Youtuber Kurtis Conner does a Deep Dive into Potterheads

[theemii]

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Youtuber Kurtis Conner takes a deep dive into the world of Harry Potter fans, also known as "Potterheads".

timestamps:
00:00 intro
4:00 J.K. Rowling
7:27 Level 1. Casual Potterheads: Watches the movies once a year. Knows their Hogwarts house and their Patronus. Possible read the book once.
10:08 Level 2. Genuine Potterheads: Watches the

Comments

[ahkna]

Even at Level 1 I'm still begging them to read more. Hell, even read more middle grade and young adult fiction because Harry Potter is so middling.

Take it away, Ursula K Le Guin!
"I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited."

[beuk]

Seriously, I read such good middle grade and YA fantasy growing up that JKR barely rates a mention. Lloyd Alexander, Joan Aiken, Diana Wynne Jones, then Garth Nix and Phillip Pullman and of course Ursula K Le Guin.

[awkward_as_heck]

Same. By the time I got around to HP it seemed basic in comparison. But I guess the accessibility is the appeal.

[kjesta]

Bless Ursula, she's spot-on. I think many of us outside the UK don't know that stuff like having school houses isn't an invention by JKR, so it seemed v novel and imaginative to us maybe? Idk.

Either way, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy is actual good YA lit, I read it at 14 (one of my first English language books) and have reread it every few years and it's incredible how well it holds up, and even gets better as I've grown up and understand stuff like class criticism, anti-imperialism and jabs at the british museum for being colonialist thieves.

[ahkna]

The Bartimaeus trilogy is absolutely fab, I agree, I really liked it!

[sandstorm]

Nathaniel is really one of my favorite protagonists in fiction. I wish he had written more side books like Ring of Samarkand.

[kjesta]

ugh i love him. i mean, i want to rip his head off 70% of the time, but that's what makes him so brilliant and tragic. ngl i read all of lockwood but never rly got warm with the series, the main girl seemed too much "not like other girls" (i feel like kitty did it better) and lockwood was like taking all the silly, tragic hero affectations of nathaniel, but taken completely seriously rather than made fun of, like the floppy hair and swooshy coat and stuff.

stroud has actually recently hinted that there might be more bartimaeus in the future! sounded quite vague yet, but promising.