[gmw]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Why do you think that's so? (I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily. I'd just like to hear your reasoning.)

A personal/opinionated answer:

I believe the Harry Potter books are well written, that they contain all the essentials of what I consider to be good writing; they are "a good experience" if you will forgive such an expression. They are not perfect, but then none of the classics held to such high acclaim here are perfect either. The important factor is whether those imperfections matter when you are reading; with Harry Potter the imperfections, to me, only exist when others point them out, they never got in the way of my enjoyment while reading. Harry Potter worked for me on many different levels, despite being well outside the target audience, so that I find it difficult to believe it will ever fade into any sort of obscurity.

I also enjoyed the Twilight books very much, but while I would not resort to calling them badly written (I think they worked too well to fit such criticism), nor could I honestly call them good writing; I would describe them as adequately written, the writing achieved its purpose. But I do have difficulty explaining why I liked these books. I don't read much in the way of romance (some Jane Austen), and will readily accept that not a lot actually happened in the stories ... but, whatever the reason, enjoy them I did - very much. The faults I can readily recognise in the books after reading them did not matter while I was reading, but the faults are such that I can see these fading from popularity over time.

An attempt at a more objective answer:

Like them or not, no one can deny just how popular Harry Potter has become (whether you attribute much of that to the movies is up to you). I also believe that the popularity is very widespread. Parents may have purchased just for their kids, but a great many enjoy the books just as much themselves. Young or old, male or female, fantasy or other, the people that have enjoyed this book seem to come from everywhere. The popularity of some of the author's mentioned by Harmon, even Edgar Rice Burroughs, I don't believe ever reached such a wide cross-section of the community (but I don't have factual data to support such a claim).

LotR: Lord of the Rings. It is now more than 50 years since publication. By no means do I want to denigrate the huge background that Tolkien developed behind that story, but I do want to use it here as a reference point. Harry Potter, is very different to LotR and HP is aimed at a much younger audience (at least to start with), but I do find elements in common. The scope and scale of both stories is larger than that of more "common" works. The journey of the main character is long and difficult and the central drive behind the story, but many other characters become important to the reader so that their progress is almost as important to you. The world created by Rowling does not have the sheer scale of Middle Earth but it does become quite large and complex, with sufficient detail to make you believe it exists while you are reading. So despite there immense differences I see the two having a similar long term effect on literature, I can see Harry Potter being a standard by which much fiction is judged in the future.

With regard to Twilight. The popularity it gained has gone beyond its target audience but I get the impression (hardly objective, but what the hell), that the audience is not as diverse. I would also say that Twilight is missing the scale, scope and complexity that mark works likely to last longer. If Twilight becomes any sort of standard it will only be for the limited genre over which it has sparked such a flurry of writing.