first to all the bashing.
on one side we have the people (in my town at least) who lined up to get a perfectly good book at midnight for 20% off. It included free food, drink, and a coupon for a chance for a 1000 dollar shopping spree at the store.
on the other side we have the people walking past said line, going "harry potter *bleeaaaah*, making rude gestures and laughing drunkedly amongst themselves.
now we have the question of which one group are the idiots, see if you can figure that one out.
second to all the fawning.
harry potter is so cool because the media has made him so cool. If you have read upward of several hundred fiction and sci-fi novels, you would realize that harry is *nothing special*. It is a superb "childrens book" (I would be inclined to call it younger teen and had it been classified as such would not likely have made such big headlines). But I have read just as many books that had just as endearing characters and storyline. If I had to name one thing about the harry potter series that makes it popular above any other stories of equal merit is Hogwarts itself. A School setting has the unique effect of allowing adults to optimistically reminisce their school years(like bull it was good enough to reminisce about), and children to wishing that their school was like that one. Plus quidditch is cool, learning spells instead of math would be a heck of a lot of fun, and everybody has a snape and a malfoy at school.
like has been said earlier there are plenty of people who have made equally enthralling worlds. Tolkien. CS Lewis. Mccaffery. Anthony. Pournelle. Niven. Bujould. Pratchet. To name a few. However, Lewis and maybe Pratchet, are the only of these authors that make books at the children level. Pratchet's series are more appreaciable at a younger teen level and Lewis's novels are *shudder* "Christian" and non-discussable in public circles. (note the resounding silence regarding the upcoming "narnia" movie regardless of the fact that I *know* it was and is hugely popular.)
in short. Harry potter has enough going for it(though not as much as people like to claim) and to dismiss it simply on the fact that the people reading it are "nerds" is the same as dismissing vegetables because people that eat them are "health nuts" or better yet, to dismiss beer because those that drink it are "drunken freaks".
edit: in reply to above
only 10$?