does anyone else get offended when harry potter is described as a classic and dan brown called a great writer?

Question

majority of questions posed are either related to harry potter series, dan brown, sidney sheldon and anne rice.......dosent it make you wonder about the quality of books that are becoming beat sellers, and what happened to real, serious, meaningful reading?

i've read these books, and i'm not a snob...i actually enjoyed reding harry potter, and even da vinci code (even though it is appalingly bad writing)....all i'm saying is that ONLY these books are now considered good contemporary reads, and are talked about, when there are many others which are truly good and memorable which are either not read at all or are forgotten entirely. dont you agree??

Answer 1

Harry Potter is probably going to be a future children's book classic. It's worse than Alice in Wonderland but in a way better than Mary Poppins. I don't have any problem with Rowling's success - she does a pretty good job in helping children (and sometimes grown-ups) who get kicked around by school bullies and the like. She's no Dickens, not all, but she's learned a lot from Dickens about describing mistreated human beings and a lot from R.L. Stevenson about 'naive heroes'. I'd call it entertaining!
Dan Brown, Sidney Sheldon, Anne Rice, on the other hand - I completely agree with you. I worked my way through the DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons and was bored, bored, bored - Brown is not an author, he produces books. He takes up stupid conspiracy theories that have long been rebuted and populates them with boring characters who are not even original - read about them before in other stupid books. Anne Rice - I seriously thought Interview With the Vampire was a comedy and as such it would have had at least some worth. But it looks like she takes it serious.
But all that's not a new phenomon - people have been reading stuff of such poor quality for decades. And there will always be people who appreciate serious, meaningful, innovative, classic, outrageous, intelligent, thought-provoking, exceptional, intellectual books. And such books will still be written and read when Brown, Rice, and Sheldon have been buried in oblivion.
Until then: I'm happy if people read at all and if it absolutely has to be Brown or Rice, I sometimes console myself with the thought that even these authors might lead their readers to some more qualified books - they often do!

Answer 2

I'm happy people are reading, but I agree with you about Harry Potter as "classic".

I've never been happy with the books that end up on bestseller lists, mostly because they're written for the general population, which is why Stephen King and Anne Rice are bloody rich and famous and other writers are less so.

I try not to force my reading preferences on other people, even when I think that the books they're reading are worthless rubbish. What I think is crap, someone else enjoys. Just like what I enjoy, someone else thinks is crap. I understand that I was an English major in college and I'm a book snob.

I don't know about the "real, serious, meaningful reading". I'm not sure exactly what that would be. War and Peace? Anna Karenina (which I never could finish...)? The Great Gatsby (don't get me started on how much I hate this book)? Not everyone is a literary aficionado, and if all books were like Moby-Dick, only a few people would be left reading, which would be unfortunate.

Answer 3

I think Dan Brown is a pretty bad writer, but a good salesman, who's somehow managed to sell his garbled stories on to millions of people. But if it's helped them to start to read books, then that's good.

It did used to irk me when I worked in a book store and people would charge up, ask for anything by Dan Brown, and if we'd sold out (far too often), they'd just walk out again without looking for a better author.

On the other hand, I think Harry Potter is already a classic. JK Rowling has revolutionised children's/young adults (and maybe even adults) reading habits, and helped other authors get noticed and published. Plus the stories are incredibly addictive, and stick in your head for a long time.

I don't think being real, serious and meaningful necessarily makes a good read, and not all great books are real, serious or meaningful. Tin Tin and Asterix are classics. And Midnight's Children (Booker of Bookers) is definitely not real or serious.

Answer 4

I'll toss in my two cents...

I think that it's a good thing if people are reading, even if it's "popular fiction" or on the bestseller lists because it means people are reading. When you think that the average amount of books read by a person (I think this may only be in the US) annually is 20 or less, then you begin to see any sort of reading as a good thing.

Now, onto the classics. I think that even if the books by J.K. Rowling and the other authors you mentioned are okay reads, but I wouldn't start ccalling them classics quite yet. They should be more established in the world. The quality of most bestsellers is not to my taste. Riddled with grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors because of bad editing and a lot of overused plot lines is not my idea of quiality. The non-fiction books are okay, but a lot of the fiction just seems to be books written with plots that have already been used way too much (go take a look in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror sections at a local bookstore/library).

Answer 5

Sometimes it does seem a little churlish to put Harry Potter above such greats as The Iliad, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Beach, but I suppose we have to include books that have sold millions, appeal to all ages and represent our modern preoccupation with escapism.

Lord of the Rings was the most talked about book in the 70's and 80's. Even now it's voted as a true classic. Personally I don't think it's a patch on Catcher In The Rye.

Answer 6

yes!
though defining something as a classic is mainly a cultural popularity thing, so I don't have any problems with that (though I think a classic should have endured a couple more years of enthusiastic readership), but calling Dan Brown a great writer definitely would offend me. I only barely managed to get through the da vinci code, it started OK, but fizzled completely into nothing and was boring and most definitely not well written. I've not felt the urge to read anything by him again, so I can't do him the justice to judge him by more than one book, but then I am not a masochist.

Answer 7

Can a book only be considered a classic after a long period of success? I'm not suggesting that these books are classic though harry potter may certainly be a classic in 50 years its just that these are fairly new authors on the scale of things and just because they happen to be popular now does not mean they will remain so nor should they be used to reflect an individual's literature scope.

Answer 8

I read a lot and many of the "classics" I don't find nearly as interesting as books like Harry Potter or Dan Brown's books. They are not necessarily the best written books, but they have clever and interesting plots. While I don't think anyone will ever look back and praise the literary value of them, they've had more impact on their present society than most classics.They've also done more for getting kids/adults to read than the classics we all read in school.

Answer 9

I don't get offended, but I do think that Harry Potter cannot be a classic, as it's not even older than myself! Classics for me are linked to, at least, some years of being around.
And sorry, I've only read one of Dan Brown's books and thought that was a good read.

Answer 10

I wouldn't call either of those books a classic, however I see no problem with them being good, popular books. One of the reasons to read is to be entertained, and these authors provide wonderful stories for people.

Even though I haven't read the Harry Potter books, I absolutely adore them. Why? They have been getting kids to put down their video games and pick up a book! This in and of itself is enough to warrent my praise.

There's a place for serious, meaningful reading, of course. However, I can't imagine spending ALL my time on serious subjects. "All work and no play" seems the appropriate cliche for this discussion.