page 5 has the book

i got my book around 11:30, but they wouldn't let us check out until after 12, but there was a small line of nerds, which overpowered the scary parts of the store

my 15 year old sister was probably the youngest one there, everybody else was 20s and up too, that was kind of surprising.

7/21/2007 12:20:11 AM

i hope there's video of a spoiler drive-by somewhere.. that's always funny yet mean to the hardcore nerds or those who just like to read it

7/21/2007 12:21:07 AM

So what are the chances of just walking in a bookstore and getting one?

7/21/2007 10:04:19 AM

^ Go to Kroger, no 1 realized they got 400 copies in. We left our house at midnight to get my gf's younger sister a book and we walked in with no line grabed it and left. They still had over 350 copies left so they are a good place to try.

[Edited on July 21, 2007 at 10:07 AM. Reason : early morning dont feel like grammer/spell check lol]

7/21/2007 10:06:48 AM

why would it be suprising that there were 20 and ups? The first book came out 12 years ago....i missed the whole Potter thing, I was past that age. Most of them were like 10-15 years old when they first book came out.



[Edited on July 21, 2007 at 10:27 AM. Reason : 1]

7/21/2007 10:25:31 AM

I didn't get into it until the 4th book and then I decided to read them in order to see what all the fuss was about. Glad I did

7/21/2007 10:41:40 AM

did you get your book last night brandon?

7/21/2007 10:43:31 AM

yeah...i got it at B&N in cary. i was in the first group so i was outta there by 12:20AM

7/21/2007 10:47:57 AM

done yet?

7/21/2007 10:51:25 AM

done

Pretty good. body count was impressive. Seemed like there were a lot of plot threads she really didn't have time to finish off, but I applaud her for getting her story done in 7 books like she promised. But now it's all over

Quote :

"my 15 year old sister was probably the youngest one there, everybody else was 20s and up too, that was kind of surprising."

Yeah, maybe and maybe not. Those people in their early 20s were in middle school when the first book came out, and there's a lot of loyalty there to finish the series.

7/21/2007 10:58:05 AM

Picked up mine about 230 last night at the Walmart on Glenwood. They had the better part of a pallet full of them left...at least 500 copies Im sure. I guess its kinda like the whole iPhone thing...camp out all day and wait in line, or just walk on in 2 hours later.

7/21/2007 11:23:43 AM

so...what happens?

7/21/2007 1:54:17 PM

done

^^^I didn't hear about it until book 4, so I always forget how old people were when book 1 came out

I could have done without the last chapter, but it tied things up. I wish she would have thrown something in there about the Weasley Wizard Wheezes or something, Fred and George have been my favorite characters.

7/21/2007 1:59:39 PM

done!

7/21/2007 2:58:43 PM

Why are people camping out for them? There is a table full of them at Best Buy in Cary, and no lines.

7/21/2007 4:27:44 PM

I walked right in and got one at Borders in Cary at 1pm.

7/21/2007 4:44:45 PM

I wish I had just gone the Wal Mart route, because I was in the last group at the B&N in Cary and ended up waiting in line until 2:00 am.

It was worth it, though.

7/21/2007 10:48:18 PM

got mine at 8am from Target and just finished reading it

7/21/2007 10:56:24 PM

You guys read faster than Kennedy. Holy crap. I would guess it's about a 4 hour read (3-4 pgs/minute)?

7/21/2007 11:27:26 PM

It took me from 8:30am - 11pm

of course I helped my roommate move for 2+ hours and ate a few times

I'd say all in all it took about 10 hours to read

7/22/2007 12:28:42 AM

Who on earth can read 3-4 pages in a minute?

7/22/2007 2:04:53 AM

I finished about half an hour ago. I'm still digesting the story. I don't know what my final thoughts are. I do have one really big gripe with the book and it's a gripe I had with HBP too concerning Ginny and how her character is portrayed (or should I say not protrayed). I'll probably do a writeup or two for my personal blog later in the week and I'll probably repost my throughts here. I'm off to bed.

7/22/2007 3:18:20 AM

Done, finally.

7/22/2007 8:07:34 AM

wal-mart allowed me to get my book at 12:05 and have it finished by 5 the next day after a nice nap around 5 this morning.

7/22/2007 1:51:21 PM

Quote :

"I'd say all in all it took about 10 hours to read"

I'd say you were right on. It took me right at 10.5 hours of reading time to read it. Finished at 4PM yesterday.

7/22/2007 2:01:51 PM

I finished at 6 this morning.

Quote :

"Seemed like there were a lot of plot threads she really didn't have time to finish off"

That's exactly how I felt through the entire thing. And instead of it being like some of the others, where there's one puzzle to be figured out (like "who opened the chamber of secrets?" etc), there were lots of things flying around (Horcruxes, Hallows, wandlore, etc) to be figured out, and it seemed like too much to be cramming in so few pages while the Harry/Voldemort battle raged on.

I pity whoever does the movie simply because they'll need an action director (plz no Michael Bay).

A few things I liked:
1. Snape (well of course he isn't bad)
2. That amazing multiplying charm on all the treasure in the Lestrange's vault
3. "Voldemort" being a way to track them
4. The white peacock at the Malfoys' house
5. The break-in to the Ministry, especially with Ron's failed attempts to stop that office from raining
6. Neville's snake-chopping skills

A few things that were cheesy:
1. The talk Dumbledore has with Harry in his head
2. The stone bringing back all of Harry's dead friends/relatives (but I admit it, I fucking cried when I hit page 700)
3. That random Ron/Hermione kiss in the middle of the battle
4. The epilogue (the thing I disliked most about the book, as well)

7/22/2007 3:27:16 PM

i can agree on most points, although i like the epilogue... too many people just ignore epilogues, as if nothing happens AFTER a story is over...

granted, the jump ahead was a bit unnerving, especially since you can't really get a sense of what the characters look like anymore... no sense of how they turned out physically to match how they turned out familialy...

7/22/2007 3:59:39 PM

The epilogue wasn't the best and I wasn't very happy with it. Rowling says she wrote it years ago so that may be it.

7/22/2007 4:43:34 PM

it seemed to generic after the convoluted (not necessarily in a bad way, but in a "you better keep up" way) nature of the rest of the book...

7/22/2007 4:55:53 PM

Quote :

"too many people just ignore epilogues, as if nothing happens AFTER a story is over"

I didn't ignore it, I read it. I honestly think the last sentence of the chapter before would've been a perfect ending to the book, as the epilogue can mostly be gleaned from everything that happened. But a sappy montage of "hey, we're older, we've got kids and we saved the world for them!" was overkill.

7/22/2007 5:00:04 PM

^ I agree that the eipologue was campy (and the names of the kids were way too bad), but I really wanted another chapter anyway. show us the start of the rebuilding process, harry reading about the new minister (whoever) in the quibbler over breakfast at Grimmauld place, and latter that same day going with the weasleys to platform 9 and 3/4s to see ginny off. talking about their plans/jobs.

[Edited on July 22, 2007 at 5:32 PM. Reason : dug]

7/22/2007 5:08:31 PM

who the hell was hugo at the very end of the epilogue, lol

I liked the book, the epilogue didn't do anything except show that Harry had no imagination for naming his kids. A rebuilding process epilogue would've been cool but still not complaining.

Also, that whole 'Deathly Hallows' thing seemed just thrown in there and didn't have much influence on the story at all. I was expecting him to reassemble the pieces some how and use them to overcome the 'must die' prophecy/mission but then miraculously there was another way!

That was kinda cheesy while reading, how solutions constantly kept popping up (o look, a doe...o look, an elf...o fuck we said his name accidently even though we've been avoiding it the entire book, god dammit). I liked how it was tied together at the end though, very nice.

7/22/2007 9:20:44 PM

it almost seemed at some points incoherent....most notably the epilog (which was almost painful to read it was so confusing)
plus it was all too predictable, i enjoyed reading it, but everything i expected to happen is what happened

7/22/2007 9:39:21 PM

i too was expecting the deathly hallows to be his way out of the necessary death of the prophecy. it seems odd to me to name the book over something that really doesnt play much of a role. they coulda called it harry potter and the elder wand and it woulda made more sense.

7/22/2007 11:02:34 PM

glad to see I wasn't the only one that found the epilogue to be an absolute mess. It was just name after name doing something. There was no attempt to really introduce any of it. I wouldn't have minded it so much had it been put together more like a normal chapter rather than 7 pages of insanity. Ohh..Malfoy is there, WTF happened to his family? Was everyone like, oh, you didn't reeeeally mean to do all that stuff? So we know what happened to Neville, what about all the other characters from the series? I assume that the girl "Teddy" was "snogging" was Bill and Flur's because she was Ron's niece?

Quote :

"i too was expecting the deathly hallows to be his way out of the necessary death of the prophecy. it seems odd to me to name the book over something that really doesnt play much of a role. they coulda called it harry potter and the elder wand and it woulda made more sense."

wanted to add my take on the dethly hallows. For me, they were important because they were what made Dumbledore who he was. They were what made him understand what Voldemort could not. By tasking Harry with finding the Hallows, he was, in essence, giving Harry the knowledge he needed to defeat Voldemort.

[Edited on July 22, 2007 at 11:18 PM. Reason : .]

7/22/2007 11:11:25 PM

I LOLed:

7/23/2007 12:01:17 AM

i enjoyed the book, there was one thing that irked me though

the battle at hogwarts, played out like a cutscene in a videogame, you're running through and something pops up to stop you and you either defeat it or one of the other random ass people does something and shouts out a one liner


well that and the epilogue

7/23/2007 3:15:16 AM

The Deathly Hallows/Horcrux seemed like a Yin-Yang dichotomy. The Deathly Hallows consumed Albus and he realized that this was his downfall (he wanted to use the power of the stone instead of destroy the Horcrux). He also knew Harry needed to make his own choice to make him who he is and thats why he was left with the knowledge of both (the decision to not go after the Elder Wand first was probably the most important in the entire book).


And that Epilogue was pretty bad.

7/23/2007 5:49:11 AM

how did neville get the sword of gryffindor? the last thing i remember happenin to the sword was that goblin runnin off with it.

7/23/2007 6:01:29 AM

He pulled it out of the Sorting Hat after Voldy set it afire.

7/23/2007 6:08:11 AM

wow, i cant believe its over

i loved the book

7/23/2007 7:28:48 AM

At one point, I thought Teddy was snogging his own cousin.

7/23/2007 8:52:24 AM

I loved everything in the book with the exception of the epilogue. I didn't think the epilogue was bad I just wish it had covered more relevant things. I wanted to know more about the characters we actually knew, instead of just making a bunch of new ones.

Still, the Battle of Hogwarts, one of the best mental images yet. I especially loved McGonagall through that entire scene, calling up the suits of armor to defend the school, and the house elves running with knives.

The scene with Kreacher and the pot, hitting Mundungus- perfect touch of comic relief.

This has the potential to be a fantastic movie, if they don't butcher it like the last few.

7/23/2007 8:56:05 AM

Finished it 4:30 this AM...Thought it was a great book. Alot of random/accidents/luck but hey, thats been Harry's style through out.

I am glad to see that DA gets more attention action...By time they got Hogwarts and things began to come together I was so pumped.

I did want to hear/know more about the characters lifes after i.e. Weasley's, Malfoys, DA members...

Still a great book...damn can't believe it's done...

Couple parts really had me sentimental


III

7/23/2007 9:06:06 AM

Quote :

"I didn't think the epilogue was bad I just wish it had covered more relevant things. I wanted to know more about the characters we actually knew, instead of just making a bunch of new ones."

yes, and i wanted to know how the joke shop turned out. maybe percy and george kept it going or something like that.

7/23/2007 9:18:23 AM

I finished the book last night and I loved it and I am sad it is all over. I have lots of thoughts and questions, too many to type.

It was interesting how Harry began to use unforgiveable curses in the bank, and how he didnt use one on Voldemort.

Then ending was bad ass, I cant just imagine the spinning camera around Harry and Riddle as the crowd in the Hall watches on. (oh and Minerva McGonagalls line to Slughorn, "Its time Slytherin decides whos side they are on, and if you get in our way WE DUEL TO KILL" that was one of the most bad ass lines in the book).

I like the 19 years later in that, she has a place to start if she ever wants to and i hope she does, continue the series somehow. We dont know their jobs or the status of the others. Who is now headMaster?

The part where Harry walked into the forest with his lost love ones was hard to read. I went through a ton of emotions in this book.

I could have conversations about it for hours.

7/23/2007 9:19:42 AM

Quote :

"(oh and Minerva McGonagalls line to Slughorn, "Its time Slytherin decides whos side they are on, and if you get in our way WE DUEL TO KILL" that was one of the most bad ass lines in the book)."

Agreed, but so was Mrs. Weasley line to LeStrange...can't remember it, at work, but that got me hyped.


III

7/23/2007 9:25:36 AM

NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH

something like that

and Harry dying for the students at Hogwarts was awesome

also, that thing crying in under the stool in Harrys mind when he died, I think that was Voldemort

7/23/2007 9:28:47 AM

^^"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER, BITCH" or something like that....made me lol

[Edited on July 23, 2007 at 9:30 AM. Reason : mmm..carrots]

7/23/2007 9:29:07 AM

Quote :

"I wanted to know more about the characters we actually knew"

i think the only one who i really noticed as missing was Luna... they've wound up doing a lot with Luna, especially in this book, and i was curious about what happened to her... last we saw she was distracting everyone so harry could escape (unless i missed a line in there somewhere)

7/23/2007 9:31:43 AM