Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

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Jamie with her copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) [Children's Edition] Jamie and I went to our local Bor­ders tonight to wait for the release of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince at mid­night. We got to the store around 9:45 pm. There were quite a few people already in the place, but not as many as the last time we did this.

All the staff were very much in to the spirit of the event with lots of cos­tumes and hats. They put on a little enter­tain­ment includ­ing a Harry Pot­ter quiz. At eleven we had a read­ing of the last chapter of the fifth book, Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix so we could remem­ber our place in the saga. Has it hap­pens, Jan, Jamie, and I have all re-read the fifth book in the last couple of weeks.

Around 11:30 the queue had star­ted form­ing and I decided to stake my place so as to not be too far down. Jamie joined me about 15 minutes later. I must say, stand­ing in a queue for 30 minutes without mov­ing is rather dull! We did get talk­ing to a nice chap and his daugh­ter who were just in front of us.

The Bor­ders staff had been announ­cing reg­u­larly the time left before the ‘arrival’ of the book. At five minutes to go they star­ted announ­cing every minute, then 30 seconds to go, 15 seconds, then a count down from 10. There was a round of applause and two head high palettes, encased in black plastic wrap, were brought from the back of the store to the front of the queue. Without any more cere­mony, the wrap was removed, the boxes inside opened, and the staff star­ted hand­ing out books at a frantic pace.

We got our two cop­ies quite quickly and we were out of the store and on our way back home by a quarter past mid­night. Now Jamie and Jan are both in bed fever­ishly read­ing the book; I have to wait for the first one to fin­ish — again. If Jan fin­ishes as quickly as she did two years ago, I should be able to start it by the end of Sunday!

Update 16/07/2005 17:00 Jamie fin­ished the book a short time ago!

Fur­ther Update 16/07/2005 11:00 Jan fin­ished her copy around 10:30. I start read­ing it tomorrow.

18 thoughts on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

  1. Wow, we’ve star­ted a cult! :

    The Bor­ders staff had been announ­cing reg­u­larly the time left before the ‘arrival’ of the book. At five minutes to go they star­ted announ­cing every minute, then 30 seconds to go, 15 seconds, then a count down from 10. There was a round of applause and two head high palettes, encased in black plastic wrap, were brought from the back of the store to the front of the queue. Without any more cere­mony, the wrap was removed, the boxes inside opened, and the staff star­ted hand­ing out books at a frantic pace.

    What coun­try are you in? We’ve still got three hours before mid­night, but I’m not that into wait­ing in lines (years of my high school lunch line killed that joy), so we pre-ordered.

    Reply ↓

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  4. wow, I haven’t read any of the HP books since the first… I’ve just got­ten very lazy and waited for the movies.

    Maybe I should pick up a few of the old ones and start read­ing them again. The first one waas good.

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  7. boyevul — the books are a mil­lion times bet­ter than the movies. Go bor­row the older books from the lib­rary or a friend and get reading.

    PS the trans­la­tion into Finnish is very well done. Menza have you read the Dan­ish trans­la­tions? What are they like?

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  8. Boyevul,
    I have to agree with Lorna: The movies prob­ably con­tain less than 30% of the plot of the books. In par­tic­u­lar the char­ac­ters are very poorly developed in the movies. There is much more depth to them in the books.
    You won’t regret the time spent read­ing them.

    Mike

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  9. Hi folks! I think we pre-ordered our copy of The Half-Blood Prince months ago through Amazon. We’d almost for­got­ten about it when it arrived in the post first thing this morning!

    Of course, it’s one thing to receive the book, quite another to have the time to read it! Might be an idea to re-read parts of the last book first, though.

    Reply ↓

  11. I fin­ished it last night — we did the book­store thing too, although I guess because it was a smal­ler store, the party was… not much of a party, even for the kids. Oh well, for #7 I’ll just show up around 11:45 and get the book.

    For those of you who have fin­ished it, I’m curi­ous as to whether the end­ing was what you expected?

    Reply ↓

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  14. Lorna,
    I mostly get books at the lib­rary, and when I wanted to read one of the books (don’t remem­ber which one) the Eng­lish ver­sion was out, so I had to either wait or get the trans­lated ver­sion. Of course, I was com­pletely unable to wait, and for­tu­nately the Dan­ish trans­la­tion was quite good.

    How­ever, I still prefer to read the ori­ginal ver­sion of a book. Espe­cially since we (in the case of HP:THBP) have to wait until Octo­ber for the trans­lated version.

    Reply ↓

  15. Harry pot­ter books are so great!! i live in aus­tria and i pre-ordered the book.
    Do you all here live in eng­land? i’m inter­res­ted when you got it!
    thanks.. :)
    birgit

    Reply ↓

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