My Potter Weekend

My theory that everyone would be home this weekend reading the latest Harry Potter was disproved by the time we reached the Massachusetts Turnpike. I followed a family into the first rest area and heard the son telling his father that he had read over 400 pages of 700 some odd. Of course, he was talking about Harry P. His mom told me they'd bought the book at 12:01 that morning. Our next coffee stop was off the highway. A woman was sitting out in front of a store with the book. After dinner that night, I saw a copy of the new book at the checkout counter at a giftshop. The young woman reading it also worked at a library and had been part of a reading party that had begun at midnight and gone on until 7 Saturday morning.

I belong to The Association of Booksellers for Children listserv and have been reading accounts of some incredible bookstore events here in New England. Of course, the closest store event I heard of before I left town was at a Stop & Shop.

So it sounds as if it was a great weekend for you Potterites. I'm curious now to see if the world shifts in some way now that there are no more books to wait for.

An Addition: Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld have some footage of the scene in New York City on Potter release night at Writer in Residence/Inside A Dog. Which isn't my Potter Weekend, of course, but interesting (though dark) nonetheless. Because I find that sometimes things that aren't related to me are interesting. Who knew?