Who is Harry Potter?

I think the Harry Potter series goes to show that a great idea with a great character can fuel a story that never dies.

J. K. Rowling had a lot of imagination in coming up with the world in which Harry Potter lived in and was able to introduce different characters and terms that were completely original.

This is what I think is most surprising about this book. Its originality is out of this world and I really think that it fueled the series and why it was not a flash in the pan, but rather kept going for years until the conclusion of the series, which is how J. K. Rowling wanted it.

@stl156 - It is incredible to think of how much money she has made and how much her books has taken over the minds of people across the world.

In order to put her success into perspective, I will say that other successful authors that wrote many books like Stephen King, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy combined would not equal the amount of money she has made off of the Harry Potter series, and I may even go as far as to say that her book sales are even greater than those three, which is saying a lot considering all have written at least two dozen books.

@cardsfan27 - Wow, that is incredibly interesting and I would have never guessed that she struggled to get her idea off of the ground from the beginning.

I guess that it is safe to say that she was adamant about her idea and knew that her book would be successful, although I doubt she would have even thought that it would be as successful as it became.

What I think is so incredible about Harry Potter is that this idea by J. K. Rowling has taken over pop culture and the world in general and turned an entire generation back towards reading in school, but her idea was originally rejected by publishers.

It is amazing to me to think that this idea, which has made her a billionaire, turned off so many people in the beginning, who thought that it would never be successful and she had to keep plugging her idea in order to even get it published, let alone become even mildly successful.

Which one of the movies was your favorite? I liked the second one best.

I know a lot of people who think that Harry Potter was just a form of lightning in a bottle. It was the right story for the right place at the right time. If the series started today it might not be nearly as popular as it went on to be.

I think that now that the series is over people have been able to look at the books more objectively and realize that even by the standards of children's epics they are pretty mediocre.

I love the Harry Potter books, but I actually think that the movies got better when they stopped trying to follow the books quite as closely (around number 4, I would say). The sixth movie is probably my favorite, and it has some nice scenes that were not in the book.

For instance, there's the scene where Professor Slughorn tells Harry about the enchanted fish Harry's mother had given him. One day the fish had disappeared -- by implication, this was the day Lily Potter had been murdered. Awfully moving, not in the book. The first kiss between Harry and Ginny also seemed more believable in the movie than in the book.

I love these books (I have the whole Harry Potter book set in hardcover), but I feel like they could have been so much more. So many things are wonderful about them. It can take a child a long time to read the whole series, and accordingly the books start out rather simple and get longer, more challenging to read, and darker as they go on.

And the plot is so truly entrancing. Harry and his friends seem like really believable characters - incredibly brave but making kid-type errors in understanding.

My quarrel is with the prose. Rowling's prose is pedestrian and she tends to over-"tell" and over-explain, especially in the lengthy later books. A good editor would have helped sharpen the writing style, keeping the books a little shorter and the writing more interesting.