I saw a comment over at Hogwarts Professor which reminded me of another article I had seen on the proclivities of people to compare the next big thing with Harry Potter. The quote at HogPro was in regard to the Percy Jackson series. The quote of which it reminded me was from a young girl’s letter to the New York Times thanking them for not comparing any of the children’s fantasies on their children’s book issue of November 8, 2009 to Harry Potter. I provide links to both quotes here for your perusal and thoughts. I personally think they make a lot of sense and a very nice corrective to a lot of the hype that gets thrown around in the publishing world.
The first one is from The Torch Online, quoting the girl’s letter to the Times. The original post may be found here.
The second is from the commenter over at HogPro named Lynn, specifically the third paragraph of her comment.
Enjoy!
Red Rocker on 
diva_alix on 
Arabella Figg on 
Joivre on 
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I like that Lynn qualifies comparison with immediate.
I am so guilty of immediate comparison. I have tried hard in the past to stop that – but you know what? It’s what comes naturally. It’s like scratching an itch. Or saying “Hey – what’s that elephant doing in the living room?”
What do we all do as children for our first lit crit work? Contrast and compare. It’s ingrained from childhood. It also helps us understand a work better – so I’m not so up-in-arms as the rest. But I can certainly see Lynne’s – and the youngster’s – point of view. Immediate comparison can be annoying and it clogs up the receptors to a given work.
It’s a hard habit to give up.
What drove me crazy (sort of) over the years were all those books advertised as “Harry Potter fans will love them”. The thing is that so far, I haven’t found that depth of character and story I found in Harry Potter in other fantasy books, so I never got it why they were compared to HP. I am aware of the fact that I might have two problems that others might not have: first, I came to fantasy rather late in life (in my early forties), I haven’t had much experience with the genre when I was a child and probably would most have appreciated reading it. Reading some of the stuff I might have loved as a girl for the first time now just makes me wonder what all the fuss is. The second problem is again “age”. After all the books I have read in my life I find it hard to find stories that engage me in the same way as some of the books I read during my childhood and youth. It is sad, I know, but there you are. Harry Potter was such an engaging book.
That quote from a thirteen year old girl is amazing. She is absolutely right that critics should not compare all fantasy books to Harry Potter just because it is fantasy. When you write reviews, this is a rather “cheap” thing to do in my opinion, some kind of a “last resort” to get people to read the book (if you liked it yourself).
When I was still writing reviews for my website myself, I tried to avoid it, but it is true that you see it rather often. Maybe it is true that it is ingrained from childhood, but I am still not very comfortable with it.
It’s just how the human mind works: when we see something new, we try to find something we already know to help classify it. You see a bird, you try to think of what bird you already know which looks like this one. You taste a new fruit, you think: hmm, does this taste more like kiwi or is it more like strawberry? Compare and contrast, as Joivre says, except it’s not just how we’re taught: it’s how our minds work.
Now given how many people’s knowledge of fantasy, high or otherwise, begins and ends with HP, it’s natural that all new fantasy works will be compared to HP, appropriately or not.
In a way, it’s a compliment: HP has become the new standard of comparison for fantasy.
But overall, it says more about the writer’s limited knowledge of fantasy than about true similarities to HP.
I agree that it is kind of a compliment to Rowling because she did something right, only it is not really helpful for me as a reader. I read reviews to find new books I might like (or be warned about stuff I might not like), so comparing everything to HP makes reading them useless. And I am not the kind of reader who is content to have “just more of the same”. I actually want new experiences, only as good as the last one, but still different. Maybe I am just weird.
We are different in that, Minerva, I try to recreate good experiences and have to be brought kicking and screaming to try new ones. My problem with the tendency to compare all new fantasy works to HP is that the comparison is usually (invariably?) wrong. If only.
The comparison being wrong is my problem, too, Red Rocker. Maybe I just didn’t find the right words to make my point clear. I also want to recreate good reading experiences, but I understand “more of the same” to be pale copies and that’s not what I want. I want fresh experiences, other books able to make me laugh and cry like the HP books did. But in order to do that, they will have to introduce me to something new, something I haven’t experienced before, or I would invariably say that HP did it better.
You know, sometimes I regret the time when even very old ideas were new and fresh to me.
Maybe it is true that it is ingrained from childhood, but I am still not very comfortable with it.
Minerva, that’s good you are not comfortable with it. It shows you think outside the box and are more apt to provide a more interesting and authentic review. I agree that it is an easy way to look at a book – too easy. And Red Rocker – you are right in that it shows a lack of knowledge of the subject – very 101 in my estimation.
I try to recreate good experiences and have to be brought kicking and screaming to try new ones.
You aren’t the only one Red, I think I embarrassingly proved that point going into my Sookie Stackhouse obsession.
I remember seeing an article a couple years ago (can’t find the link) complaining that every single review of new CCM albums, regardless of style, said they “sound reminiscent of Coldplay.” I’m don’t remember whether they decided that was because Coldplay was the only secular band the reviewers had ever heard of, or because all the new CCM albums really did sound a bit reminiscent of Coldplay.
However, I do think comparisons can valid as long as reviewers remember to ask the all-important question, “In what way”? Book A is “like Harry Potter” because it has schoolchildren learning to use magical abilities to fight an evil wizard; that’s fair. Book B is “like Harry Potter” because it has an imaginative world and mythical creatures; that’s flawed (because it’s also “like” every other fantasy book ever!).
Miss Landau is going to go places. Very good and successful places, I imagine.
don’t even get me started about CCM comparsions Eric – even pandora can’t do recommendations properly for the genre, because they assume that if you like Michael W. Smith that you automatically like the rest of the genre (and that you like all contemporary worship music – when the fact is the only albums of his I don’t like are his worship albums because he writes much better stuff himself than all the mediocre stuff he covers when he does worship music!)
I think the problem with comparisons on anything is that factor though. We don’t all like Harry Potter for specific things that might seem like proper comparisons to some other people people. To me, I might consider something as well written and interesting in fantasy to be rightfully compared to Harry Potter, where as something that just has to do with kids and a school and whatever (the similarities between HP and Percy Jackson) might not really seem “like Harry Potter” to me… So relying too heavily on comparisons – even if there are valid reasons to compare them – won’t work for most people, because I doubt the obvious plot points of any book are really what makes you enjoy it.
Its the same way I was very disappointed in the YA novel “Wings” – I had read a review that compared it favorably to Stephenie Meyer’s “The Host” – well there really was no reason to compare them – since the plots were nothing alike I figured they must have been of similar quality and with characters that would pull you in the same way as “the Host” but it was not that way at all – I still would love to know what in the world the author of that review found similar between the two books because they’re not anything alike (not even same genre given that Wings is fantasy and the Host would be more SciFi)
Let’s look on the bright side – at long last, we won’t see every single new fantasy described as “Tolkienesque”!
Hi all, I am following my comment over here. Let me qualify what I wrote just a little. For an individual to compare a work they are reading to the wealth of stories they have read and stored in their head, I agree is human nature. That doesn’t bother me so much as long as it doesn’t cloud or interfere with the story they are reading.
What bothers me is literary reviews that compare a story to whatever is popular in a way that doesn’t explain why or how. I think it is the height of laziness in a review. It makes me wonder if the person really read the story very deeply. I also think it is used too often as a tool to dismiss a work or pump up a work. A reviewer will write something like “oh, it was just like Twilight….Harry Potter….(fill in the blank here with any random popular series)”. What does that even really mean? That the reviewer thinks the original story was ripped off? That the reviewer thinks the story is as good/bad as the first one mentioned? That it is a clone? I think what is often the case for stories with similarities is that the inspiration for the stories was similar. It would be more beneficial for the reviewer to say perhaps that it reminded them of Harry Potter because of X, Y and Z.
I remember reading amazon reviews that complained that Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games was a “rip off” of Battle Royale, The Running Man, and several other works. If they had read what had inspired the author to write her story they would see exactly what led to her writing the book. It was not another story she had read. Perhaps some of these other stories had things that inspired them and they just happened to have some similarities in the final outcome. Or perhaps some of the things that inspired these authors were the same.
There are books that are direct take offs of books written, I won’t deny that. I just think it too often becomes a sort of cop out for people to describe a book series and becomes authorial laziness. Rather than describe details they will just say “oh it is just like Harry Potter” because it is a YA book with appeal to both adults and youth. How is that helpful or informative really? How is it even very relevant?
Consider the cynical view that reviewers wish to have their blurbs quoted, especially on the books, just as reviewers do with films. Thus comparisons to HP or Twilight will increase book sales. This serves both reviewer and publisher.
Bleargh. I’m with Eric and Ally on CCM comparisons. The only valid comparison I’ve ever heard anyone make is that Mac Powell’s voice sounds a lot like Travis Tritt’s.
I think Lynn is right on the problem with reviewers comparing a new work to HP and other bestsellers. It is hard, most of the time, to understand what that even means. Are there wizards, or is it just thought to be equally engaging? I’m not a professional reviewer, but while it probably does increase sales (very likely true, Arabella), it seems awfully sketchy to claim that a new book is as widely interesting as one that has already sold millions of copies.
As for similarities, I would never buy a book just because it had wizards in it. And while I love Twilight, I am SO tired of coming across other sexy vampire novels. Wal-Mart seriously has about four feet of shelf space, three shelves deep, devoted to such things (not including their Meyer display). The meme is getting old. Whatever happened to variety?
What bothers me is literary reviews that compare a story to whatever is popular in a way that doesn’t explain why or how. I think it is the height of laziness in a review.
Lynn, I cannot agree more. I wanted to say something similar but thought it might sound too harsh, but it is actually the truth. And it is always dangerous to compare a book to another if you aren’t really widely read in the genre so I tended to avoid this like the plague when I was writing book reviews myself. So it wasn’t always thinking “outside the box”, Joivre, more like fear of ridiculing myself.
As for the blurbs, do people really buy books based on them? I ask because we don’t have this kind of thing in Germany and I generally don’t read them.
Apparently, it’s not just book publishers who have figured out if they put out a blurb that reads, “The next Harry Potter,” they will automatically bring in Potter fans; I’ve just read on Yahoo! news that Warner Brothers, now that its Harry Potter franchise is winding down, and seeing the sucess of the Alice film that was just released, is planning a remake of The Wizard of Oz. Only this version will not be a musical and apparently will be a lot “darker”.
Not sure how much darker they could make the Wizard. I never liked it as a child – couldn’t believe the storyline – and found a lot of the characters fake, ugly and repulsive. Found the bad witch and the flying monkeys scary. Didn’t like the wizard. Didn’t much like the good witch either, to tell you the truth. Oz didn’t seem magical or delightful. I don’t watch it now, and I’ve never put it on for my nine year old to watch it.