Kevin Moberg and the Half-Blood Prince

A few years ago, when the last installment in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of novels was released, my wife Susan and our friend Jen stood in line at the bookstore late at night to be there just after midnight when the store opened and the book went on sale. They arrived at 10:30 P.M. and stood at the back of a long line snaking its way through the Barnes and Noble parking lot. However, the next morning, Susan was shopping and saw plenty of copies of the novel at stores all around town. Hm.

So we were not planning to do any standing in line for the release of the most recent novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, at 12:01 this morning. But Jen's husband Curt asked me this week if this year was to be our turn to do the standing in line. I agreed to it; what harm could it do? We agreed to meet at 11:15 P.M. to get in line for the midnight opening of the store.

When I arrived, the parking lot was pretty empty, and the "line" consisted of about a dozen people. Pretty anti-climactic, especially considering the news stories about pre-release parties--literally across the globe--just jam-packed with people lined up for a copy of The Half-Blood Prince. Curt and I stood in line behind five teens seated on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones, holding disposable cameras, and wearing the enormously round, black-rimmed glasses sported by Harry Potter himself. One guy even had a wand. The group had me take their photo a few times while we all waited.

That and my conversation with Curt kept me distracted so that it wasn't until close to midnight that I bothered to check out the line-up behind us. It was gi-normous! A store employee in Harry Potter glasses and a black graduation gown emerged riding a broom to goof around with people in line and help us count down the minutes until opening. When the doors opened, we streamed in (right past Laura, my friend who works there and gave me a buss on the cheek when I passed by), stopped briefly at a "free goodies" table by the door (where I got a green rubber bracelet and my own pair of black plastic Potter spectacles!), grabbed a copy of the book from a stack, and got in line to buy. I was out of the store by 12:15.

I had planned to come home and put the book on my wife's desk for her to read first. She gets through books more quickly and, besides, I have a few half-finished books that I should wrap up before tackling another. But I did manage to stay awake to read the first 100 pages or so (of 652 total). I don't tend to recall all the names and details of the previous volumes when I start a new Harry Potter book, so part of the fun of reading is re-meeting characters and re-familiarizing myself with them and their histories. Susan told me this morning that she will reread the previous book before starting this one, so I'll keep going with this, Book 6 (of 7). (I have a few students who spent the past couple weeks rereading all 5 previous books in preparation for Book 6!)

I wore my plastic Harry Potter glasses out of the store last night and saw one of my students waiting to get in the bookstore. She yelled out my name, so I got to talk to her and exhibit my pride in the goofiness of the whole event: the waiting in line late at night to buy a copy of a book that I could easily purchase the next day and that I wouldn't be able to finish reading that night anyway, and the participating in the mania of rushing the doors and grabbing the promotional goodies and displaying my Potter gear for the world (or at least the people in line behind me) to see. Silly . . . and fun.

My seven-and-a-half -year-old daughter is sporting the specs around the house this morning. She has neither read any of the books (or had them read to her) nor seen any of the movie versions, but she is looking forward to the day that her mother and I share them with her. (When will she be old enough? We haven't discussed it enough to have decided.) In the meantime, it's pretty cute to see her in the oversized glasses, pretending to ride a flying broomstick, and saying, "Haddy Poe Tah" in her best British accent.

I'd better get back to reading. Dumbledore has just dropped Harry off at the Weasley house and . . .