There's actually significant backlash against them now that Rowling said some unpopular stuff.

I also don't think people who read them now understand what it was like for the original readers who literally grew up with them. They were unique because they transitioned from books for children to books for teens, and they were a cultural phenomenon, with movies coming out well before the book series was finished.

When my child read the series, she was very young and one of the few in her age group to finish it. Young children often get stuck after book four, while teen readers may find the first books pretty childish.

As an adult, I enjoyed reading the series and watching the movies, but I wasn't the primary audience and I don't read them over and over again. The primary audience was really that one generation of children and teens who grew up with them, and it was perfect for them.

Another criticism I see is that they don't make sense, but I think that's unfair. They appeal to kids precisely because the world they describe is so arbitrary. It confirms their suspicions that adults really don't know what they are doing any more than kids do. It's a satire of the way the adult world works.

Quidditch is a perfect example. It's a sport that makes little sense, just the way school and politics and magic make little sense. It's ironic that quidditch has been turned into a real sport.

I suspect they read better to kids then they do to people who come to them as adults.

They do get better as the series goes on but you also have to take the time period that they came out into context.

Middle and Young Adult books were very, very different back then and were a pretty small market. The success of Harry Potter changed that and is the reason why you're seeing so many books in that genre being published and pushed.

I agree that if Harry Potter came out today then you wouldn't get the same reaction.

A lot of the success also came from the very, very active fandom. There was fic, artists, musicals, bands, etc. A lot of people got into the books for the fandom. Hell, the fic alone made it worth reading because there are some God Tier fics out there for any pairing you could think of.

You may be somewhat unique in feeling that the world conspired to gaslight you in particular, but many, many people are unimpressed at best. I love them not because I think they’re brilliantly written, but because there are elements in them that spoke to things I’ve felt deeply. I actually have no idea if they’re well-written because I’m emotionally attached, and can’t judge them fairly.

(Can’t judge the degree of the quality, not saying I wouldn’t notice if they were literal garbage. What I meant made sense in my head and sounds so dumb the way I typed it out.)

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I have no recollection of reading them but remember being crazy about the books in the late '90s and early 2000s when they first came out. When each one came out I'd read them pretty much in one sitting.

They felt big and grown up because they were so big, but the story was pretty basic and easy to read. It created an exciting fantasy. They're not particularly brilliant as pieces of writing, but there wasn't really anything else at the time and it was a very rare instance of a book becoming a huge cultural phenomenon.

I stopped reading them after 4-5 books when there was a long gap between books and I grew out of them.

The enduring popularity is similar to Star Wars. The original Star Wars films are objectively terrible on almost every level, but it was unlike anything else when it came out. Young people at the time loved them, grew up with them, and then introduced it to their kids and so on. All thr while new Star Wars stuff would come out. I got into Star Wars when the original trilogy got re-released ahead of the prequels coming out. Now I'll still watch Star Wars stuff out of nostalgia more than anything.

Harry Potter is the same, but they're also films. And there have been spin-offs and additional media. Parents introduce kids to the books, kids too young for the books would be the right age when the films came out, etc etc.

Quality is very rarely the cause of a cultural phenomenon. It's a case of timing, capturing imagination, and marketing.

JK Rowling didn't write a great book, she created a fantasy world with very wide appeal.

They are remarkable only for their popularity.

I liked the first three, but everything after that...

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The books are brilliant works of literature. Sorry you are unable to enjoy their beauty.