evkl's commentary

Prisoner of Azkaban started the shift to a darker and edgier book, as well as introduced my favorite character, Sirius. Chamber of Secrets was trash.

I liked the fourth book. Worst goes to either the sixth or second for me.

Damn it, everyone stop agreeing.

I like the third book best although I've increasingly grown to think of the seventh book not really as like 1-6 but mainly as a work of moral philosophy that just sums up the previous 6. So it's kind of outside the series in my head. Book 7 is a series of parables, as it were. And I think the seventh book is a pretty interesting work when looked at from that perspective (Spoiler): You will experience loss, the road will be tough, you can pursue your own path but don't forget your friends, love is important, loyalty is important, etc. etc. (/spoiler.)

I really, really don't like Chamber of Secrets. I think it's just ill-conceived. The entire notion of the bad guy (Horcrux Voldemort) is totally meaningless and tangential until Half-Blood Prince. There's just no sense of threat. Sorcerer's Stone is an exploration of the wizarding world with a bit of Voldy thrown in, but CoS is like "hey let's make Voldemort evil but we really can't put him in someone's turban this time." So it's scattershot in that respect, and there's never a real sense of why Harry or the reader should be invested in the danger until Hermione is petrified.

But I also think it would be the book that would benefit most from a revisiting by Rowling, which I suspect will happen in a few years.

Favourite goes to third or seventh. The last time I read Chamber of Secrets I was like 8 so I didn't think about it much, but you got a point there.

I like the fourth best. It had great pacing and was exciting enough to keep me hooked for vast amounts of time. The next book failed in that regard, IMO. It dragged on far too much and spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about Harry's teenage angst and romantic trouble.

See, I loved the fifth book because I read it when I was at exactly that stage of life and can really connect to it. She wrote a 14/15-year-old boy extremely well. They're explosive, prone to bouts of anger, and deeply conflicted about so much in their life. I also thought the fifth book did a lot more with its size than the fourth; the fifth explored a delicious new character in Umbridge and contains two of my top 5 favorite scenes in the entire series (in the chapter "Career Advice," which shows you how good it is--I remember it without looking it up.)

For the curious, they're Umbridge being told off by Mcgonagall and the Weasley twins leaving Hogwarts.

Oh, I loved Umbridge. Brilliant character. I still felt the book was needlessly long, though. I enjoyed the sixth and seventh much more.

5th is my favourite because the character depth. And Umbridge. I also like CoS.

The first book. *shot*

But tbh, I did think it was less good than the other books in the series. Looking back, the whole introduction of the wizard concept and the final challenge for the book could've been a lot better.

I think 6th is my favorite. We not only get to explore into Voldemort's past but there also neat bits like that lucky potion thing.

It's been a long time since I read Harry Potter books, so I am not clear on which is my favourite. I seen the movies before reading the first two books, so I find the first two easier to read because of the movies. If it's my favourite, I think it has to be the sixth and seventh books, because the adventure pretty much expands from Hogwarts, something quite refreshing, I think.

That's it for now.

I liked the last book, though the ending seemed a bit hurried..
My least favourite was the 3rd part..i found it boring..

Don't kill me when I say this, but I loved the Seventh Book the best and I disliked the Fourth Book the most. Don't get me wrong, I love all of them. Although if I could skip one in a read-through of Harry Potter, it would be the Fourth. Maybe it's the Quidditch. I'm not a fan of Quidditch.

There's no Quidditch in the fourth book...

Quidditch World Cup. It just doesn't do it for me. Also, I wasn't too fond of all of the TriWizard Tournament, although the Last Event was enjoyable.

The Cup chapters offered only a few paragraphs about the actual match and spent more time talking about the events preceding and succeeding it.

The fourth book has grown on me--originally I hated it, because like the second book (and to a lesser extent the sixth) I felt it was lacking a point. Sure, Harry is in the Triwizard Tournament, but why should we care? The fourth book strikes me as the most overlong of the series, simply because I never could get invested in, say, the Mermen challenge. The Maze at the end is obviously important, but there was a lot I couldn't bring myself to care about.

I remember the 5th being very good, although I can't really pinpoint which book I like best. But from the 5th book the story really picks up and reaches a whole new level, mostly because they got darker and more serious.
I'd probably say that the first is my least favorite, for various reasons.

Also, I have to say that the ending of 7 IMO is very hurried and kinda sloppy.

(But the films are just so awful....)