What was the best Harry Potter novel?

the one where he stretches his legs

She has such an airy sing-songy voice and has no vulgarity to her actions, a perfect qt.

The one where Hermione grew up to be a disgusting negress

In all seriousness, the excerpts I have read from this are all hot garbage and I can't believe anyone takes that half-educated dropout seriously.

I thought Cho Chang was just an exotic wizard name until they made the films.

4

What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now only read J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Goblet of Fire
>funny as fuck
>lots of cool wizard shit and lore like the Quidditch World Cup
>mystery
>start of the bigger plot

Goblet of Fire was good, and seems to be popular, but I always liked Order of the Phoenix better. Harry's relationship with Sirius was a thing I really liked, because I essentially had a telephone-based relationship with my father. I also liked the revolt against the system by forming the DA, and dreamed of doing the same with subjects I liked.

I'm sorry, I can't possibly critique the books ears after having read them as a child or teenager.

How many scientific papers have you published, user?

Real talk. What's your favourite series of covers?

>reading for the plot
That's like, watching sports, dude

A qt between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter.

Shes hot. I would grope her ass on the train

Kerrie? I just asked you that on tumblr. Never would have guessed you lurk Veeky Forums.

The later ones where Rowling finally manages to make the kids' actions useful. In most of the books, the plot is structured so that the kids just not fucking doing anything unauthorized would have solved the problem.
Book 1: Voldemort wants the Stone, but can't take it from the mirror, because there's no selfless kid next to him who almost killed himself getting there to help. Dumbledore returns, kicks Voldemort's ass.
Book 2: In Flourish and Blotts, the kids and Weasleys avoid the Malfoys, have no confrontation, and Riddle's diary isn't slipped into Ginny's books by Lucius, so she never opens the Chamber of Secrets.
Book 3: Where to start? Buckbeak dies. Black dies. Nobody cares.
Book 4: Harry just doesn't try. Screw the Cup's "binding magic": nobody can make him actually try to win. He throws the fight, is never near the Cup, doesn't fight Voldemort.
Book 5: Harry stays home from the Ministry. The prophecy is useless anyway.
Book 6: Finally Harry actually is useful, getting the locket.
Book 7: This time the kids are Really Useful Engines.

Nobody gives a shit about your friends on tumblr