Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
Harry Potter is like [b:Fifty Shades of Grey|10818853|Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1)|E.L. James|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1372516342s/10818853.jpg|15732562] in the following ways:1. The hype about the books is what sold the books. The books themselves suck.
2. The writing styles are horrific.
3. The plots are flimsy and meandering.
4. The characters are one-dimensional and simplistic.
Both books are a testament to the overwhelming power of the insinuous, insidious, and saturatousness (I just made up a word - fuck you) marketing machines in the US (and UK).
They are shining examples of the marketers telling us what we should like, and us believing them without questioning why we should care about a girl with no self-respect, why we should not be insulted the assumption that us girls will swoon merely by a billionaire taking off his shirt, why we are going to tolerate a meandering tale of a wizardlet who plays pseudo-soccer, then births a dragon, then finds a unicorn, then..all the million other side-stories Harry Potter stumbles through.
What else would explain our collective lack of insistence of a cohesive story that does not rely solely on deus ex machina to move a plot forward (you know - invisibility cloaks introduced 3/4 of the way through), our acceptance of cardboard cutout characters named after their personalities (I'm talking to you, Draco Malfoy and Mr. Grey).
I demand more from my taste-makers. I expect The Story of O, I demand [b:The Wonderful Wizard of Oz|236093|The Wonderful Wizard of Oz|L. Frank Baum|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327894516s/236093.jpg|1993810], I insist on [b:The Princess Bride|21787|The Princess Bride |William Goldman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327903636s/21787.jpg|992628]. The fact that I am not only spoon-fed this shit, but expected to like it is beyond annoying. I don't like being treated like I'm stupid. I don't like being coerced into books that clearly exist in order to make me see the movie version, then buy the outfit, and the Barbie editions and the comic book renditions.
I just don't like either of these books.
Now, [b:Twilight|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1361039443s/41865.jpg|3212258] on the other hand.... that's a book I can bite into (harhar).