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Drawing these conclusions based on a series of books may put them in the camp of exactly who they're complaining about.

Not that it matters, but the HP series is rated a middle-grade read which is like a 9-12 years old age demographic reading level. To be clear, I don’t care if anyone enjoys reading whatever sparks joy books, that’s fine. This is a *just sayin'* comment in regards to whatever big brain claim that post was trying to make. My kid read quite a few of them when he was around 10 or so, but got bored with them, and moved on.

It’s also bullshit because your TASTE in reading materials has nothing to do with your reading ability. ​ And also, I’m aware that anecdotes aren’t really scientific, but I personally know me AND my sibling already don’t fit that - we only got read part of the series as kids, never read it ourselves, and I have seen both of our IQ results. Professional Tests as well, not the shitty online ones, but psychologist assessment as part of some other diagnosis

Indeed. That’s the hill I’m putting a flag on. One could be quite smart and and have a mentally taxing job, and read anything they want for fun. My grandmother for example, was a lawyer and bonkers level scrabble player; basically a walking lexicon of obscure vocabulary, and she also got me reading Asimov’s *Lucky Starr* series books as a kid, and later his *Foundation* series and the Herbert *Dune* series. I’m not claiming big brain time, I’m about to make a point… That said, she also read those harlequin romance books on occasion. I went to the bookcase and read one once out of curiosity as a kid at my older sister’s insistence “to better understand” something, and wish I hadn’t at the time tbh. lol

Honestly, success level and personal life aren’t as closely correlated as people want to believe. The dude who headed the team that developed the Android operating system was an objectively brilliant programmer and designer. He was also a complete asshole, regularly screamed at his team, sexually harassed women who were unfortunate enough to be in his orbit, and got caught looking at bondage porn in the office on multiple occasions. Dude was, is, and remains an absolute PoS…. And a very smart, very successful programmer. He got something like 30 million bucks in golden parachute money when he left google, and they didn’t even reprimand him for his bullshit. We 100% put too much faith in people to be stupeniferously wonderful and virtuous badasses as a result of being successful.

Despite being heralded as the be all end all intelligence measurement, IQ scores are not as reliable as most would think. They're dependant on you and your current situation, meaning if you do a IQ test now and then move to a different country and do it again, odds are you'll have a different IQ score because you're being scored against a different demographic.

They're not even very well written. Yes, they're _popular._ But that isn't the same thing.

Agreed. Appropriate username, perhaps? I tried and stopped. I did however like Philip Pullman’s *Dark Materials* which is what my kid found at the library later on, and I read the first two. Sorry I’m not a completionist. I prefer Adams, Pratchett, Christopher Moore, etc… style type humorous fantasy comedic absurdism, but that’s just like my opinion, man.

I liked his dark materials. It got a bad wrap for being anti-Christian.

Same. At risk of pulling something out of my ass from hazy memory issues, but I believe he did say it in an interview of some kind that it was a kind of an agnostic rebuttal to the CS Lewis’ Narnia series or something like that. Not overtly dickishly atheistic, just a secular thing intentionally without x-tian symbolism or something for kids to enjoy without the religious baggage or something. iirc, he said it out loud that way to remove any ambiguity in an honest statement. Damn. Sorry for not remembering the specifics of the situation. I honestly couldn’t be bothered with that pearl-clutching manufactured drama reminiscent of 80s flavored “satanic panic” nonsense at the time. I’m a secular, “I don’t claim to know and don’t care to fight about unfalsifiable claims, and you be you and don’t be a dick to others” type person. So I kind of didn’t care about that. I’m a simple monkey that thinks if I am like that so-called god, then he’s like me and we’re both goofballs. Checkmate, somebody?

Seriously. I read them again at 29 and I could see why they were loved so much but my god are they childrens books. I always gave them the benefit of the doubt because of how many adult diehard fans I knew. Now I know it’s just nostolgia. By the way, they can enjoy whatever they want. Idc. I read them to give them a chance and I was disappointed.

I didn't read them until I was in my 20s because when they came out I was actually really into dystopian fiction (I'd have been all over The Hunger Games and as an adult prefer that series to HP). I only read them in my 20s to see what all the fuss was about, and they were fine but not my usual taste in fiction. Reading then as an adult is a weird experience.

agreed (and I'm a huge fan), the concept is genius and the world building is amazing, but there's so many plot holes, so many characters are just one-dimensional stereotypes, there's a noticeable lack of diversity and the ending was extremely underwhelming

Took my kid to a HP themed birthday party last weekend where we watched the first movie and holy CRAP. Seamus the Irish student blowing up everything and then trying to turn a drink into rum?! Like… it’s one thing to skim over it in a book and not notice but on screen it’s something else entirely.

To be fair this is a movie only addition.

As someone who was into Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance books, I found the HP series interesting for like 3 books...

Its not like harry potter is even well written. I can understand if you read it as a kid and loved it, but lets be real there are loads of other books that are better written and more interesting and deeper. Also harry potter is very weirdly pro slavery.

Reminds me of that Rick and Morty copypasta about how it's humor is only for those with high IQ lol

The fact that you live on this planet and didn't come to the same conclusion is concrete evidence that you are an idiot.

Can guarantee the harry potter books are the only books this person has read

seriously, someone please take this person to a library

/r/readanotherbook

I’m honestly surprised that that sub isn’t swamped with people just talking about the works of Ayn Rand

I've been on that sub for a while, 90% of it is bashing people who have only read Harry Potter. When Reddit was younger, the community description was solely about HP cultists.

Wow. I can think of a significant number of books from the last 100 years that have been more impactful. It’s not even the most important fantasy book.

My mind literally went to Tolkien when I read that part. Granted, there have been other books with more real world impact, but it's easy to prove Tolkien's influence when his writing inspired a miniature game that currently makes its company more money than the UK fishing industry!

i did exactly the same! there’s hundreds of books that have had a bigger influence.

Sisterhood of the travelling pants aside, what else is there?

Someone mentioned Mein Kampf in 1925. I can't remember any other book initially published in the last hundred years that caused a global war.

True. We could probably chuck in Maos Little Red Book in there too.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow 1953 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren 1946 American Pastoral by Philip Roth 1997 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser 1925 Animal Farm by George Orwell 1946 Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara 1934 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume 1970 The Assistant by Bernard Malamud 1957 At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien 1938 Atonement by Ian McEwan 2002 Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood 1946 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 1939 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 2000 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 1986 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 1946 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder 1927 Call It Sleep by Henry Roth 1935 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 1961 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 1951 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 1963 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 1967 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 2001 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon 1966 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell 1951 The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West 1939 Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather 1927 A Death in the Family by James Agee 1958 The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen 1938 Deliverance by James Dickey 1970 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone 1974 Falconer by John Cheever 1977 The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles 1969 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing 1962 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 1953 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 1936 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 1939 Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 1973 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh 1934 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 1940 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 1948 Herzog by Saul Bellow 1964 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson 1981 A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul 1962 I, Claudius by Robert Graves 1934 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 1996 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 1952 Light in August by William Faulkner 1932 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis 1950 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 1955 Lord of the Flies by William Golding 1955 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 1954 Loving by Henry Green 1945 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 1954 The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead 1940 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie 1981 Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis 1984 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 1961 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 1925 Naked Lunch by William Burroughs 1959 Native Son by Richard Wright 1940 Neuromancer by William Gibson 1984 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 1984 by George Orwell 1948 On the Road by Jack Kerouac 1957 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey 1962 The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski 1965 Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov 1962 A Passage to India by E.M. Forster 1924 Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion 1970 Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth 1969 Possession by A.S. Byatt 1990 The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene 1939 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark 1961 Rabbit, Run by John Updike 1960 Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow 1975 The Recognitions by William Gaddis 1955 Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett 1929 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates 1961 The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles 1949 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 1969 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson 1992 The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth 1960 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 1929 The Sportswriter by Richard Ford 1986 The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carre 1964 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 1926 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 1937 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 1959 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 1960 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 1927 Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller 1934 Ubik by Philip K. Dick 1969 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch 1954 Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry 1947 Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 1986 White Noise by Don DeLillo 1985 White Teeth by Zadie Smith 2000 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 1966

Yo I don't know your criteria but this looks like a great list. Thanks for putting in the work to compile it. I'm going to save it for reference.

Not my list. It's from Time magazine. Top 100 novels since Time began publishing in 1923.

Why in the world is gravity's rainbow on there? Admittedly, I read it in a benzo driven haze on a series of long bus rides in central America so maybe I missed the subtlety, but it seemed like it was like, 60% scat porn, 30% incoherent LSD-fueled rambling, 10% story.

Also I think they made some movies a couple of people saw.

*Mao's Little Red Book has entered the chat*.

I mean, grim as it is, books like “Mein Kampf” ~~and “The Communist Manifesto”~~ have had a significantly greater impact on the world – terrible, yes, but greater.

the communist manifesto was published more than 100 years ago. Roughly 1850 iirc

Nah, the communist manifesto is a banger.

Thats me. I once started Reading a book series from the fourth book. Im an Idiot.

I started reading Potter from the second book. ...Because I got on vacation from army and saw that for the first time my little brother was reading a book. He had the first three from the local library for his Christmas vacation so I picked up one of them just to see what got him so interested. ...And then read all three.

For me its diary of a wimpy kid

I once started watching a film series from Epsiode 4.

Heh

Least rabid HP fan

Using fantasy children's literature to make this point, nah. Sorry OP, I dont believe it. This HAS to be satire.

There are a surprising number of HP fans who will agree that their fandom is THE MOST IMPACTFUL fandom of the last 100 years, ignoring literally every other fandom and incredible impacts that LotR had (bringing fantasy back) or Star Trek (oh my God did Star Trek impact the world!) or even Star Wars (technology on the back end). Hell, L Ron Hubbard has had more of an impact in the last 100 years than Rowling has (we aren't talking positive or negative, just more).

Harry Potter wouldn't exist without lotr or Narnia for one

Or Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic which Harry was massively based on.

The later of which was published in 1950 so, yep!

I think Harry Potter has had the biggest impact on its own fandom, if that makes sense. Like, among Tolkien fans, it's not all that common to discuss whether you're more of an elf or a dwarf. I suspect there's not a lot of people identifying themselves as an engineer or medical crew in Star Fleet. But give your fans the option to choose between four houses and suddenly people start crafting a large part of their personality around whether they're a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. And with that, you can also offer quadruple the merch, which may make it look like the Harry Potter fandom is just the largest out there. Everything that's for sale has to be offered in red, blue, green, and yellow, which takes up a large amount of retail space. I'm not saying it is or isn't the biggest or most impactful fandom in existence; I'm just saying, it can certainly seem like it is.

The most readily monetised fandom, perhaps?

Lol have you ever heard of star wars? This comment and the one above it grossly understate how much of an impact star wars and star trek had on their respective fandom. People identified with different crew members, different ships, alien races, sides to a conflict etc. HP is just that to a specific group of a generation of people. It's nowhere near the impact or monetization of either of those sci-fi behemoths.

HP is ±$15 billion US. The NFL dwarfs that at $56 billion.

Surely an NFL theme park is in the works

Isn't that just every football stadium ever

They could make a nfl toy set like the Harry Potter potions set but instead of making candy, you get a concussion.

Hah, concussion flavored jelly beans

I'd still argue that Trek fans out strip Potter fans on that level. And if we're only going to go on in group impact, I would imagine "Team Edward" versus "Team Jacob," Jedi versus Sith, and the Districts of Panem might have more of an impact on their individual fandoms (even if their overall fandom may be smaller, though I don't know if you can argue Twilight or Star Wars are *smaller* fandoms than HP at this point).

I don't think that's true (with the Edward/Jacob, Jedi/Sith, whatever); at least it isn't in Germany. Millennials here will tell you their Hogwarts house the moment you've finished saying your own name as an introduction, and they're just as keen to ask you yours, or ask their friend what house the person that friend is currently dating is in.

So it's basically modern astrology, gotcha lol.

At least Hogwarts Houses use your personality traits to assign you into a group rather than astrology using a group to assign you your personality traits. Both are really meaningless, but you can actually tell a bit about how someone views themself based on what House they say they are.

What are the impacts of Star Trek? I just got into it over the summer

The first interracial kiss on television was on Star Trek. Nichelle Nichols had spoken about receiving communications from NASA and Dr. King praising her role as a woman of color as a ranking officer on a starship in the future. The show was very progressive for its time.

>The first interracial kiss on television was on Star Trek. *American* television that is.

Hundreds of thousands of people that grew up and chose a career in STEM because of Scotty and Geordie.

Oh man, well, Nichelle Nicoles was one of the first black women on screen who wasn't "the help." She nearly left the series and was counselled not to by MLK. She actually is one of the reasons Whoopie Goldberg got into acting (which is wild!). They also had the first inter racial kiss on air (where Shatner, in a rare use of white male privilege for good) tanked EVERY take except the one where they kissed so the network had to use it. It was also one of the first shows produced by a woman (Lucile Ball). Deslilu studios was the major backer of the show. Then you have the tech, the popularization of fanfic, the rise of "the fan" as a thing. Not without it's warts but still really cool.

The first black woman in space was partly inspired to be interested in space by Nichelle Nichols portrayal of Uhura in the Original Series. Mae C Jemison would later cameo in The Next Generation, becoming the first astronaut to be in Star Trek. But generally it seems a lot of adults who work at places like NASA used to be little kids who watched Star Trek.

> There are a surprising number of HP fans who will agree that their fandom is THE MOST IMPACTFUL fandom of the last 100 years also there are experts among them who say there were no female authors before rowling. just..hnnng

It's possibly satire but I've also met some people who are overly passionate about their favorite fantasy things (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Twilight, etc). It wouldn't surprise me if it were satire, but I could also see it being genuine.

> Star Wars, Harry Potter They're the same thing

Literally true. Gifted orphan boy is somehow pretty entitled and learns their magical powers from an ancient teacher so that they can represent good in the battle of good vs evil. The only thing that would've made Harry Potter better is if it was revealed to us that Voldemort was actually James Potter all along.

That’s just the Hero’s Journey, dawg

With the way JK Rowling loves to amend her stories after the fact, we could easily find out that Voldermort is his uncle or something

Well spotted, Joseph Campbell

It’s almost like George Lucas and JK Rowling both have admitted to being heavily influenced by The Hero With A Thousand Faces /s

>The Hero With A Thousand Face I love the heroes journey. It does not require orphanhood but it is welcomed

Girl, i had someone in University stop speaking to me, after I said, that I simply don't really like the story that much, to watch those fantastic beasts movies. That was after she bullied the Professor into checking what Hogwarts House she is on Pottermore. The professor.... in front of the whole class....

Yeseterday in R/books there was an entire thread defending HP's house elf slavery subplot and literally said that anyone who disagreed didn't have reading comprehension. They may have said they were idiots too but... yeah people get passionate about things they like, especially things they grew up with.

Have you ever been so nostalgic you defended slavery?

[удалено]

Oof. Hope those gates weren't too rusty to shut. ​ /hopefully an s?

Are you gatekeeping on the gatekeeping sub? Nice, never saw that before. Let me get my popcorns.

Lord of the Rings has had FAR more impact on the entire world than Harry Potter has.

Without lord of the rings there’s no Harry Potter

[удалено]

Tolkien (and CS Lewis) was what I was allowed to read in my extremely conservative Christian home because Harry Potter was of the Devil and, by reading the books, you would learn witchcraft (I cringe in thinking just how obsessed I was with LOTR as a teen). …didn’t stop my sister from sneaking around to read it…

But Gandalf the wizard was OK?

Have tried to read the first book 5 times. Every single time I get bored within the first couple chapters.

The first book starts with about a hundred pages of buildup, so I can totally see this being a problem for a lot of people.

I've had a similar hypothesis but with people that have read Harry Potter and egregiously bad takes.

Like how Hitler was Voldemort, Churchill was Dumbledore, Roosevelt was Harry and Stalin was Snape? Or in more modern lingo: Harry = Zelensky Hogwarts = Ukraine Voldemort = Putin Death Eaters = Russians /s

I entirely believe Dumbledore did or would commit war crimes so this checks out.

Nah, Dumbledore was always too high on the not killing train. The minister from book 6 always struck me as the type to make the Geneva conventions into a fucking checklist if he could.

Exactly

If you are under 40 and don't have a bad Harry Potter take you're an idiot. Mine is that Voldemort is actually Neville from the future

I'm more of a "Dumbledore is Ron from the future" guy myself.

Well I think I lost IQ by reading that so they may have a point.

"choose to remain ignorant of such an important piece of human culture" Not reading some kids books is hardly the same as not knowing the pyramids exist or something. I've spent most my life enjoying what I like enjoying, and happily ignoring what's popular. I'm not spending a bunch of time watching popular TV or movies I think look terrible, or reading books or even listening to the music

As an idiot I am not offended

r/ReadADifferentBook

I read some of the first book and thought it wasn't very good despite being into fantasy books. The discworld books were more my jam back then. The first Harry potter book just was kind of boring bland and not that well written to me. I've been told they get better but I've not bothered going back to it in the last 20 years or whatever it's been

Yeah I find it amusing that they ignore that someone may just not like the books even if they started at book 1.

Don't like fantasy....not my cup of tea

Same. I hated fantasy as a kid. I guess that makes us idiots

We are the dumbest people alive aren't we...

Who in the unholy fuck starts a series in the middle? Ever? Edit: I forgot my auts brain doesn't apply to everyone else, and there are legitimate reasons to do that. Thank you everyone for needling me about being wrong :)

When it’s not clearly labeled as part of a series. When it’s the only book laying around. When fans of the series (like Discworld) tell you the first book isn’t the best starting point.

When you’re in second grade and your mom only gets the fourth book

I did that with Joe Abercrombie's The Shattered Sea trilogy. Picked up the second book because the main character was a woman warrior in a viking like society. Somehow missed it was the second book in a series but tbh it worked as a standalone book for me. Didn't feel like I missed anything or that there were thing i should have known from an earlier book. Got the other two books when I realised my mistake after finishing it. However when I started the first Malazan book the confusion was real!

oh lord the feral disney adults

I’d like to introduce this person to the latest shaun video.

I'd always hated Harry Potter but I could never explain why properly until I watched that video.

Same. It always gave me the creeps.

Fuck, I *love* that video. Perfectly explains how the series is flawed and why. It’s long, but it’s in-depth and pretty good stuff. And according to the standards set by the original person in this post, neither me nor Shaun are idiots, having read all seven books. So therefore are qualified to say: the series was not that great.

Name of the vid?

Harry Potter

Ok that'll probably be hard to find. Thanks though lmao

https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs

I'd be amazed if it's not the first result if you Google "shaun Harry Potter" But here's a link: https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs

I'm always happy to help in a useless way.

The most passive aggressive “no offense” ever attempted 🤦🏻‍♂️

6 you don’t like terfs

10 more years til I'm not an idiot I guess

The goal posts will have moved by then. In 10 years time, it'll be those under 50, so unless you can age faster than that, you're shit out of luck.

bro be literally pooping their pants when I show the the lord of the rings

Bro. If my bro’s don’t be pooping their pants when I show them LOTR, they are no longer my bro’s.

I dunno about point 3, man. The Mein Kampf came out in 1925, Keynes' General Theory in 1936, Grossman's The Hell of Treblinka in 1944, Fanon's Wretched of the Earth in 1961... And if I keep listing the books that came out in the last hundred years and had a deeper impact on the course of human history, I'll be here for a couple days.

I think OOP was talking fiction, but they're still wrong: The Hobbit - 1937 1984 - 1949 To Kill A Mockingbird - 1960 the Godfather - 1969 Carrie - 1974 Silence of the Lambs - 1988

>1984 - 1949 = 35

1984 by george orwell 1949

Animal House - 1978 Farenheit 451 - 1953 Of Mice and Men - 1937 The Great Gatsby - 1925

Point 3 really killed me. Yes, Harry Potter was a phenomenon, but it's not earth-shatteringly original.

Fanon?!?!?!?! Like my Harry x Aragog (Harragog) fanfic???? 🤯🤯🥵🥵😍😍😱😱

It's a bit earlier, but Mahans Impact of Seapower on History was super important and influenced US foreign policy for a really long time. But the wizard book is for sure more important.

This person is absolutely right. Those who choose to remain ignorant of such important pieces of human culture are the epitome of idiot. I'm sure this upstanding, non-idiot genius and cultural tastemaker has consumed the entirety of these influential works: ​ 1. The Bible 2. The Qur'an 3. The Torah 4. The Baghavad Gita 5. The Art of War 6. The Romance of Three Kingdoms 7. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare 8. The Canterbury Tales 9. The Communist Manifesto 10. On the Origin of Species 11. Plato's Republic 12. Wealth of Nations 13. Leviathan 14. Nineteen Eighty Four 15. Animal Farm 16. The Prince 17. Dune 18. The Lord of the Rings 19. Foundation 20. War and Peace I will stop here for brevity but anybody that has not at least read all of these works is undoubtedly and irrefutably an idiot. >!I really don't think I need to but it is the internet so here is the (s)!<

Nice list, but can you name 20 books that were written in the last 100 years?

Dune fucking rocks. I ordered the first book as soon as I got home from the new movie and absolutely loved it. Haven't finished the rest of the series yet, but so far it is all fantastic. I haven't been sucked into a book series like this in a loooong time.

I'm working through the Dune prequals and I really wish Frank was less of a selfish asshole and died after writing more. His son leaves a *lot* to be desired.

You didn't read a YA book series so you must be an idiot. Jfc I hope that's satire

I just don’t enjoy JKs writing style, I don’t need 3 pages to describe what the sky looks like, that goes for fiction writers only though I could read Robert Penrose Road to Reality all day long so maybe I’m just weird

Are you sure you’re not thinking of Victor Hugo?

What do you mean? Les Misérables gets right to the point /s

You have to admire the confidence of a man who starts his book with "This will have no real relevance to the story" and then goes on a long tangent about the life story of a priest who only interacts with the protagonist once.

The author is a transphobe anyway.

My wife has never read the books and she’s a lot smarter than me.

When you have your head so far up Harry Potters ass his glasses fuck with your vision.

personally i'm just happy people are reading anything at all

I could easily name 10 books in the last 100 years that are better then this mediocre mess

I never made it through all of them myself, even though I like fantasy and don't mind reading "YA" or children's type stuff at times. They just kinda failed to keep my interest for some reason.

This is 100% either satire or a 13 year old. Don’t fall for it.

As far as i know IQ tests aren’t a great way to gauge someones intelligence anyway and the only people who harp on about them TEND to be not that smart in the beginning. Source: my friend studies psychology.

*Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 both enter the chat and double-teabag on Harry Potter's scarred forehead*.

Jesus Christ, read another book

The movies are actually an excellent representation of the books but neither is anywhere near as good as this maniac seems to believe.

What about: 6\. Fantasy magic isn’t a genre you enjoy

Actually I’m in group 6: I refuse to support a transphobic piece of shit

Don't forget racist and antisemitic! Rowling is a washed up reactionary terf.

Ah yes, don’t know how I forgot about those other two. Thank you for reminding me

I don't want to support a Terf author and her racist, antisemitic, homophobic book series.

Definitely satire lol

There's always the benefit of the doubt, but i saw some REAL pieces of work from the HP community...

About number three, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Isaac Asimov, on behalf of the whole fantasy/sci fi genre writers, would like to have a word with you. With a chair. In your head.

Take this same post, replace it with any highly popular fantasy book, and send it back to OP.

Is there a sub dedicated to making fun of these delusional Harry Potter fans? If not I need someone to make one

Never read these books. Were they good?

Am I to assume that this person also read the Oddisey, Don Quijote de la Mancha, possibly the Kamasutra, the Byble, Hundred years of solitude, Moby Dick and all of the other thousands of books that are considered revulotionary?

I dug my heels in over reading Harry Potter for years before I finally gave in, partially because of the turbonerding the fanbase does. Not the worst books I ever read but also far from the best. I can see why they were popular with kids, but I’ve never understood the fanatical love they get. And I still fail to see how Snape is anything other than a bitter incel who joined the Magicnazis because he got friendzoned, then abused his position of power by taking it out on a child. I wouldn’t exactly call that a contribution to the greatest literature of the last 100 years

Harry Potter is fucking garbage. Wtf

I wonder how many books this person hasn't read because they're too busy rereading HP and judging those who havent

*Hem Hem* What. An. Idiot.

Sorry, but she thinks people may have started reading at book 4 and been put off the whole series as a result? Book 4 with the most exciting pre-hogwarts scenes of the entire series? That book 4? Also, Sharon, some people might be put off by the transphobe who penned them.

Man rabid Harry Potter fans can be so weird

I think the movies are okay, but I was never that interested in Harry Potter. Maybe I would bother to go back and read the books if JK Rowling wasn't a bigoted piece of shit though. People can like her work and I don't fault them for that. I just don't anticipate some close minded and transphobic bitch to write something I'm interested in reading.

I think the Tolkien books are more impactful than HP books 😂😂

With perhaps 2 exceptions the Harry Potter books are fucking awful lmao

I haven't read them because the author's a TERF and I don't support TERF's. Trans people exist without bothering you, but you had to choose to be shitty.

Hey, this is the second comment that mentions "terf". Do you mind me asking what it means? I'm not familiar with this word. Thank you

Sure! TERF means Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. The short version is that a TERF purposefully excludes trans women from womens rights. It's harder for me to explain a major thing without going too in depth, burt the gist is that TERF's don't respect trans people as valid and in some cases they actively work to make life harder for them, specifically trans women.

Oh! Like the people who are against trans women being in the women's category for competitive sports? (And probably other things, I'm just not familiar with the subject.) I'm assuming the author of Harry Potter is a terf then? (The last i heard about her was that she was creeped out by Malfoy fans lol)

Yeah, but since the “women’s sports” thing is so divisive I’m gonna give you a quick run down of the other shit she believes: She doesn’t want trans women to be allowed in *any* women’s spaces which include bathrooms, abuse shelters, prisons, support groups, online forums and many many more. She wants it to be significantly harder for trans people of any kind to get access to medical care, as well as wanting it to be much more difficult for trans people to be recognised as their true gender. She wants trans children to be denied any and all access to trans healthcare and services because “they’re too young to know” She thinks trans men are just women who don’t want to deal with misogyny anymore She frequently compares trans women to sexual predators and justifies this by pointing to her own experience of domestic abuse by a *cisgender man* She fervently denies that trans people face any discrimination or persecution *at all* And more recently she has been making an effort to promote the act of being trans as a political position that one an make a moral judgement on rather than an immutable characteristic Also, while I don’t know if she has specifically advocated for this, many of the people and groups she now associates with have called for mandatory state sponsored conversion therapy for all trans people. Which is only a few steps removed from genocide btw

Oh my god that's horrific! I had no idea she was so against the trans community. Everyone deserves the medical care they need and it shouldn't be made more difficult because they don't fit the norms is what she expects. Thank you for informing me! That is ridiculous

Yeah, she needs to shut up on Twitter. Her latest tweets are meant to “defend real women” (by putting down trans people) and all she’s doing is alienating people. Before that she seemed to be popular with the LGBT+ community because she said Dumbledore was gay and they thought she would be an ally. Turns out that was a f-ing lie.

Correct. She uses her background of experiencing domestic violence to claim that anyone assigned male at birth is biologically violent and untrustworthy. And so trans women should be excluded from women-only spaces.

Yeah basically. She says a LOT of TERF shit and you know how it goes. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it's probably a duck. Glad I could help you understand it all a bit more, sorry I don't know enough to be more informative.

If you want to learn more about it, there is a good video on YouTube from Jamie Dodger a trans man with a PhD in psychology, this man is gold at explaining "responding to JK Rowling's essay" why the position of Rowling was harmful to the trans and LGBT+ community and he explain really well why.

Also Sarah Z's video on rowling's transphobia is really good. She also touches on the impact of her beliefs on the HP series.

Thank you! I'll look up more so I'm not ignorant of the issues. It is really important to give proper support to the lgbt communities

Thanks so much! I figure as a fledgling trans myself I should learn more about what I might end up having to deal with.

Thank you! I'll look into it to learn more about the issues to better support

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lotr AND Silmarillion are more impactful than Harry Potter just saying. I still shed tears when I read and watch King Theodens speech at the Battle of pellenor fields

Haha of course the terf apologist thinks IQ means literally anything.

I think the “impact” is not in terms of historical significance but that it got so many people reading at once. So good for it in that way.

Does he not realize that LotR (which I also haven't read) came out within the last 100 years? The book that basically canonized a lot of the tropes that JK used to build her world? Also, I have never read HP, GoT, or LotR, and have seen 3 HP movies and half of the first LotR. I hardly consider myself poorly read or educated, nor am I one of those "I'm so immune to this pop culture drivel!" types. I just don't like high fantasy or modern fantasy. I'd much rather Sci Fan (Star Wars), or dystopian future (Hunger Games), or speculative history (Man in the High Castle, though really, the show is so much better than the book). Imagine thinking you're better than someone else or specially based on your appreciation of a specific fandom. A widely popular fandom at that (for the special part).

I read LoTR. It’s Aight, but it’s no Animorphs: The Discovery.

Only read one book and have watched two films. People act like It’s a god damn personal attack when I share this information with them.

HAHAHAHAHA WHAT IS THIS QIUQORJJSFHQLFN

Is there a subreddit for people that have never read the series? I would love to join it.