Harry Potter's Bookshelf is an unauthorized study of literary influences in the Harry Potter books. The author, John Granger, has published a number of other books on Harry Potter.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked up Harry Potter's Bookshelf. What I got was a crash-course in select areas of English literature--enough material to fill an entire English course crammed into about 300 pages.
Granger bases his analysis on Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye's, iconological school. In the introduction, Granger explains that he will look at "the surface," "the moral," "the allegorical" and "the anagogical or spiritual"(xv).
In the remainder of the book, Granger ties the Harry Potter series to the genres of the detective story, the schoolboy story (think Enid Blythe), the gothic, Jane Austen and post-modernism. He identifies links to The Canterbury Tales, the Bible, Charles Dickens, alchemy, and much more, all while utilizing Frye's iconological framework.
Although I enjoyed this book immensely, I found "the anagogical" aspect of Granger's analysis a little too abstract, like listening to an English prof. pull at tiny details to build a theory that may or may not be true, or have been intended by the author.
However, I don't outright disagree with any of Granger's arguments and analysis. Reading, after-all, is intertextuality. The interpretation of a text falls on the reader and every reader will experience and interpret a text differently based on the other texts (books/ideas) that they have engaged with and experienced in the past.
Harry Potter's Bookshelf takes analysis of the Harry Potter series to a whole new level, but its clearly written, not for the average reader, but for those who study English. I wouldn't, however, discourage anyone with an interest in Harry Potter from giving this book a try.
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