Author: Greig

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

This second book in the series is the weakest of all the Harry Potter books. It’s too similar to it’s predecessor and feels like it’s treading water in terms of the greater story arc.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s still a fun read and has a couple of great sequences. I particularly love the diary of Tom Riddle and whole Polyjuice potion storyline.
I guess it’s the almost videogame structure of the plot that makes it feel more generic and weak in comparison to the later books. It’s all very linear in a ‘solve this puzzle’, ‘play this sports section’, ‘gather these items’ and ‘face the big bad’ way (Lego Harry Potter is one the best games I’ve played in years by the way). Now the flaw of the later, larger books is that there’s too much in the matter of sideplots and digression. Failing to have any of that makes this book seem kind of perfunctory.

Rating: B-

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

So I saw the final film installment of the Harry Potter saga the other week and it gave me the impetus to do something I’d been meaning to do for a while; to re-read all the books.
This is in part to experience the world as Rowling wrote it, shorn of the film maker’s interpretations and compromises. The other reason is that I’ve only read the last book once – and a very quick read it was. So there’s a lot of things that I can’t remember and I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance I missed throughout the entire series that I never picked up on.
The first book is a great kids book. It’s not terribly original but very well done with a consistency of tone and world building that would pay dividends as the series grew into a phenomenon.
It’s a quick, fun read within a recognizable tradition of boarding school (magic or otherwise) stories. The greatest pleasure of this re-read is identifying the number of things that are seeded here that come to fruition later in the series. Though it’s hard to tell what’s a deliberate plant – some things gain signifigance in an almost haphazard fashion.
Another enjoyable aspect of the book is getting to know characters again that aren’t terribly well served by the films. Ron and Hermione are richer and more interesting people in the books. In the celluloid version of the series I feel that they were reduced to comic foil and brain respectively.
One thing that I definitely noticed this time through are that there’s a lot of negatives in the depiction of fat people.
I like this book and it’s an enjoyable gateway to a series that is ultimately a very rewarding read.

Rating: B+