1 Followers
2 Following
georgenaylor

georgenaylor

Currently reading

Herodotus: The Father of History (The Great Courses)
Progress: 8 %
The Western Literary Canon in Context (The Great Courses): Audio CD set
John M. Bowers
Progress: 8 %
A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex
Chris Jericho
The Great Courses, The Skeptic's Guide to American History
Mark A. Stoler
Progress: 4 %
The Vampire Megapack: 27 Modern and Classic Vampire Stories
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Nina Kiriki Hoffman
The Werewolf Megapack: 22 Classic and Modern Tales of Shape-Shifters!
Jay Lake, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Gregory Betancourt
Dracula's Guest and Other Victorian Vampire Stories
Michael Sims
Progress: 4 %
The Captain of the Polestar, and Other Tales
Arthur Conan Doyle
Tales from the Perilous Realm
J.R.R. Tolkien
Progress: 21 %
The Iliad of Homer
Richard Martin, Richmond Lattimore, Homer
Progress: 20 %
On the Trail of Harry Potter - Vera G. Lee Lee writes a good book, very readable & informative. For the most part. There are two places where this book doesn't quite come up to snuff. First, it bills itself as the first literary analysis of the Harry Potter series. I suppose it is if you ignore everything John Granger & Travis Prinzi have written about Harry Potter. Those two authors have already covered to a great extent everything Lee covers in her book. However, they don't even get a reference in the bibliography. That shows sloppy research on the part of Lee, in my opinion. I wouldn't make such a big deal of this except for the claim of Lee's book being the first literary analysis of Potter. It's not, even though it is still a good analysis.

Second, Lee makes some obvious errors in fact throughout the book, primarily in references to events in the Potter books. For instance, in one place she describes the effect of some event on Harry in the 5th book. But the event she uses didn't actually happen until the 6th book. There are at 4 noticeable errors of this nature I saw while reading the book. Again, this smacks of a little sloppy research.

Despite these two complaints, Lee does shine in some areas. Her discussion of the main characters is good. She has an excellent section on the humor of the Potter books. And much to my delight she does an excellent analysis of why Michael Gambon just doesn't work as Dumbledore in the films & also why the romance between Harry & Ginny in the 6th movie fell flat.

In conclusion, even though I have a few complaints about the book, I would recommend it for Potter fans to read.