Finished Potter Book 6

For the last two days I have been spending any free moment reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince because, like millions of other people world-wide, I am obsessed with the series - which I hope helps to explain my lack of any real posting here on the site. But I'm not here to apologies... barely anyone take the time to read these things anyway... I'm here to tell you all about "Potter Mania".

On Friday night after work I was beginning to get excited. The book that I had waited a year for was finally being let free into the world. My big master plan at the time was to just go down to Stop and Shop, (New England finest grocery store conglomorate), and raid their book section at 5 past midnight. Now normally I wouldn't do this, but you all have to understand how quickly these books sell out - Scholastic had over 8 million copies printed for the release and still had to begin printing more starting yesterday morning because the world was nearly out. Now I want you to think about that if only for one second and realise that I wouldn't have stayed up untl midnight to buy a book if you didn't think I had reason to. If I hadn't then I'd of had to wait another day or two for the book. I had the weekend off to read the book and wasn't willing to do that.

Regardless, I somehow convinced my non-Potter fan of a boyfriend to go down to Barnes and Noble at around eleven thirty with me... just to see what a "Release Party" looked like.

IT WAS AWFUL. I will never go again. Funny in that "Steven King writing-about-little-childre- in-a-cornfield" sort of way. The entire shopping plaza parking lot was full to the point where people where parking in fire lanes and anywhere else they could cram an automobile for a few hours. I was lucky enough to find an actual parking space in the far diagonal corner to the book store. The theory there is while people are more then willing to break the law to get a premo spot, they'd rather do that then walk an extra 100ft, (go obesity yeah!). So after parking and walking it was about ten of midnight and was that bookstore crazy. My boyfriend pointed out that the place was never even that busy for Black Friday... I tend to agree... I felt like a sardine.

The worst part about the whole release party, was that this really wasn't a "party" at all. You would think you'd have all the elements for a pretty good one. Crazy people dressed in cloaks and thick bottle rim glasses, lots of other people pointing at these other people and a huge space with plenty of floor space and a little cafe'. But there was nothing going on, just a giant serving of clostrephobia and tired children zombies dressed like Harry being dragged around by their wild-eyed parents.

After only using there bathroom and taking a quick tour to see if we happen to know anyone, (to both of our relief we didn't), we left the building and drove down to Stop and Shop as I had previously intended. By the time we got down to the supermarket it was exactly 12 midnight and I was happy to just walk in, buy my book, and go home.

By the way, the book was excellent. I was a little sad at the end because of what Rowling decided to do with one of her fantastic characters. But like every rabid Potter fan out there all I can do is wait for the next installment - probably a year and some change from now - and hope it all turns out okay.