On JKR's favorite HP books (was Re: CoS Is The Least Favorite)

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 27412

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Penny & Bryce <pennylin at s...> wrote:
> Funny thing -- I think I recall that JKR said CoS was *her* favorite 
> of them all (I'd have thought PoA because of Lupin).  Can you 
> imagine how hard it must be for *her* to rank the books or at least 
> name one of them as her favorite?  That comment might be pre-GoF 
> though -- I can't remember exactly.

Yeah, JKR has commented more than once how COS and GOF are her 
favorites (though she doesn't seem to have decided on one more than 
the other in these interviews, so it must be hard to pick) and said 
(not at all verbatim, but close) that "it's a funny thing, because the 
two that were hardest for [her] to write are the two [she] likes 
best".

Although she says this is a funny thing, it's actually quite common 
with artists.  It is difficult to be objective and the things that 
required the most effort are often what the artist likes best, 
regardless of their actual "merit", per se.

***

Veering a tiny bit OT, but still relevant to the discussion:

There's a story I was told about a young photographer who was working 
as an apprentice to this master photographer, and he would always 
bring in piles of photographs to submit for analysis.  The master 
would sort them into two piles, the ones which he deemed good and the 
ones which were not worth keeping.  There was this one photograph that 
was looking down into a valley, but there was nothing particularly 
eye-catching about it, so the master added it to the bad pile.  The 
next time they did this, all the photographs were new as usual--except 
the shot looking down into the valley was there again.  So the master 
again sorted it into the bad pile.  And again, the next time the young 
photographer submitted his latest pile for sorting, that same shot was 
included again.

The master said, "Twice you have brought this photo to me, and twice I 
have rejected it.  What is it about it that you like so much?"

The young photographer replied, "I had to climb a mountain to get it."

***

JKR also said POA was the most *fun* for her to write, and she just 
couldn't wait to write it when she was writing PS/SS and COS, largely 
because it was the first book with Lupin.  It is generally considered 
on this list to be the best of the novels.

So maybe we should hope that she's having fun writing OotP since she 
then seems to produce some of her best work.

-Luke