At the risk of taking a pithy dismissal a little seriously:

Different categories of books offer wildly different experiences, and the marginal utility of great literature goes down the more literature you read. By reading the best books in different genres you get a far more richer and rewarding experience than by reading only great classical literature (or only the best biographies, or only the best scientific literature).

hpmor is at a local optimum, or at least close to it. It is clever, contains tons of in-jokes and obscure references to geek culture and the book successfully subverts many tropes. So if you liked reading sci-fi or fantasy as a kid or if you like geek culture you probably will like hpmor as well. Try the first chapter or so and see for yourself.

>It is clever, in-jokes and obscure references to geek culture and the book successfully subverts many tropes

Thanks, that's enough to tell me that I wouldn't enjoy it.

I think you are probably not open minded enough to enjoy it anyway, so in your case I'd recommend to skip it and sticking to something with more complicated words and more obfuscated and mysterious messages that allows you to sustain your airs of high culture and intelligence.

It's inventive and clever, extremely well-written, and the combination of a hyper-rational character in a fantasy world setting is unique. Don't let 'but is it literature?' questions deprive you of an enjoyable reading experience.

That said, you probably will get more out of it if you've already read J.K. Rowling's novels, and if you worry about whether something's 'actual literature' or not, I'm guessing you haven't.

I agree with you in all possible ways.

Counting that your average lifespan will be around 85 years, and you've been reading real literature since you were 14, that gives you 71 years of good reading. That is, if you are lucky enough to preserve your eyesight.

On average, let's say you read about 12 books per year, which gives you the sad total amount of 852 books you'll be able to read in your whole life. In my case, I've still got enough time for 684 more books. Think about this when you go into a library. A whole life worth of books fits into a couple of bookshelves...

There are more authors worth reading than books I'll ever be able to read before I die. So, nope. IMO you should NOT choose to read this over actual literature.

This is "actual literature". I say this as someone who greatly enjoys world classics as well as modern writers, everything from Gogol, Tolstoi, Kafka, Dickens, Dumas, and so on...

The only point of reading JK Rowling, imho, is to make HPMOR more fun.

Someone so concerned to optimize their reading experience really ought to be reading more than 12 books a year.

According to Goodreads, I've read 438 books so far (it's probably way above that, since it doesn't have that many Spanish language books...), and I'm only 32. So, whomever is reading 12 books a year is being lazy :)

However, most are the literary value equivalent to your average sitcom :)

I think I read that many books in high school. b^)

My rate has really plummeted recently, but it's not as though St. Peter is going to decide my case based on whether I read the seven volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French. When you read for enjoyment, no one is grading you. The "real literature" thing is odd.

If I was reading more than 12 books a year, I wouldn't be so concerned to optimize my reading experience ;)

Anyway, that was just an average, and I was just talking about literature, I wasn't including essays or technical books.

So you're happy to read things other than "literature". (Quite right!)

Which makes it a bit strange to say "don't read this, because it isn't literature". (Not your actual words, but I don't believe I'm misrepresenting your meaning.)

As you clearly appreciate, there are many reasons for reading things. Some of those reasons are best served by reading highbrow literature, some by reading technical books. Is there some general principle that makes it obvious to you that there is no good reason that would be well served by reading HPMoR?

Perhaps you have read enough of it to know you don't like it. Perhaps you've found "fanfiction is always junk" so reliable a guide that it would take an enormous amount of contrary evidence to change your mind in any instance. Fair enough, in both cases; but in both cases the actual reasons are much more detailed than "it isn't literature, so away with it".

What's real literature, then?

A couple weeks ago, I read 3 books by Lois McMaster Bujold over the span of a week. She writes Hugo winning sf, poignant and thoughtful.

One book a month would be a living nightmare. If that's all I had time for, I would turn my life upside down.

This book really rips after it gets going. It is not for everyone. There are occasional blobs of 'rationality', but nothing like Ayn Rand's interminable philosophical passages. It's a great meta take on Harry Potter. And it succeeds in its own right as an adventure story. Maybe not emotionally, you could argue about that.

Which work of literature is it, I wonder, from which you got this idea that min-maxing your life is the way to happiness and fulfilment?

Which one of my words is it, I wonder, that led you to to think I was taking about happiness and fulfilment and not simply about the way I choose which books I want to read? :P

Why do you use criteria besides your happiness and fulfillment?

You could probably pick up one of those leather bound series of 'Greatest Works of Literature' for cheap nowadays. I'd envy your library for its uniformity, at least. I really hate all those different coloured paperbacks...

>There are more authors worth reading than books I'll ever be able to read before I die.

Since you seem like you would have an interesting opinion on this: What books do you feel I should read before I die?

Well, I don't have an actual list, but I usually choose books I think will still be read 500 years from now.

You think HPMoR won't be? It has the kind of intensely devoted (not to say cult) fanbase that preserves things and actively recruits new fans. If your view is that Harry Potter itself won't be read 500 years from now, even if that were to happen it's reasonably common for parodies to outlast the original. If I had to bet on a piece of literature from the last 10 years (say) that would last 500 years HPMoR looks like one of the better options.

Is that a litmus test for quality, or do you plan on being alive five hundred years from now?

If you had read my words, you would know I obviously "plan" to live around 85 years, and the verb «think» would have suggested to you that I don't have an infallible way to know what the people of the future will enjoy reading.

I thought you were asking sincerely, but it seems you're either trying to start a flame with your sarcasm or just not reading through my words.

If I want to read good sci-fi or fantasy I'll pick Bradbury, Asimov, or any other brilliant author I _think_ will still be read in 500 years.

Go and read whatever you like, I couldn't care less.

I was asking sincerely, you gave me a non-answer.

If you were asking sincerely whether I was planning on living 500 years, you've read way too much Harry Potter.

I have, in fact.

EDIT: Actually, it doesn't have to be like this. I'm sorry for being unnecessarily snarky when you told me how you evaluate books. If I may, I'd like to rephrase my question too: "Keeping in mind specific volumes, what is a book that you could see yourself feeling sorry for somebody having not read before their funeral?"

How do you make that distinction before you've read the book?

For new authors, I follow recommendations by friends whose taste I trust, or reviews from people who have similar standards.

For old authors it's much easier, especially for the ones born more than 500 years ago ;)

Aha, so the bible, quran, torah etc then?

Not quite fitting into the literature category, but I've read the Bible out of curiosity and interest for the origins of our culture.

You don't think them fiction, then? ;)

There are two kinds of fan fiction, fanfiction that degenerates from the source material, and fanfiction that generates from it. The former is much more common than the latter but this is without question the latter kind.

Then again, I can understand if you have better things to do, I try not to read books that I'd regret spending the time on later. As a litmus test, if I could revoke having read HPMoR in exchange for the time I used, I wouldn't.

Because this is one of the more interesting books of recent years, creating an interesting story, showing the tragedy and comedy of a very logical and rational boy who tries to interact with chaos of humanity, and the book manages to work in many discussions of science, rationality, politics, Bayesian statistics, and the potential and limits of each. If this book had used an original setting with renamed characters but was identical otherwise, it would be hailed as a modern genre classic.

If you have any interest in fantasy / sci-fi / or the original Potter setting, this book also deliberately sends up or subverts many of the tropes common to this setting. The application to the fantasy settings is particularly interesting due to the main character attempting to apply the scientific method in a world where people can perform magic and do so without questioning where it comes from, and the book therefore tries to take Clarke's old maxim to its limit.

Is it literature? I personally think so. Will it be read in fifty years? I have no idea and care little. Do adults need to only sit down with incredibly serious books which have been approved by a set of gatekeepers? No. You're missing out on a world of weird and wonderful things if you limit yourself in such a way.

>If this book had used an original setting with renamed characters but was identical otherwise, it would be hailed as a modern genre classic.

If that were true, then wouldn't it have happened already? 50 Shades of Gray is a famous example of fanfiction that was well-received enough that it got rewritten into a standalone work. I wasn't impressed. I see no reason not to interpret "best fanfiction" as "least stinky poop".

The difference is that 50 Shades of Gray is fanfiction for those who liked Twilight. I didn't like Twilight, and I didn't like 50 Shades.

OTOH, Methods of Rationality is fanfiction for those who were disappointed with Harry Potter.

In what sense is fanfic not actual literature?

In the sense that it is almost uniformly trash.

I'm not in it, but it seems like it has a neat, active community.

Because it might cause them to take themselves less seriously.

The same reason an adult could watch football instead of (insert your favorite meaningful activity here). Some people happen to like it.

Football isn't known for typically being aimed solely at teenaged girls. Harry Potter fanfiction is.

hpmor is the only Potter fanfic I have ever read, and I couldn't see any particular affinity to teenage girls. But maybe all others are, I have no idea, so I defer to your expertise here.

Something tells me the people who like this are the same ones who think Big Bang Theory is hilarious.

From what I have seen I really despise Big Bang Theory, but I loved HPMOR.

Nope.