One week to go...

One week from tonight, people will be congregating in bookstores all over the country, all over the world, awaiting the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I, unfortunately, will not be among them.



Five years ago, when Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire was released, I watched the phenomenon with both amusement and skepticism. "Why," I thought, "are otherwise rational people standing in a bookstore at midnight instead of just showing up the next morning? Why is that guy in Virginia who somehow got one a week early refusing $100 for it?" I had not, at the time, read any of them. Later that summer, in anticipation of taking the kids to the first movie, I picked up the first book. The next day, I read the 2nd. The next day, I read the 3rd. The 4th book took two days. When Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix was released, I was standing in a bookstore at midnight, waiting in line. Had I had the opportunity to get it a week earlier for $100, I may well have taken it. I think the series is a spectacular accomplishment, on the surface a wonderful fantasy, but actually taking the form of school stories in the grand tradition of Tom Brown's Schooldays and the early works of PG Wodehouse.

As much as I enjoyed the first two books, for me the entire series changed with one line. Late in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when they're gathered in the shrieking shack, and Lupin says "that's not a rat. It's an unregistered Animagus named Peter Pettigrew." All of a sudden the series changed from a collection of entertaining and amusing fantasy school stories to an epic fantasy, on a large scale, with a large scope.


But I won't be in a store next Friday. I'll be at Tang Soo Do camp, where I expect that both my 12-year old and I will get our black belts on Saturday morning. But sometime on Saturday morning, a box will arrive at my house with 2 hard-cover copies of the book, as well as the audio version, which has been done so well on all of the books so far by Jim Dale, on both CD and tape. The 7 year-old is not yet ready to read it, so my wife and I, and the 12, 11 and 9 year-olds, will be juggling the books for the next couple of weeks...