@Dark that is odd I do recall other British terms that were not changed. One being  knickerbocker glory and I remember thinking what the heck is that? I later learned it was an ice cream sundae but was very confused at the time. I also remember Professor McGonagall telling Harry to "Have a biskit Potter." Untill I was told it was a cookie I thought it was odd that they would be eating biskets in a office. @Merin
  I agree also a Jim Dale fan and the 7th book was not as good as it should have been. Also good points about the enchantments. My favorite book is the Prisoner of Azkaban.

@Merin, the biscuit one I can't explain, (I know biscuits means something else in the states, though whenever I hear "biscuits and gravy" my stomach does a flip flop), however nickerbocker glory is something specific and so probably doesn't have an American equivalent to translate into (it's not your average icecream sunday).

Imagine a tall icecream glass filled with layers of different icecreams, jelly, often fruite and chocolate bits, however layered so you eat your way through specific bits. Usually very highly decorated, fancy looking and expensive, hence why Dudly would want onne, and a big one at that .

I think that Dudley wanting thirty+ birthday presents every year is a bit much.

@JEfb, Oh, when I said "jelly" I mean the gelatine dessert stuff, I think it's called jello in the states.I didn't mean jam, ie, preserved fruite that you put on bread. Sorry, forgot about that difference in language, and yes, icecream with jam would taste pretty fowl I think, but then again I don't like jam at all.

I'm not exactly sure what "whitetrash" means, that's a very american phrase. The Durslies are an example of very middle class right wing conservative yuppies and altogether vvile, but that's pretty much a distinction quite apart from skin colour .

I do think Rowling was going a bit roald dahl esque in the first book, hence the ridiculous idea of Dudly not being able to add two to 37 and demanding he has more birthday presents than the preceeding year etc, though one thing I will note is that dudly did get 16 computer games. that isn't unreasonable in the early 90's when there was a lot out for the Snes or MEga drive, though each game would've cost about 40 quid so it's a hell of an amount of money (my brother and I were lucky to get one or two per christmas or birthday, ), and of course Dudly didn't get his playstation until 1994, ---- apparently Uncle Vernan bought him back an exclusive one from japan which is how he got one before they were on european release, which makes the thought of him throwing it through the greenhouse roof even more dreadful .

I personally have a per say right wing conservative outlook type outlook in this country, but to me, being a yeppy on either side is not good. The problem of the Durslies is that they spoiled Dudly. I don't really care how much money you have because spoiling your children to that point could easily mean that they will not be able to go out and support themselves do to the possibility that they are so used to having everything handed to them. Here in the US, the left leaning parts of our government seems to be best described as going with their fillings per say. While they bring some good points from time to time, it could be said that they would forget about how much it would cost to do whatever it is. Of course the right seems to forget that from time to time too, but I know I would personally like to see competing to get what is needed for reasonable prices. Speaking of this, I am so thankful that Fudge got kicked out of office by the sixth book. Grant it, I didn’t get enough of a reading on him to say what his leanings were, but I could relate to him being bought seeing that it seems like it doesn’t matter what your leanings here were here, someone was always getting paid to vote an exact way and it is usually someone that didn’t want a rule change. An example of something like this is Draco’s father giving Fudge a bunch of gold. Remember in the fifth book, right after Harry’s trial? I also like the fact that J. K. Rowling really didn’t go too far deep into the politic side of things. That would had messed up the books for me somehow. After all, we didn’t have to worry about who was trying to get an edge on who when harry is out fighting or getting killed, except that harry didn’t die. We already got enough of who can you trust thing already. The seventh book, as far as I can tell, was giving us more of a taste of the war. It did that ok. On the other hand, the deathly hollows seemed to come out of nowhere. Yes, it did explain somethings, but still.  The ending fight disappointed me. I thought that it was going to come to be bigger than it was. You know, spells bouncing off the walls and the like.

I have to say that Jell-o in ice cream also sounds pretty disgusting, only slightly less so than jelly. Yuck!

Count me in as another person who absolutely despises the ending of the seventh book. While I can kind of see the point about Harry not being able to win, I think it would have actually been ok if he had died. Killing off your main protagonist is usually frowned upon, but honestly, I would have accepted it in this particular instance.

When harry went into the forest, I had pretty much given him up for dead. I was mentally preparing myself for it the entire time he was walking with his parents and so on. The grief-stricken citizens of the wizarding world, already battered and broken by the losing battle that was raging around them, honestly couldn't have had their morale shot to hell any further.

For harry to triumph, not only over his near-death experience, but then pretty much not have to do anything at all to kill Voldemort, was just too much of a stark contrast to the horrors of the previous battle. It basically left me feeling as though Lupin, Tonks, Fred, and so many others died in vain. Speaking of which, that was one brutal fight, and I cried several times while reading it for the first time.

But that's not even what I hate with a burning passion. No, I abhor the stupid epilogue.

The fact that it was all happily ever after is just a complete load of bullshit. There is, of course, the nauseatingly trite bit where Harry names his kids after those who influenced him. it was too much of a cliche. I might have simply rolled my eyes at that and moved on, except for one thing...

Harry and Ginny, the series's most odd couple, being as carefree as they appeared in that final scene really, REALLY bothers me. Let's face it: the kind of carnage that Harry directly caused would leave profound psychological scars on anyone, yet we see absolutely no evidence of this. I don't even think that wizarding psychology/counseling was a thing, and, even if it was, I would be willing to bet that such things were generally frowned upon. I say this because the views that much of the wizarding world held were rather antiquated, and in many old-fashioned societies, counseling, to say nothing of mental illness, was generally looked at with disdain.

So, let's recap. harry goes from sitting in Dumbledore's office, feeling the entire weight of the world on his shoulders and reflecting on all the mistakes that got him from being that scared little boy on Platform 9 and Three Quarters, to Voldemort's defeat. Then, we go to this sappy, saccharine ending that's designed to please those fans who were only in it for the love story anyway! That makes absolutely no sense, and it pisses me off every time I think about it. It's jarring, and it's just plain stupid.

So, now that I've ranted about that, let me say that I get great pleasure out of reading fanfics where Harry and Ginny's marriage is on the rocks.

Finally, since everyone else has stated their favorite books, mine was definitely the Goblet of Fire. I felt that it was long without dragging, the way the Order of the Phoenix did at times (although I did really like that book on later rereads), while showcasing a bit of the darkness that was in store. It had just enough teen angst without going into overdrive, again like Order of the Phoenix, while also maintaining the last bit of charm that the earlier books had.

I think that's probably enough from me for now, but those are just some of the things that came to mind as I read this topic.

Hi. Also I am a big fan of Harry Potter series and I would like to share with you how I reed them a few years ago. When I was 12, one of my classmates received from her parents the audiobooks. In the free time after lessons she told me about the books and I find them  so interesting. In a friday when she came to school I received a big big surprise from her: two DVDEs with the four  volumes. On that times, I did not had a computer so I listened them on my parents DVD player. This happenned 10 years ago. How nice it was. I remember that I reed the first volume in a whole night and in the next morning I had to go waiting my grandmother on the railroad station.

@turtlepower I agree on psychological scars and that popular series can have grim endings. While I thought the second and thid books went a bit off the rails, Hungar games did both rather well.
On the other hand I will say harry's none death was something I saw when he got shot. The idea that Voldemort would attempt to kill harry and kil the peace of his soul inside harry is actually one my brother and I had predicted ever since hearing "neither can live while the other survives" prophecy. To me it was almost fitting that voldemort ended on an anticlimax where he scuppered himself, because in the end voldemort wasn't the great and terrible immortal he thought he was, look at the way he got pissed when Dumbledoor constantly referd to him as "tom"
It's rather the way that in steven King's dark tower the crimson king turns out to be a bumhug, ie, something far less terrible than his own misteaque predicted.

As to the happy families ending, in fairness I think part of that comes from rowling herself. She began the books while devorced, alone and looking after a one year old child. She ended with a husband and three children. In one interview she said her idea of happiness was! the happy family, and we see this in Harry potter, taking the abusedd child with no parents, giving him a surrigate family in the wieslies and a home in Hogwarts, not to mention various parental figures (hagrid, Sirius Black, and Ron and Hermione), and he ends with a family of his own.
It's where rowling was.

Originally i did feel it was a bit too saccharine and over emphasized, however to be honest I'll say my perspective on that idea has changed somewhat, having had direct personal experience of the power of love and what can indeed be overcome with the right person, and my own miracle romance.

the one thing that did! annoy me in Harry Potter was that Harry ended up with jinny, the girl who had an eleven year old crush on him and basically just seemed a flawless friend with little to nothing by way of problems who just admired harry, indeed she was kind of a mix between Ron, fred and george and Hermione and a little too perfect for my liking, not the least being harry's best mate's sister.

I myself am still convinced Harry should've endedup with Luna lovegood, a fellow misfit with a remarkable emotional intelligence and a calm way of dealing with everything. Indeed if I had a crush on any of the girls in the potter books it's Luna, precisely because! she's somewhat flawed and illfitting just like Harry, not a completely perfect ideal witch next door like Jinny.

I have a couple things. First, Grindelwald was mentioned in the first book on the Dumbledore chocolate frog card. Granted, you don't hear much about it after that, but it is there. Second, I have to agree, the epilogue was really anticlimactic. I would have been happy if it ended before that. Finally, there's a book by John Granger, The Deathly Hallows Lectures: The Hogwarts Professor Explains the Final Harry Potter Adventure, which really sheds a light on not only the last book, but the series as a whole.

So, what are everyone's thoughts on the newly-released Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?

I confess I really don't like reading seriously propper literature with a synth voice, so I'll probably wait until  there is some form of audio version of cursed child, which I suspect won't be too long.
With respect to big finish and doctor who cannon, actually one of the things I really like is that they manage to stay within the confines of what's known from the tv series extremely well much of the time, indeed they do a far better job of this than STeven Moffat.

I think it's the fact they have an over all producer and framework to work from, so there are things they just can't! do, indeed on the occasions they've gone a little too overblown, they tend to get a serious telling off from the fans, though like any long running series they have their less good moments.

My only main issue with Big finish is sometimes they do extremely stupid things to preserve continuity,  since there are only so many occasions that the "And it's all a dream!" or the "Oh and we go back in time and reverse it so it never happened!" plot can actually work satisfactorally, and usually bf's better stuff is when they just focus on doing something new that is their own that doesn't step on the toes of the existing stuff too much, either trying to outdo it and be the worst! thing! ever! or trying to have an entire adventure happen during the time the doctor goes and puts on his coat .

Either way, I don't say there aren't any good fanfics or original novels based on long running series, I just tend to find that the awful to awesome ratio is weighted a bit far in one direction, so I tend to find my time better spent with original works.