Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.jpg

Hard cover - USA - 1st edition.

Author J.K. Rowling
Published 1997-06-26
Type Fiction
Genre Fantasy
Themes Adventure, Fantasy, Friendship
Age Group Childen

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, known in the UK as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is a young adult book written by J. K. Rowling, and published on 1997-06-26. It is the first book in the Harry Potter series. The content dealing with witchcraft and magic causes the book to frequently be challenged in public libraries. The book has been adapted into a film and into a video game five different times.

Personal

Own?Hardcover, USA, 1st edition.
Read?Hardcover, USA, 1st edition / Audiobook read by Stephen Fry.
Finished2001 / August 2016.

I read the book in 2001 after it was gifted to me by a friend who was really into the series. This got me into it, and I became a fan. I've since read all the books.

Reviews

Overall:

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— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

  • The book has wonderful characters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all lovable, Dumbledore, McGonagall, and the other professors are fun, Snape and the Dursleys are nicely wretched.
  • Hogwarts is exquisitely described. Everything seems fanciful and magical, sentient pictures, moving staircases, secret passageways, dangerous monsters, etc. It's all fresh here, unlike in the later books where it becomes more formulaic.
  • I like how Snape is believed to be very evil, but, through a certain lens, he's actually a hero. Of course, he's still a bully, but you can appreciate him.

Bad

  • Trolls are supposed to be deadly, but the three children bumble their way through its attack without so much as a scratch.
  • Quidditch could be a lot of fun, but it has several features that ruin it. Since the snitch is worth 150 points, catching it usually guarantees a victory for the team's catcher, making scoring with the quaffle pretty much pointless. It seems like a winning strategy would be to have all the players just help the seeker get the snitch and ignore the quaffle all together; even if the opposing team scored 14 times, they would still lose! Also, since the match ends the moment the snitch is caught, but not until, it seems like games will end very quickly (if there is a good seeker), or take forever (if both seekers are awful), and neither outcome would be enjoyable for the spectators. Also, while finding the snitch would be a difficult task in a game without spectators, when you have hundreds or thousands of people watching, any one of them could easily help the seekers by pointing them in the right direction. Finally, since brooms vary so much in quality, whichever team spends the most money has a major advantage over the other.
  • The reveal of the true villain is certainly a surprise, but I would have preferred a bit of hints leading up to it. It just happens without any evidence.
  • This is common to most childhood literature, so I don't fault Rowling, but it would be nice if authors stopped doing it: bad people tend to have ugly-sounding names. Crabbe, Goyle, Severus, etc., while good people tend to have common names, Harry, Ron, Molly, etc., a trend which continues through the series. It's a juvenile way of making evil characters seem evil and good characters seem good, but it also tends to influence children in real life so they assume that anyone who has an ugly sounding name, is an ugly person.
  • I don't like how so many people have alliterative names, I suppose it could just be a quirk of the wizarding world, but a fair amount of muggle-born children are also named in this manner.

Ugly

  • Harry's natural affinity of flying is unbelievable. Even if he weren't locked in a cupboard his whole life, and therefore had the physical aptitude of the average boy, it's like taking an 11-year-old who's never played basketball, and, on his first try, he's better than 18-year-olds who have been playing their whole lives. A much better (and realistic) way of writing this would be to require Harry to devote himself to practice in order to become good.

Media

Covers

Fan Art

Representation

Strong female character?Pass
Bechdel test?Unknown
Strong person of color character?Unknown
Queer character?Pass

Links

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