You’re a wizard Henry. By @HFoenander
By Henry Foenander
You’re a wizard Henry.
One of Marc’s challenges for us over the holidays was to read a book that we would never consider reading.
Now, what i’m about to say may infuriate the majority of my classmates, but i feel it has to be said. I hate Harry Potter.
I’ve just never quite understood the buzz around it all, I think i must have missed the ‘perfect age’ to read the books. I’m sure J.K. Rowling is a lovely person and she’s certainly a good writer, but when it comes to the wonderful wizarding world, i’ve never been impressed.
Over christmas i realised i should really give it a go.
I’m a massive epic fantasy nerd so it should be right up my street, after all, I could probably recite a fair amount of ‘The Lord of The Rings’, and i know just about everything there is to know about George R.R. Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’. When it comes to epic fantasy i usually get frustrated when the book ends, and have to spend hours researching the lore and history of the alternate worlds online. But i never felt this urge or pull to do the same with the Harry potter series.
But over the break i bit the bullet, I read The Philosophers Stone (Actually it was the weirdly american titled Sorcerer’s Stone, what have they got against long words?). I sat down and read the whole thing in a few days.
And i hated it.
The writing was lovely, the form of the story was great, but i just didn’t get the usual kick. There was no addiction, nothing kept me wanting more and more.
It got me thinking about timing. The series is clearly brilliant, it wouldn’t have reached such widespread success if it wasn’t. But i missed the perfect time to get stuck into it. The books have been and gone, the films are old-hat now, theres even been sequels and spin-offs to squeeze every last bit of Potterness out of Rowling’s mind. The Potter market is saturated. It made me realise (especially with our current briefs) that a great advert needs to be perfectly timed, so it suits the consumer. If the audience has been inundated constantly with similar material for the last ten years, the ad will get lost, it will lose the ability to stand-out.
So although Potter didn’t do much for me, I suppose it did at least give me some insight.
