For laffs and for lack of anything better to do that evening, I decided to try and pick up my pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince at the “Midnight Magic” party my local bookstore was throwing to celebrate the release. By the end of the evening, I wasn’t laffing and I was wishing I’d found something better to do with my time. The only perk was actually getting the book.
The procedure called for picking up wristbands to claim your spot in line at 6 PM. By the time I got there after work, people were already queuing up. The bookstore’s café offered itty-bitty samples of Starbucks-esque coffee to the hot and cranky crowd, which was nice. I nearly choked on my vanilla frappacino when a small boy of about eleven said solemnly to the brother he’d been roughhousing with, “Violence is never the answer…. Except in virtual reality, where violence is definitely the answer.”
Worried about parking hassles if I waited too long to come back to the store, I returned to the store around eight, figuring I’d grab one of the comfy armchairs and spend the evening reading. With the exception of being continually distracted by hordes of screaming children running around the store in capes, Potter glasses, and homemade wands, I managed to get a lot of reading done. About a half-hour before the sale, my eyes were drooping, so I decided to cruise around the store checking out the games and crafts stations. The crowds made it impossible to see what was going on at those stations, of course.
Around fifteen minutes to midnight, I noticed a large group of people starting to crowd around the registers. Interrogation of individuals in the crowd yielded the information that this was how we were expected to get the books. Despite assurances that wristbands would be checked, it became obvious that the wristbands were a polite fiction. I could have cruised into the store at 11:45, told the clerk distributing wristbands that I had pre-ordered, and then worked my way through the crowd to the register to present myself as first in line. Fortunately for me and for the store, I was out within ten minutes with my copy, so there was no need to complain about the situation. Next time though, when Year 7 is released, I’ll go the next day to pick up my copy.
This past weekend was spent reading Year 6. All in all, very good. I’m still bleary-eyed from the last couple of late-night reading marathons. Despite the frustrations with the "Midnight Magic" brouhaha, the new Harry Potter book was well worth the wait. It’s difficult to discuss my specific thoughts about the book without revealing huge, honking spoilers that would disappoint those who haven’t yet read the book, so that post will have to await a future date when more people have had a chance to finish the book themselves. In the meantime, all I can say is that the climax is problematic, but I am hopeful that Rowling can play it out in Year 7 without destroying one well-loved character and another character for whom I’ve always had a grudging admiration.
I didn’t have as much reading time over the weekend as you did, Michelle. I got the book at Target on Saturday morning, after hitting the farmer’s market, & only got to read about 160 pages. So far, the writing’s much, much better than #5 – I can count the elipses on one hand! 😉 The prose is tight & efficient, definitely showing signs of a strong editorial hand absent in #5. Moves like a freight train. We’ll see what comes of the last 500 pages!
BTW, while flipping channels last night, I found an interview piece on MSNBC with Jo Rowling & Katie Couric. The piece was expectedly overblown & sometimes silly but the interview segment was very interesting. More was to be shown today on . . . Today. I’ll have to find the whole thing. Rowling told a very interesting story about being in the neighborhood of the flat she wrote the first HP book in when she was on welfare. She & her husband went over to have a look & it was a very emotional experience for her. She said her life before HP was poor but “pure” &, even though she’s got more money now (apparently nowhere near the billion Forbes pegged her with), she’s got so many other issues to deal with now. She was almost emotional just speaking about it. I’ve said this for a while as a sort of a joke but I’d definitely like to have coffee with her & chat. She seems a very humble & affable person.
I didn’t love the book, but at the same time, I read it in one 7.5 hour sitting, rarely putting the book down (thanks to my husband who lets me read books before he does because he knows the faster I read, the sooner he gets it).
I was a bit bothererd by the actions of 2 of the characters, and it made me fearful for the fate of a loved character, and I was actually realieved that the “bad” guy turned out to be who he was, because I think (okay, hope) that he’s going to turn out to not really be bad in book 7. I’m not happy about the death, but I can see how it was “necessary” in terms of the overall plot.
Overall, a good read, I think.
Read it myself.
I think we need a spoiler warning thread or we will all burst.
But — as a sidenote — I liked what she did with Tonks.
Tonks and — sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. *giggle*
I enjoyed the “midnight magic” party at my store. We did it for book 5 too. We go as a group so we have folks to talk to and play with (old boring grownups as we are)… it’s fun to see the children’s enthusiasm, it’s fun to see the store employee’s enthusiasm (there were HUGE house banners on the cieling… snitches suspended from the cieling… it was awesome 🙂 Ran into someone from work too, and as usual, my husband hit it off with her (he’s usurping all my friends, slowly but surely). Ya gotta know what you’re getting yourself into, is all 😉
dear me, Tammy, are you sure that’s appropriate for a no SPOILER WARNING thread?
0:)
(the part about Tonks, I mean. 😉
“Violence is never the answer…. Except in virtual reality, where violence is definitely the answer.”
This is my new personal motto.
OK — I’m not sure what the spoiler status is here, so I’ll try to be coy. But, just in case —
SEMI-SPOILER!!!!
I’m having a hard time buying that Rawlings would settle for something as obvious as what seemed to happen at the end of HBP. I am really hoping that all was not as it seemed, because when someone appears to be wise except inexplicably believes something that seems unbelievable, it seems beneath the build-up for that person to just be dead-wrong.
Assuming Rawlings is going to show us in Book 7 that we didn’t really see what we think we saw, but if so, I think it was unwise to end Book 6 with what appears to be a cop-out. She always has been so great about giving her audience what it (and Harry) least expects; giving it what it has always suspected just seems wrong.
Another possibility is that things were as they seemed, but that the motives behind them were not. If so, this could raise some big moral questions in Book 7.
Til then, can someone please suggest something (other than Tolkein or Lewis) that adult readers of Harry Potter might like?