San Francisco City Hall is being lit orange until Barry Bonds breaks the home run record...
...but the special lighting might just as well have been to herald the final "Harry Potter" installment, which was being handed out in bookstores around the world at 12:01 AM on Saturday, July 21st.
At Books, Inc. in the Opera Plaza complex on Van Ness, a couple of hundred people waited down the two hours before midnight by flipping through fashion magazines...
...entering costume contests...
...and a lottery for a bag of Potter goodies...
...which was won by the boy above.
Though there were a couple of dozen kids at the event...
...most of the people waiting with bated breath...
...and getting lightning bolt tattoos on their foreheads...
...were older folk.
Finally, the handcarts stacked high with the books came rolling out between the alphabetical lines.
The entire phenomenon, lining up for books at midnight, is unprecedented in the last century's literary history...
...and we'll probably never see it again in our lifetimes.
5 comments:
I quit on Harry Potter 2 books ago: as a professor I really cant support a boy who mess up is schooling time EVERY year.
heehee
Sorry.
I got into it and then I find it just plain depressing. I would btay awa ke fate for Murakami Aruki newbooks though...
And then I read your postaud I realise how Mrs Rowling is important: people enjoy reading again and this is just plain fabulous.
oups sorry for the spelling: trying to Comment in the early morning with a baby on my lap is just a bad idea -Sorry again -
Delphine, you've intented a whole new genre, the "baby laptop typo." I love it. And yes, the books got very dark just like the real world around it. I'm praying there's a happy ending to this final volume.
Harry gets adopted and changes his name. Then he gets these weird ideas about horses, winding up blinding a stable full of them.
Not stuff for the kiddies.
This was in the news months ago.
So, basically, we "don't talk" about what happens to Harry.
I am mystified by this phenomenon. Doesn't anyone read George Eliot these days???
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