I've resisted writing reviews for these books for a while now, because it sort of seems like a pointless effort. Everyone knows these books, and there doesn't seem to be anything more to say about them. But then I figured, why not add my two cents? So here we go:
I am a member of what I'll call "the Harry Potter generation" - ie, I was a kid when these books first came out, and I've literally grown up with the series. My best friend in elementary school gave me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for my twelfth birthday, and I was hooked immediately. The seventh book came out only a couple months after I had turned eighteen. Because of this, there was never more than a year or so difference between my age and the ages of the characters I was reading about. I'm only just starting to appreciate what a special experience this was.
In light of this, I've decided to give myself a summer project (in addition to The List, which I continue to hack away at). My goal for this summer is to re-read the entire series, one book right after the other. It's been at least five years since I read the first three books, and I never went back to re-read the seventh book once I'd ripped through it in three days right after it came out. Writing reviews of the books as I read them strikes me as a pointless and overly time-consuming job, so I decided to try something else. In the tradition of my abridged Shakespeare reviews, I'll review the Harry Potter books by writing a single-sentence plot summary for each book. We'll see how it goes. (spoilers should be expected, obviously, but frankly if you haven't read these books by now you probably don't care that much about someone ruining the ending)
-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Harry Potter skips off to wizard school, and millions of children read about this and are cruelly made aware of the soul-crushing mediocrity of the lameass real world they are forced to inhabit.
-The Chamber of Secrets: Trouble starts its yearly brewing at Hogwarts, and we're expected to believe several increasingly improbable things - that three kids who aren't even old enough to get into a PG-13 movie solve a mystery that stumps Albus freaking Dumbledore, Hagrid is sixty-three, and the word "Mudblood" is somehow a more effective insult than "motherfucker."
-The Prisoner of Azkaban: Harry finds out he has a cool living relative who doesn't hate him, and the universe responds by delivering yet another bitch slap to the face and fucks it all up, AGAIN.
-The Goblet of Fire: Hogwarts hosts the conveniently-reinstated Junior Wizard Death Olympics, and the laws of the universe are once again suspended so Harry Potter can be awesome.
-The Order of the Phoenix: ANGST.
-The Half-Blood Prince: We break from the usual magical fiascos for some Gossip Girl-esque romantic drama, and Harry and Ginny decide to hook up - four years later, and I am still not okay with this.
-The Deathly Hallows (which will get more than one sentence so I can discuss the infamous Epilogue): I'll paraphrase one of my friends, who said after finishing the book, "What the hell kind of crappy fan fic ending was that?" And she has a point. But dammit, this is one thing I just can't be cynic about. Screw you all; that boy deserved a happy ending. (less)