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Hmm, both of them are game for taking over the world! eek Well that's that then, 2/3rds majority. So, we'll have a three way dictatorship....

And we'll make Quidditch the world's most popular sport! Soccer, Football, La Crosse, move over for the game that features broomsticks and flying balls!
-LD

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. Number 4 was indeed a great book, but I think it was the most fun out of all of them. Book 6 I think was the best, simply because it kept you turning pages and JK was trying to show the reader so much but the book eventually stopped and... no spoilers today. I'm looking forward to the 7th so much, we already know Harry can't possibly find all the cruxes, heck dumbledoor only managed to find one.

So excited!

the Demon

I loved the 5th book I read it all night and day almost I got soo deep into the story it drove me nutz whenI had to put it down

W00t for Harry Potter series! I love J.K's books so much. I can't until the 7th one comes out on 7/7/07. For me its hard to stop reading once begun. I hear the book whispering to me*twitch* to read more. I've read them all more than once. Plus Snape may not be evil(o rly?) I still hate his guts.

I probably won't be as verbose as some people have been. I've like the series so far. Yeah it moves slow some times, it's not a deep book with many layers of hidden meaning (truthfully I don't really like that kind of book), some of the characters arre paper people instead of being true-to-life and sometimes the plot is predicable. But I like it anyway. I know it'll end with the seventh book (from what I got told when the third one came out, Rowling always planned it that way. Seven books, seven years of Hogwarts, see?)

I was about 1/3rd of the way through the sixth one when I kept trying to tell my ssiter everything that was happening (thus spoiling the book for her). Instead we decsided to read it together out loud. That was the most fun I've had in ages and we plan on doing again with the seventh book. I personally think it's a fun series to read with someone and it's a good way to get younger kids (junior high) into reading.

I think that, as with so many other things, you have to take Harry Potter for what it is.

Harry, Ron, Hermione and all the characters are, indeed, archetypes. Because they fit into thier standard fantasy roles (young hero propelled by reckless bravery and luck, stalwart sidekick, brilliant scholar, relentlessly evil villian, wise mentor and so on) they do, indeed, end up two dimensional.

But still one has to ask... if they were bad books why would they be so popular? The reason is that they are enjoyable. For kids they are readable, interesting and accesible enough that they can see something of themselves in Harry and his friends. For adults there is just enough complexity and humor that we can *relax* and enjoy the romp. And that's important. If we had to slog through The Wasteland for our enjoyment 98% of people on earth would never read. Sometimes we all just have to turn our brains off and enjoy the ride.

And Rowling, at least in the first four books, makes the ride interesting. Even though the characters are achetypical, Rowling is passionate about them. She adds vibrance to them, even if they lack depth. While they still act exactly as we expect them to, at least they do so with personality. It is the mark of an author who cares but doesn't have the training (or experience) to make her stories as tightly crafted as someone like Lloyd Alexander, Robin McKinley or Phillip Pullman. I would argue that the last few books feel strained - as if they were written too fast, which is why the fifth book is a darn long slog.

Beyond passion, I would also add that Rowling reads like someone willing to put the time into her imagination. Again, it isn't as "tight" as someone trained in literature, and most of her references are obvious... but at least she makes them. Adults find names like "Lupin" and "Dumbledore" fairly obvious, but it's still fun to figure them out in the same way that sitting down and finishing your newspaper crossword is a good passtime. Kids, on the other hand, can find great pride in looking up the name, finding that the author has left secret "nuggets" in the ooks for them.

are they the best books I have ever read? no. certainly not. But they are, at least for most tastes, fun. Moreso, because Rowling is untrained the books reflect her (and our) culture shamlessly in the writing - she cannot edit out her own voice, and so we see ourselves in it through her. In twenty years Harry Potter will likely seem dated, but for now appreciate it for what it is.

Technically Dumbledor found two Horcruxes, or thought he did. He found the location of where the second Horcrux should have been, but somebody got there first. Nagini is quite possibly a horcrux, being quite a bit larger than normal, being the size of a boa, and still being poisonous, and seeming to be more intelligent than most snakes. Plus there was the ring(the first horcrux) and he probably had found a way to find another one.