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.
