HP Party

It's been a long time since I've gotten through a weekend with that little sleep! Friday night was the Harry Potter Release Party - the secondary highlight was watching my little bro get sorted into Slytherin. There were tons of activities, although a bunch of them ended before we even got there. There was Quidditch, played in the gym with hula hoops suspended under the basketball hoops; there was a band - I think - they didn't play much and they talked a lot; there was Platform 9&3/4; there were picture frames you could put on and be a moving picture; there was a sorting hat; there was Diagon Alley - with all sorts of shops in it that had food and arts & crafts & wands.

And for the last 10 minutes, everyone crowded into the gym and waited - at least 500+ people. They got the first 100 people lined up to go out the doors to the room with the books, and then we counted down the last 10 seconds. Everybody screamed! Except the baby - she stayed asleep. It was more exciting than New Years. We filed out the door in our turn, got our copies of the book, and sat down in the hallway to start reading them right away.

I was all ready to go home and stay up late getting a good start on the book - but there was construction on the freeway, narrowing it down to 1 lane, so I got home close to 2:00 in the morning. So I only read the first 50 pages, and then I slept for 6 hours before getting up for a full day of parties! Between a baby shower and a company picnic ... when was I supposed to read my book? I snuck in another 100 pages by the evening, and then Saturday night I had another 2-3 hours to read while "babysitting" sleeping kids, but I still wasn't that far - when I'm tired I read a lot slower I guess. And I actually fell asleep again.

So Sunday was IT - after church I just picked up the book and refused to put it down. Until it was finished. I think I liked it. But that is ALL I will say. No one ruined it for me, and I won't ruin it for anyone else.

Countdown

Wowsers! I haven't written anything for a long time ... by now I may just be writing to myself anyway. Oh well - for a little while my life has been most interesting, what with packing and moving and familiy visiting and working lots of overtime to pay for that new house! But no excuses - I have still been reading - just not writing about it.

So it seems it's time to join the rest of the world and countdown to Harry Potter. I read the first 3 in 3 days, but now everybody has checked them all out of the library; I will finish - I will just have to borrow #4 from my brother.

So the official countdown is ... 16 days, 8 hours, and 37 minutes.


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So as I was reading the first 3 books, I experienced some nostalgia for the week that my apartment found Harry Potter in college. We had 6 girls, and probably only 2 copies of the book - good thing the first book was such a quick read. We had a lot of debate - was Harry Potter really the next big thing? Why was it so great? Why was it so popular?

I still think Harry Potter had some great advertising, especially as the news networks picked it up as the next big thing...but I also think it wouldn't have spread to fast if it wasn't a well-written story. One interesting theory that we read online was that girls can relate to a boy main character better than the other way around, so books written with a boy as the main character have a bigger audience. Interesting if I ever turn into an author.

What do I think of the books themselves? They're good. They're fun. They're not the best thing I've ever read, but I like them a lot and it's really fun to read something that everyone else reads too because you can talk about it more. My favorite book was probably number 4 - I think that I liked the fact that the book lasted longer, but it still was full of action. Harry hadn't turned into a teenage jerk yet, and You-Know-Who was actually able to come back - which of course leads to the bigger and better conflicts in the books that come later.

Sadly, I didn't like Harry as much in #5 and #6, but they have their moments too, and the final book will really determine if I LOVE the series or just like the first 4 books. It's kind of like Star Wars - the original 3 - the 2nd movie maybe wasn't quite what you expected and it didn't leave you with that good feeling, but when you add the 3rd movie then all 3 are awesome.

So I have my book on order, and I'll be partying with anyone else who's at Island Books. I wonder if any of us will sleep at all that night.