I thought it might be fun so
I decided to go to the Harry Potter release party at the local Borders. I
arrived at the bookstore a little after 11pm and parked near the back as all the
spaces in front were taken. It was fun--many of the staff and some of the
customers were in costume, and there were activities for the kids: paper masks
to be colored in, "magic" tricks, a recipe for invisible ink, and so forth.
Malfoy, or the actor who plays him, is QUITE popular with the junior high school
set of girls who go in for black finger nail polish! I saw Malfoy
t-shirts--always with black fingernail polish. I rather preferred the very
young lady who seemed to be dressed as Ginny Weasley, a small stuffed owl
on her shoulder. Unfortunately, there were so many people in the bookstore
it was hot. Fortunately, I discovered that the aisle where the opera DVDs
were was not so crowded and was close to an air vent with a good breeze.
No where to sit except on the floor, so I sat on the floor with the others,
remarking that with my bad knees I might not be able to get up again when my
number was called. The black lady across the aisle laughed, said she had
the same problem and that she had brought her husband to help. Other
people chimed in--I would say the crowd was at least 60% adults.
Everything was well organized. You had your line ticket and they called
out blocks of numbers in groups of 50 and you went and stood on the paper
arrows. They had one person checking your number, then you were quickly
passed to the table where a young Harry Potter look-alike (complete with
lightning scar) gave you the number of books you had reserved. One of the
other two people at the table checked your name off the list. Then you had
another short wait for a cash register. It seemed to take about 20 minutes
for them to process 50 buyers. I had line number 274 and I got my book
around 1:15am, but I had moved to the tail of the line after they had called out
250 and so I was near the front of my group.
The thing was, by the time I got home, it was a quarter to 2am on Saturday and
for a long time my work commute had me getting up at 3am. So my body was ready
to stay awake. I finished the book I had been reading and then made the
mistake of starting "The Half-Blood Prince"--unfortunately, I was unable to
stop. It's much better than number V altho the humor is much more muted.
I had speculated in an email to Ken regarding the major character who dies and
the character I had tapped as the most dramatically interesting one for the
author to bump off is the one who gets it.