Chris Barker

Harry Potter is not and never has been for adults. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I read the first three books in about 1999 when I was eleven. They were fine- superior to most books aimed at children at the time. If you wanted to graduate from Goosebumps and Dick King-Smith, they were a decent next step.

The fourth book came the next year. It was big and thick, and one of the characters died! Not one of the important ones, but still. Very grown-up, if you’re twelve.

There were bigger gaps between the rest of the novels. The next wasn’t released until I was fifteen. It was a bit of a snooze, and it was difficult to maintain my enthusiasm for Potter because I was starting to try ‘proper’ literature by authors like Thomas Hardy and George Orwell, and punky writers like Irvine Welsh.

The last book came out during a break from my first year of university. My parents reminded me to order it- I would have forgotten otherwise. By that point, Harry Potter was an afterthought for myself and my friends; something we would at most get nostalgic about reading when we were young.

I remember a lot about the first time I read important books as a child. Staying up after midnight at my uncle’s house, enthralled by Gandalf’s stories of the One Ring and Gollum. The uncanny terror of Ged’s shadow coming to life and sprouting claws in A Wizard of Earthsea. Reading a tea-stained volume of Hitchhiker’s Guide at our old house, giggling as I discovered surreal humor.

My favorite Harry Potter memory is taking turns to read chapters with my brother and my best friend when we were ten or twelve because my best friend was good at doing funny voices for the characters. It’s the only strong memory I have, and it has nothing to do with the books.

I read the last book in the series in about a day. It felt like an anti-climax: I skimmed some critical reviews on my new smartphone, to see if anyone else felt the same way. Most agreed it was fine, but not great. Honestly, that was always my experience of Harry Potter.

After I put down the book, I didn’t think about Potter for 6-7 years. At that point, I began to realize that some of my colleagues were reading the books. Not for nostalgia: they were actively re-reading and enjoying them in their mid-to-late twenties.

It was bewildering because Harry Potter was basic even for a twelve-year-old. My only real explanation for why they became such a media juggernaut is that everyone has, at some point, read them. Like my memories of reading and enjoying them with my friends, their value is in connecting us with other people, not the quality of the story.

Even if JKR wasn’t who she turned out to be, adults can and should move on to something better than Harry Potter. It was never very good.