Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody by Michael Gerber

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Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody
by Michael Gerber
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1754735

I've had this on Mount To Be Read for ages, and today I was looking for something else to read for Do Nothing But Read Day and selected this.

First off, I have to say that I'm probably in the top 1% of crazy extreme Harry Potter fans. I drove from Virginia to Boston and back just to see my favorite Wizard Rock group. I drove from Virginia to Chicago and back just to see the Harry Potter Exhibition. I've got wands (plural) and robes and shirts and banners and hundred of dollars in LEGO sets and books and movies and many games and more than $400 of Harry Potter-related music. I'm the assistant organizer of my local Harry Potter meetup group. I'm even trying to start a local Harry Potter Alliance chapter. So I have a certain love for Harry Potter's world and don't like to see it made fun of.

That being said, I thought this was absolutely hilarious and really had no problem with it as a parody. In my opinion, the characters were so far removed (in a super-extreme sort of way) from how they are in the book that I didn't find them insulting (I thought of them as separate entities). Sirius Black is one of my favorite characters, so I thought I'd have a problem with Serious, but I laughed at pretty much every reference to him in the book.

The story itself wasn't bad either. I thought the plot was pretty funny and the layers of reality made me laugh. I really didn't like the ending at all, but I'm not bothered by it. Some of my favorite bits were:

"There will be Barry Trotter wands, robes, mops, figures, board games, stationery, pens, candy, T-shirts, coffee cups, calendars, audio books, stones, trading cards, comics (manga, alternative, and regular), theme restaurants, an amusement park, a video game--and maybe a hockey team, if I can find enough Russians"
LMAO!

Well, you're an adult now. Your adventures are no longer appropriate; what is she going to write, Barry Trotter and the Difficult Tax Return?
I'd read that! LOL

The Fifth book. Barry Trotter and the Order of the Penis, dealt with Barry's stormy puberty and fueled an ocean of inaccurately-erotic fanfic....
*snort* Yeah, I probably wrote half of those.

Barry had sewn a Doctor Whom patch on his Army jacket last year, simply for irony's sake, and while most people Barry's age got the joke, Serious didn't.
Doctor Whom. Priceless.

So it wasn't the funniest thing I've ever read. It was silly and stupid. But I laughed a lot and wasn't offended and that's all I really wanted out of it. So... success! :-)