Adult readers who are dismissive about Harry Potter

[Caius Marcius]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "ladyramkin2000" 
<ladyramkin2000 at y...> wrote:
> Iggy, glad to hear you love The Phantom Tollbooth, a brilliant book 
> that should be required reading for people of any age from 9 to 90. 
> But you don't enjoy Dickens!!! Oh you poor man, what you are 
missing!
> No one writes like our Charlie, not even JKR.
> Do give him another go.

Citing Dickens in connection with Rowling reminds us of another proof 
that great literature and popular literature are overlapping rather 
than discrete domains. During Dickens' lifetime, far from being 
a "Standard Classic", he was as wildly and widely popular as JKR is 
now. In the 19th Century, it was a common practice for new novels to 
appear in serial form (i.e., several chapters a month).  The Pickwick 
Papers, his first novel appeared in 1836, and soon made its 23-year-
old author a household name. GK Chesterton later wrote that, "In the 
days when Dickens' work was coming out in serial, people talked as if 
real life were itself the inerlude between one issue of Pickwick and 
another" 

I think any HP fan who had to wait three years for OOP can relate to 
that!

  - CMC