this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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[โ€“] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 day ago (6 children)

They are not even good, why is everyone crazy about these books?

[โ€“] 123@programming.dev 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

They are easy to read and were some people's introduction to fantasy/fiction (not everything is as dull as school assignments) and a set of shared experiences growing up.

[โ€“] bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even when the books were written I found even the concept pretty stupid. "You need a wand to do magic" ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ "We can teleport but you have to use a train to get to school" ๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™‚๏ธ And the story is a ripoff of too many previous stories.

[โ€“] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

World building was shit. New stuff was being added in later books that, if it existed in early books, would have made the story so different.

[โ€“] Tonava@sopuli.xyz 3 points 22 hours ago

The consistency isn't really the selling point, yeah. What made the books any good was the kind of whimsy of being suddenly thrown into a weird magical word that didn't follow any understandable logic and was full of cool stuff and mysteries. That's a great hook for kids! The first three books do that pretty well. After that...

[โ€“] Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 day ago

They came out at peak millennial, at the intersection of shared cultural experiences and early social media. Before the internet a book wouldn't go global like HP did, and after algorithmic feeds there haven't really been cultural experiences shared so broadly.

[โ€“] Mothra@mander.xyz 11 points 1 day ago

I agree. I wish I could understand.

Then I remember that stuff like Twilight makes it into best selling territory and I give up trying to understand.

Same fucking reason why Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters and many other old good media is still popular today. Nostalgia.

[โ€“] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

Because the US (I guess the UK as well) is full of adults who haven't read a single book since HP. It's their only reference point.

[โ€“] Rothe@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

Childhood nostalgia I guess.

I am too old to have any for this series, but still even if I did, I don't understand why you can't drop it. I realise plenty of the things I liked in my childhood was commercialised nonsense, and I have no desire to keep revisiting it.