O’Brian wrote novels and stories and translated a number of books from French into English, but his great career began in 1970, when Master and Commander was published and introduced Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin to the world. I remember very well when I read that book. I was mesmerized and told my son about it; he was mesmerized, too. From that time on we awaited the publication of each volume in the series and shared the pleasure of reading copies a thousand miles apart and calling one another every day or so to delectate particular events and scenes.
Jack and Stephen were—still are, of course—a wonderful pair. But so are many of the other persons in this great series of books. For John and me, and for many thousands of others, they were beloved friends and companions for twenty years. Our only cavil, and it isn’t a minor one, was that O’Brian killed off his faithful bo’sun and also Stephen’s wife, the spirited Diana, in the next to last volume. Of course this was the year in which his Mary, “the beautiful and spirited English wife” of Count Tolstoy, was either dead or dying. It was as if he couldn’t stand to let Stephen’s Diana live when his own Mary was gone.
J.K. ROWLING
1965–
The Harry Potter Series
Joanne “Joe” Rowling was born near Bristol, England, in 1965. She attended local schools and “Hermione is loosely based on me—at age 11,” she has said. She earned a B.A. in English and Classics at the University of Exeter and in 1990, while on a delayed train trip, jotted down notes about a young boy attending a school of wizardry. In 1994 she moved to Edinborough, Scotland, to be near her sister. Divorced, unemployed, and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel, writing in local cafés because she would take her daughter Jessica out for walks and, when she fell asleep, would duck into the nearest café and continue the story.
She completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1995 and found an agent who submitted the manuscript to twelve publishers, all of whom rejected it. The thirteenth, a small publisher in Bloomsbury, accepted it because the eight-year-old daughter of the chairman read the first chapter and “demanded the next.” Rowling received an advance of 1,500 pounds, about the same number of dollars at that time.
The book was published in 1997 with a first printing of one thousand copies, five hundred of which were distributed free to libraries. Such copies now sell for between $25,000 and $35,000. Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council of 8,000 pounds to allow her to go on writing, and in fact that first book was named British Children’s Book of the Year. It was published in the United States in 1998 by Scholastic after they had won an auction. Over the author’s protests, Scholastic changed the name of the book to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
The seventh and last of the Harry Potter series was published on July 21, 2007, and sold more than 250,000 copies in the first 24 hours. More than eight million copies have been sold all told, and J.K. Rowling is now the wealthiest woman writer in history, with a net worth for the books alone estimated at more than eight billion dollars. Well, in my humble opinion “Joe” Rowling deserves every penny of it. The books have gotten better and better as time has gone on, and the last—I truly hope it is the last—is the best of all. I read it through in the first four days and then joined John and Sally and our two grandchildren, Sam and Charlie, while they read the last hundred pages out loud to one another. We were aware that many thousands of people were doing the same thing at the same time. Maybe half of them were youngsters, but the other half were grownups, even oldsters like me. It has turned out to be hard for some grownups to admit this, but all I can say is I’m sorry for them.
Why has this extraordinary success come to Rowling? Does she have a secret? If so, what is it?
I don’t think there is a secret. In a way, she does what all authors of novels, and especially series of novels, do: She imagines a situation and invents characters and events. She creates a world, peoples it, describes it, makes us care about it. She tells good stories, being sure to build suspense. She leaves us hungry for more, which is what the best series do.
Rowling’s tale opens in a special school where students are taught about magic—what it is and how to do it. It isn’t easy to get to this school, because you have to know a secret place where you can board a special train. When you arrive at the school you find that it too is special, secret. Not just anyone can go there. That’s exciting. It’s a good start.
The characters are also interesting, but not unique. There is a girl and two boys; they start as children and grow up as seven years pass. There are families and one of the boys finally falls in love with the sister of the other boy. That is good but not unique, either.
There is something very special about the first boy, though. He has a tragic past; his parents were killed when he was a child, his mother, when she was trying to protect him: giving up her life to save him. This is fine; it adds a tragic note even if the characters are just children and then teenagers.
The circumstances surrounding the death of the boy’s parents are mysterious, which is good. Some kind of evil was involved; only very slowly do we begin to understand that the evil is represented by a single individual who grows more powerful as the series proceeds. In the last book he has become all-powerful, and there is no hope left for the world.
Or so it seems, even to Harry, the boy-hero. But his courage, which has always been remarkable, permits him to face the prospect of certain death if he does not yield to the evil lord. Even so, he does not yield. His courage, in the last analysis, is greater than that of his foe.
It is Harry’s beautiful courage, I think, that makes this series unique. We accept it, we believe in it. We are frightened for him at the end of the series; we can’t see any way out. But Harry Potter can.
Ten-Year Reading Plan
The following reading plan is more than merely suggestive, although it is not carved in stone, either. It emphasizes classical works over recent ones, mainly because the former are less likely to be familiar, but many recent books are also on this list. There could be other books on it, replacing the ones I have chosen. But stick to my list for a while, at least, and see it if works for you.
For each year I have recommended that you read ten books, but sometimes I have felt that really long works should count for more than one. This means that the number of different titles is less than one hundred. The books can be read in any order desired, although for each year they are listed in chronological order, so that might be the best way to read them. For each year, the recommended books are both instructive and entertaining, according to my lights. Some years may be harder than others, but nobody is watching you. Read as much as you can and don’t spoil your pleasure by struggling to “keep up.” There is plenty of time, even if you have to spend twenty years reading these hundred books, instead of ten.