There’s a lot I can say about Harry Potter in the antipathy he generates in people, but I’d rather talk about Washington Post critic Ron Charles. Here’s Ron:
It happened on a dark night, somewhere in the middle of Book IV. For three years, I had dutifully read the “Harry Potter” series to my daughter, my voice growing raspy with the effort, page after page. But lately, whole paragraphs of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” had started to slip by without my hearing a word. I’d snap back to attention and realize the action had moved from Harry’s room to Hagrid’s house, and I had no idea what was happening.
And that’s when my daughter broke the spell: “Do we have to keep reading this?”
O, the shame of it: a 10-year-old girl and a book critic who had had enough of “Harry Potter.” [ Harry Potter and the Death of Reading ]
Go back and read that last passage. This time, try to put that scene firmly in your mind. Imagine what it must be like to be that poor child, late at night, listening to her dad read a book that obviously bores him. When you’re 10 years old, I am sure there is plenty of tragedy in your life. But this has to rank close to the top.
Novels are novels, but once you start reading them they also become performance. Speaking as a long-time customer of Audible, a poor reader can destroy even the best of books. Given his own description having Ron Charles read a book to me sounds positively dreary. He could probably even make me hate Douglas Adams.
There is one other thing that’s worth pointing out. Not all of the Harry Potter novels are on the same reading level. While the first book might appeal to a 10-year-old in theme and story in scope, the later books might be too involved are complicated for the same child. So, Ron’s reading aside, Ron’s daughter might not have been ready to read the Goblet of Fire to begin with. Anyway, why is Ron reading to her? She’s 10. Isn’t she old enough to read on her own? Isn’t Ron concerned with the Death of Reading?
