As always the books are better than the films so you ought enjoy them I think
The Prime Minister (definitely Tony Blair) is in it for about 5 pages so imagine any recent male PM you like, but Major was way before the book and any timeline was even written
The writing's pretty good, particuarly the dialogue and the magical names and places and spell-associated objects, but it's the characterisation that made me want to scream as it tends to be heaven or hell - luckily in the films the casting was absolutely spot on in most cases, so that carried it pretty well if you were reading the books after the films (which I was up until The Prisoner of Askaban). If it's book first then seeing the film will help a lot with reading the later characters, but overall because its focussing on Harry most of the time it's rather like Frodo in LotR and after about Bk 3 you want to shake him and scream
FFS lighten up a bit you self-obsessed anal little nerd! :twisted: Ditto Ron - Hermione kind of improves 'cos you want to scream that at her within about a chapter of her being introduced, but she mellows and is quite likeable in a Rincewind sort of way after a while - for being the voice of reason mostly
What I dislike about JKR is that she's definitely standing on the shoulders of giants and there's very little in the fantasy line that's new - she's great at giving things a new spin on in terms of updating and making things a little 'edgier' - the later books are definitely darker and not really for little kids as a rule I'd say. Hogwarts is terrific fun but after a while I got the distinct feeling I was reading about a magical Mallory Towers or St. Clares (Enid Blyton boarding school books to the young and/or uninitiated
). They're definitely fun to read and not too bad on the re-reading front (I've still got to get the last 2 books though and I'm not into that except for Terry for some reason these days) but to some extent she's over-rated I think because the books lack depth and were definitely written for children and kind of growing up with them in some respects. In that she does deserve the success she's had in making a whole generation want to read fiction, let alone fantasy. But she's no Terry at the end of the day, really because she's got far too much appeal and popularity so the books are essentially too 'easy' for people who want to be swept up by more than the admittedly amusing smoke and mirrors.
