Harry Potter – look, I can’t be objective. I grew up on these books. My friends and I could act out entire scenes by heart. I went through the cycle a generation experienced: Love, obsession, disappointment, detachment (in many cases by growing up, in my case by discovering fanfics).
I still really like the first book though. It has a strong vibe of a good book for kids, strong worldbuilding, an atmosphere you can nearly touch. I don’t mind its inconsistencies, the lack of logic in many places. It mirrors how a child sees the world: when I read the books as a kid, there was nothing weird about Harry being abandoned on a doorstep by supposedly-responsible adults and then tortured for much of his life. I mean, relatable content, right?
In some ways, the series as a whole is a mess, and that’s not talking about the aggressive retconning business the author has tacked on on Twitter in the years after publishing it. But I still enjoy revisiting the feeling I got when I read the books, and that’s really all that matters.
Further Reading
And then, of course, there is fanfiction. I have not added all the Harry Potter fanfiction I’ve read to this site, but I’ve added notable ones, and you can find them here.
