Friday, July 20, 2007

T minus five hours—and counting


The highly anticipated, final installment of Harry Potter is very close to its official on-sale date. I'm pretty excited and relieved. For the better part of three months, I have been assiduously avoiding all press releases, websites, blogs, articles, and general speculation about the book. My hope is that I can keep my imagination keen from the very first word, sentence, chapter. And, it hasn't been easy.

An internet retailer messed up their shipping schedule so that customers who pre-ordered the book have already received it. Someone has already photographed each page and posted the photos online, including the conclusion. Some other person has attempted to sell their illegally obtained copy on eBay. In a pretty dumb publicity stunt, a KS95 DJ claimed he would read the final chapter on air, which he did albeit silently. And, Kakutani has already reviewed HP7 for the NYT—bad girl.

Mr. Bibliotonic and I have attended midnight parties for each of the last three books and were set to go to one tonight. However, Mr B. is on vacation. I thought about going with the kids, but I'm very apprehensive about keeping the little Bibliotonics awake long enough to attend a party, then wrangling overtired kids, who are too young to care yet. Instead, my friend Caryl is going to meet me tomorrow morning at The Red Balloon, our local children's bookstore, which is opening its doors at 7:21. I've already pre-purchased my book so really I could pick it up any time, but I'd like to catch a little bit of the buzz.

I. Can't. Wait.