Scott,

I've read a few of the Potter books (the first three, but stopped after starting the fourth, it was so poorly written). But I had children who were reading them, so it seemed like a fun thing to do along with the kids. I can very much understand why kids love the books and I've encouraged my own to read them (and will continue to do so when the two youngest can read), but I don't understand why adults who could be reading something else would invest their time in them. There are a finite number of books one can read in a lifetime. If you are not a kid, skip them. If you want to understand the "Potter phenomenon," a couple of entertainment articles will do the trick. The hoopla has more to do with the media blitz than the actual merit of the books.

The parallel is more to those who disdained Dickens for being vulgar and populist (while, possibly, having read him.) I'm not pure enough to condemn, since I don't, for example, plan to read the Left Behind books and yet scorn them. But I submit that while the pleasure to noting the references to Dickens and Rushdie, among others, don't in themselves sanctify the books, they're both a joy and a sociological phenomenon unparalleled since The Pickwick Papers. Too bad to let a conviction of one's superiority impede pleasure, but for a few minutes more it's a free country. Too bad to miss the fun, though.

Tell you what -- find a single line in which I expressed disdain for the books, then we'll talk.

You know, it is just possible that one might not read Harry Potter on some grounds other than "conviction of one's superiority."

It is ridiculous and pathetic to have to say this.

I haven't read them either, and probably won't. I have plenty of other unserious guilty pleasures that take up my time; Harry Potter just isn't one of them.

You could have written the same piece in reference to almost any other book (including the Bible) and not gotten so vehement a response. You have run afoul of a cult called "Potterology".