Okay, this is my book blog. What’s the point of this blog?

Well, let’s see.

What would you say if you had a friend that ate at some nasty place, some sticky-elbow fast food joint. Every day, same burger, fries, and a coke.

Conversely, perhaps you have been to France and walked the boulevards and enjoyed intimate dining in a street-side cafe. Or you’ve sat on a pier-top restaurant off the California coast, enjoying a local wine with your pasta as the sun slides into the golden ocean. Or perhaps you’ve been to cooking school and learned every detail of food preparation, meal balancing, taste complementing and so on.

And now your friend is telling you just how tasty his lifetime of burgers are. How nothing is better than a good burger with cold cheese, limp fries, and a carbonated drink in a wax-paper cup.

You’d cough and search for something… generous… to say as you slowly pushed off.

Welcome to the writer’s view of Harry Potter.

I’ve read a great deal across my life. I’ve read Gilgamesh. I’ve read the Iliad. I’ve savored Anna Karenina. I’ve thrilled to Well’s utopias, laughed at Pratchett’s diskworld, and sailed both Twain’s Mississippi and Farmer’s Riverworld. My house is stacked full of books. And so what can I say when someone comes at me with a children’s book (with a plot done over and over before (hello, “Once and Future King”, anyone?)) and blabbers at how imaginative and magnificent this story is, “unlike anything ever done”!

Please.

I’ve seen the world destroyed a dozen times. I’ve “died” inside a character. I’ve lost and won a thousand women. I’ve charged with the light brigade, stood with locked hoplons with the 300, and smelled spent powder at Greasy Grass. I’ve felt the wind at 10,000 feet over shell-torn Verdun. I’ve stood in the shadow of Holmes, Chan and Poirot, baffled as they pieced a mystery together.

And you want to weigh all that against a runt on a broom with a wand?

So, the point of this blog. I’m not going to review books for their plot devices and pacing. No, I’m just going to tell you which books I really, really liked, and which ones fell flat for me. This will be my own personal view, not impartial, nay – imperial, perhaps.

Cover to cover, I’ll give you the straight poop.