/lit/ - Literature

Hey now, don't put words in my mouth.

If only it were kids the largest portion of HP's fanbase

I would never read this shit to my kids.
I'd rather tell them tales with a moral and stuff - you know, life lessons.
As opposed to a book that will make them think LOL STORIES R COOL IM READIN BOOK AM SO CLEVER.

>>579048

Yes! Thank you! I am so sick of hearing this! Reading is not an absolute good. It's full of unintellectual tripe just like any other entertainment medium.

Harry Potter is the junk food of books. The problem isn't people reading it, it's people reading it and thinking it is anything more than junk food.

>>579098
well, I guess you can still make the argument that it advances the reading (and thereby also the writing) of young people. This is pretty relevant if you see the relatively low level of mastership graduates have today. poor orthography and almost non-existant reading comprehension. as shit as twilight and harry potter are, they use grammatically correct sentences.

>>579102
This.

True that just reading something means nothing if you a) don't understand it or b) don't care to read anything good ever.

But books are also not restricted to 'moral values' or high art. There is such thing as simple entertainment.

>>579048
>>579092
>>579098
>>579102
Get off your ivory tower, you elitists. I got my cousin into reading using this series and he still reads.

Children's books exist for a reason. I'm pretty sure you weren't able to comprehend what you read now back when you were a 10 year old.

Kids like stories better than intellectual drivel, deal with it.

HATERS GONNA HATE

I propose that there are two possible scenarios:

1 ) In a world with no Harry Potter or Twilight (or equivalent), the current generation grows up not reading for pleasure at all, not even having the comic books and magazines we grew up with. All pleasure reading comes from blogs, twitter, texts, and TMZ.

2 ) In a world with Harry Potter and Twilight (or equivalents), the current generation grows up reading thousands of pages of professionally-edited, intermediate-level text, albeit with no thematic depth.

I'd rather these children be exposed to a large volume of accurately structured material than not, as the alternative is simply no exposure at all.

>>579109
you are missing the point. they don't say that HP is a bad thing to read, but that it does not make you an intellectual if you actually do and that the claim that it works as a gateway to more serious and advanced literature is not necessarily true.

"harry potter is silly shit why dont kids read good books etc blah blah"...

...says the Goosebumps generation

>>579115
Much like when people claim marijuana being a gateway drug to the harder stuff. That may be true for some people, but that's only because they had the personality for that type of stuff anyway.

>>579048
>then go back to not reading books afterwards?

This. I never understood why people were so happy with "lol kids are reading", when they're done, they put books aside again, so the gain was... not much of a gain. Very few advance into other literature.

>>579119
Goosebumps books weren't that popular.

>>579122

gee i wonder what it could possibly be that causes kids to lose interest in reading

puberty maybe?

you fuckign idiot

>>579123

I strongly disagree with that

Also throw in Animorphs and it's ilk

>>579121
even though I used the term gateway, i did not think of it like this, this analogy is fucking brilliant.

>>579123
"R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series has sold more than 300 million copies world-wide."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96332083

For comparison, Harry Potter is in the range of 400-500m

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7649962.stm

>>579125
>you fuckign idiot
>fuckign

>>579125

Are you trying to say that's a legitimate excuse?

>>579125
>gee i wonder what it could possibly be that causes kids to lose interest in reading

>puberty maybe?

what?

>>579140
>>579139
>>579138
sure is samefag in here

>>579139
>>579140

kids going through puberty do all sorts of stupid shit, lose interest in things, become temperamental, personality changearounds. parents love blaming it on books and video games

they get over it

>>579144

I don't have the dexterity, especially at 7:30 in the morning, to post fast enough to get sequential post numbers.

We all just think you're an idiot.

>>579131
Yeah, but his series has like 80 books in it.

>>579145

u fuckign idiot

>>579147

you werent a kid in the 90s were you?

or if you were you grew up in some backwards dump

>>579145
way to miss basically anything this thread is about

>>579152
I know they were popular.

I'm just saying they were nowhere near as popular as Harry Potter.

>>579158

You sound really butthurt about admitting that Goosebumps was the Harry Potter of the 90s.

All you lamers who read Goosebumps and lame and losers.
I read much more advanced stuff, like Terry Deary's Horrible Histories.

>>579165

But that's simply not true. Goosebumps was a fairly popular kid's franchise of books, Harry Potter is a damned media empire whose readership spans all ages.

>>579165
I'm a different guy.

Also Goosebumps was never that big here. The TV show got here before the books.

Some guy on facebook told me Twilight was at least "getting kids to read", but didn't mention that it's utter bullshit. Dat hypocrisy!

Harry Potter is a good series,not the best but still good.

>>579169
>Terry Deary's Horrible Histories.

High five my brother.

Also did you know they made a cartoon about that book series?

>>579198
They also made a live action series.

>>579194
>doesn't know what hypocrisy means

>>579207
No I do. May of been the wrong word for the context, but the guy was being a bumbling idiot in his argument.

>>579198
They made loads of shit. It all went a bit ridiculous after the original ones.
Are you from the UK then? I don't know if they ever got anywhere outside which is a shame.
Anyway, I lent them all to the kid who lives next door. Quite glad I did that.

So what, in /lit/'s opinion, has more literary value: Harry Potter or the A Series of Unfortunate Events series?

>>579235
A Series of Unfortunate Events.

>>579235

Depends on the reader. They're about equal in my eyes.

>>579235
unfortunate events is more hipster so prepare for everyone to vote that

>>579235
A Series of Unfortunate Events by far. Though it fucking fell apart towards the end and I never even read the last one.

Once upon a time I was really big on reading.

But after you hit middle school and they start seriously forcing you to read/write complete garbage, the magic goes away. By 8th Grade they had almost entirely broken my love for life. Spent a few months reading Shakespeare's Complete Works because I found a really cool copy of it in my house, and then just gave up on reading altogether.

Since then I've more or less read nothing but what schools force me to. Only exceptions are things I look up online from time to time, mostly Conrad and Kierkegaard.

Also, Harry Potter was only garbage after the first few. It started out in a very lovely Nesbitian fashion. Pic related, the only good thing about the later Potter books.

>>579291
i saw a 16-17 year old-ish girl in Ruby Tuesday who i swear was a dead ringer for Luna, kinda a mix from the book and the movie. I had to avert eyes, jail bait and all, but it was hard...

>>579293
I have a neighbor just like her, shit is so cash

>>579048
Harry Potter is not "absolute garbage" no matter how you look at it. It's mostly devoid of literary value, but, if anything, it's high quality entertainment, and second through fourth books definitely are the best mainstream-approved books in what, half a century? must be so.

If you really believe Potter novels are as bad as Twilight (you didn't say that, but the likes of you often do), you are very much mistaken. Again I repeat: Potter's top quality entertainment. THe only flaw of it is it's mostly devoid of objective literary value, that is: while it entertains, it mostly fails to move, but that's a passive flaw. It's not "garbage", it's a kind of ast-food that's tasty, but not very norishing - yet neither bad for your health, so scrap the fast-food analogy, I guess.

0/10 OP

TEEEEERROOOOOLLL

>>579386
The only smart post ITT

>>579128
I never liked Harry Potter EVER.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events, was however great.

>also read like 90% of the Goosebumps books.
>Babysitter's Club, Junie B. Jones, and other shit like that were on my reading list :D

I read the series because my younger brother was reading them and I wanted him to try more novels (I failed miserably as he's now on [a/ pretty much all the time) and while the last few books are really fucking rubbish the second and third, third mainly, are pretty good kid's books. Sure, they have plotholes out the arse, but it's not as awful as the later books. So this thread's definitely not trolling me at al
>>579214
>May of been
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

>>579505

>I failed miserably as he's now on [a/ pretty much all the time

Does your brother contribute,or is he one of the trolls?

>>579512
He just lurks. I don't even think he posts at all.

Harry Potter: And The Hipster Who Learned to Read

Goosebumps books were fucking majorly popular. I was in a goosebumps club, I still got over 50 of those motherfuckers! I'm gonna send R.L. Steinjew a fan email tomorrow and I can't believe ive never done it before.
The horror at camp jellyjam FUCK YEEEEAH.

>>579119
>...says the Goosebumps generation

I don't know any college kids who read Goosebumps.

>>579555
Who in the hell would admit that out of the blue?

>>579569
someone who sees college kids reading Harry Potter religiously?

>>579581

>reading Harry Potter religiously?

I'm an atheist. So...no.