe horn in the storylines) ...oh and the world doesn't hang together...



and JKR strikes me as the sort of person with whom one would *not* want to be trapped in a lift...

I entirely agree with the point that the world doesn't hang together, Cloviscat, and I would like to say (again. Sorry ) that if you like that sort of thing, Dianna Wynne Jones does it far far better, but generally I really enjoy the books. They are not, of course, worth the hype, but then what ever is? Except in that they do seem to have utterly captivated kids who are not particularly interested in reading, without any hype at the begginning (as someone mentioned earlier).

Oddly enough, we went though the same thing here in Russia. Suddenly, without any great fanfare the Harry Potter books went from being totally unknown to the only thing anyone seemed to be buying their kids for Xmas. And the fighting over the translations was through the roof. The point being, there must be something in it, even if I can't really see what it is...

I haven't read the books. Saw the movie a few days ago. Sort of just sat and waited for it to end, nothing special at all. And also with many things in the books, I always seem to remember having read the exact same thing in another book as a child. I've read some books about children going to wizard schools and such, and many things seem to be taken straight from them.

Also, those children were seriously jumping to conclusions. I hope they never decide to go into law enforcement.

Xantic, they're twelve years old... of course they jump to conclusions! They wouldn't stand a chance in the real world of course.

Ooops, shove an extra a into Xantic up there... should be Xanatic of course.

But part of the plot was them trying to solve a mystery, couldn't they have done a bit better than that?

Ah, but what you have to remember about the movie is that when the adapted it to fit into something less than 10 hours of screen time, they made very few changes except to cut out about a third of what was in the book. So what seems like total leaps of faith in the movie has... slightly... more build up/logical foundation in the book. If you see what I mean. I can't imagine how you followed it at all actually.

Blimey, talk about critical. Have you forgotten that the Harry Potter books are meant for children? The buzz about them was originally through word of mouth and many kids that would rather stick pins in their eyes than pick up a book have actually started reading. Surely that alone makes the books worth the hype. Also, don't forget that when you are a child, your imagination is capable of going into overdrive - those kids can actually see themselves as Harry or Hermione or whoever.

When I was ten or eleven, I read The Hoobit and then the Lord of the Rings for the first time. While reading the stories, I was taken to a world that I wished existed and that I could be a part of, and that's how children today feel about Harry Potter.

When you pick up a Harry Potter book, it has all the ingredients that I wanted from a book when I was a kid... set in a boarding school (in my day it was Mallory Towers - I'd have prefered Hogwarts), the cool, but self effacing hero chooses the slightly geeky kids to hang out with (akin to Buffy and the scooby gang) and they are all wizards and witches to boot!

Get a grip people, we are discussing a children's book and a film targetted at the same. I saw the film on Friday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have read all the books and will collect my pre-ordered copy of number five on the day of publication... just let one brat try pushing in front of me.

I kind of agree... I don't like the Harry Potter books, but thinking back on reading the C.S. Lewis Narnia series as a child - I loved them, but picked up a couple last year and was absolutely appalled at the sexism, patronisation, and lack of tolerance for religions other than christianity, something that went over my head entirely the first time around.. I was also a little more critical of the "borrowing" of the bible stories the way JKR has borrowed from greek and other mythology (not that I'm against that, as long as they do something, well, creative with it)

I guess kids don't need writing that is *that* good, but still, it seems a little nasty to take advantage of them.

THe Harry Potter books are great. For a child, they are one of the best series of books. I'd put them in the top 10. For an adult, Harry Potter is immmensely enjoyable if you treat it as a children's book. It unites many of the common themes of Children's books: boarding school, magic, children saving the day behind the backs of the adults, and throws in all sorts of funny things which keep it amusing from page to page.

It doesn't have any of the disturbing elements that you might get in something like His Dark Materials, but it is these elements that make a book better for adults. So adults will be disappointed if they approach Harry Potter as a an adult's book.

I wouldn't say my disappointment stems from being an 'adult' reading a 'children's' book. I started reading 'adult' books at six, but have never stiooed reading children's books to this day, so I feel my view is pretty homogenised. Of course, HP wasn't around whenI was a nipper, but at the sort of age when my friends kids seem to be reading HP, the children's books I was reading included
Diana Wynne Jones
Susan Cooper
The children's books of Ursula le Guin
The children's books of Jane Yolen
The children's books of Tanith Lee
The children's books of Joy Chant
The children's books of Joan Aiken
Penelope Pearce
Lucy M Boston
Penelope Farmer

and I'd rate all of these above JKR, and I still enjoy them. (I never rated Narnia by the way, or Alan Garner).

I may be disagreeing with people's opinions, but I'm not trying to convert anybody - you are welcome to your own opinions, which I'm sure are valid from your viewpoint!

I don't think anybody is "taking advantage of" children.

Eldest Daughter read the first Harry Potter and thought it was brilliant, almost as good as the best of Diana Wynne Jones, so she bought the other three herself and was equally delighted with them. She then read them to Youngest Daughter, whose reading fluency wasn't quite up to reading them.

My sister-in-law read the first one to her son and he bought the other three and learned to read properly so that he could read them.

My niece bought the fourth one (the 500-page one) the day it was release and read it in one sitting.

I'd agree with Cloviscat that the best of Diana Wynne Jones is far better than Harry Potter. My favourites are Archer's Goon, Howl's Moving Castle, A Tale of Time City, Power of Three and The Lives of Christopher Chant. But DWJ has also produced a lot of mediocre books, whereas all the Harry Potter books were excellent.