How late will you/did you stay up reading HP7: The UPS Man Hates Him Like Damn?.
I’m betting Hubby will be up until about 2am, eastern. What about you? Your family? Will everyone be up late reading?
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I am bemused to say that Hubby was up until 3am but his brain was spinning and he didn’t get a wink of sleep.
He’s a zombie. Is that JK Rowlings’ next series?
I picked it up Saturday morning, started around noon, and finished at 2am. After the big reveal in the pensieve toward the end of the book, the climax was a little anticlimactic for me. Snape’s story would have been much more interesting!
Finished it around midnight, then wrote a haiku on how gobsmacked it left me.
Wow.
P.N. Elrod- my husband is composing a letter to JKR threatening to send her his therapy bills. Lord knows she could afford to pay for em…
I may listen to them on audio at some point, Alison, but I picked up the first book a few times and never could get past chapter 2. I like the movies well enough, and think they’re great stories, but the writing style does nothing for me.
The first book was not very well-written, in my opinion (I’m not saying the plot itself was not well-done, but the writing). The following books, she definitely improved her craft. But she still does the cardinal sin of using as many adverbs as possible, which I knows drives some writers crazy.
I don’t mind it. It really was a series written for children. A lot of children’s books are written in a different style.
I recieved my copy of HP early on Saturday morning and stayed up until 2:30 PM to finish(had to take food breaks and a nap-I was up at six in the morning,waiting for the UPS guy). It was so wonderful!
I totally finished at 11:30 on friday because I am a bad person and got it illegally and proceeded to read all day at work.
How’s this—no one I know in RL is reading it—or they aren’t admitting to it.
I went to the midnight release, but waited ‘til saturday morning to start reading. My husband, ever the voice of reason, reminded me that throwing off my sleep schedule 4 days before the BAR exam was probably not the best idea. So we read all day saturday and didn’t leave the house or turn on the tv or radio all day for fear of spoilers.
Unfortuneately, I read a lot faster than hubby. I spent a lot of energy making sure not to cry, so I wouldn’t give anything away. Then I finished a good two hours before he did and re-read teh last hundred and fifty pages or so, just to keep myself occupied and quiet.
Just finished it and called my daughter on the other side of the country to discuss it with her – she finished last night. We both loved it.
As to JKR’s writing – like any us who are writing regularly, it was improved and tightened. She’s also showed some great character arcs over the entire series.
I really loved it (don’t care if I get dissed – loved the Beatles in 1964 when everyone was dissing them and me). Also loved the ending – my favorite book of the series.
Mitzi
Staying away from any and all stories ( scrolled madly to the end of the comments for fear of spoilers) about Harry and Book 7
Me and my kids have read each one a few chapters a night for the last decade. it’s still a big treat even though my oldest is 13! When was the last time you had your 13 yearold say “Mom can we read the story before bedtime?”
I’ve alread issued a no spoilers warning e-mail to everone I know, on top of that I intend on staying away from the more snarky/asshole sites I frequent (excluding this one of course, cause you Bitches would’nt do that to us) for fear they would just give it away
I swear I will pummel the person who gives away any portion of this book!
An interesting side note for me…the number of households purchasing multiple copies.
Alot of the local grocery stores sold #7 @ 40% off cover. I overheard clerks saying they sold 60 in the first 20 minutes.
Not reading. Kidlet figured the series could be her summer reading, after finishing #1 she’s confused about all the hoopla. Picked up #2 at the library yesterday, I’ll tell her SB’s say it gets better…currently reading “Hunt For Red October”, so she won’t be starting immediately.
Kidlet had a recent movie night with friends to watch first movie. Her brothers were sucked in also, but that probably owed as much to the cute girls in the room as interest in the movie. Frankly, none of mine are particularly interested in HP.
7:30 AM and I finshed it.
Just came to say something I’ve observed…
Good Girls Go To Heaven…
And Bad Girls Go To Slytherin
My son learned to read somewhere between book two and three. After that, he read them by himself—he didn’t need me.
You couldn’t have met a happier man.
For me, HP is like Scientology. I understand that a lot of people really love it, but I can’t comprehend the attraction.
Reserved a copy at my local Borders about 2 weeks ago. Went Saturday morning after a leisurely breakfast and got a cherry parking space, was the only one in line to buy my book, snagged it. Went home. Slathered on the sun screen and proceeded to read. Several hours later, and one really nasty sunburn, I moved back in the house with 100 pages left to go. Had a party with various friends all while eying the book.
From 7 to midnight I was a perfect hostess and kind and considerate. At midnight I pretty much kicked everyone out and said “Harry Potter time! Good night!” Finished it around 1am. Sort of sat there blinking for another hour. Then passed out.
Was worth it. 🙂
I got my book at midnight and started reading at 12:30am, as soon as I got home. Read until 3:30am. Only peeked once at the Epilogue.
Read all day Saturday from 9:30-midnight, with breaks to do a couple of loads of laundry. Took cooking/eating breaks, too, but they didn’t count since I turned on the CD version while I did those things.
I cried buckets.
I’m not sure how I feel about the book overall. I’m still processing.
Loved it. Never went to bed on Friday night after I got mine—I finished around 7AM on Saturday morning.
I didnt’ *intend* to pull an all-nighter. I just…never got tired. My adrenaline kept me going, sans-caffeine, for a marathon 6-hour reading session.
And then I had to try to sleep for a few hours until the rest of the world caught up with me. *That* was the hard part.
Someone somewhere talked about how strange the Newberry Awards were, having awards in children’s books being handed out by adults, folks who knew nothing of being a child. Harry Potter in Book 1 is 11 years old. It’s more of a kid’s book than any other in the series. Me, I hated Book 5. Too much teen angst—Book 4 was really great, and then the beginning of Book 5 was a disaster. And yet now I see why JKR had that there. Book 6 was a bunch of puzzle pieces and this last one… well, I’ll hold my judgment here.
One thing I can say is that Book 7 isn’t written for the same audience as Book 1. I’ll let parents choose how to break this news to their children.
I went to one of those midnight release parties and the were no E-meters in sight. The age skewed toward the late high school/college age crowd, leaning toward the female gender.
So, I’d liken the craze less to something akin to Scientology and more toward the end of The Sopranos. Everyone’s expecting the worst to happen, and you want to see how it all comes together. Or falls apart.
I’m done. Tried to read it when I first got it Friday Night/Saturday Morning but was too sleepy and only read about two chapters. Finished it at 3:30 am finally Sunday.
3 AM.
I began about noon, however; a late start.
“One thing I can say is that Book 7 isn’t written for the same audience as Book 1.”
Or, looking at it another way, they’re written for exactly the same audience. My daughter was 9 when my sister sent her HP1 for Christmas in 2000 – very age-appropriate read, and she’s 16 for HP7 – still an age-appropriate read.
I always wondered if JKR did that consciously – grew the books up with the readership.
Couldn’t really get to it until today—though I had managed to sneak a few chapters Friday night and Saturday evening. But today. Ahhh.
I finished it in 4 hours and was highly satisfied.
I got my copy yesterday (local BAM had tons of them) around 2 CDT, started reading around 5, had to put it down to go get my new glasses. Picked it back up around 9pm, read until 11:30 CDT when I was about to fall over (the woes of motherhood lol). Finished it today around 2:30 CDT.
I thought I was a fast reader, but I am amazed at some of you finishing in 4 or 5 hours.
I wasn’t able to start reading until 4pm, took a break to go out with friends, and then read until 3am. Just finished a couple of hours ago.
I finished in about 14 hours, I’m a slow reader. My best friend flew in from the Seattle to be on the East Coast with me for the book release. We had been planning it since the date was decided in February. She reads much faster than me, she finished in about 9 hours. It was brilliant. I didn’t think that JKR could pull off so many plot circles/arcs in under 1,000 pages without it feeling like a laundry list of information. She made it all flow in a storyline. I cried and needed tissues at one point, but I teared up at many more.
The whole experience of reading this book can be liken to a rollercoaster. On one page you are laughing out loud at what someone says or does and within two pages you are yelling “Noooo!” The best part of the book is that there is an end. No more “what’s next?”
Her hero grew up, so it makes a lot of sense. Too bad The New York Times doesn’t see it that way. They’re calling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a children’s book, and thus should be banishing it from the official Bestseller list (for mainstream hardcover fiction)
—Why Harry Potter Won’t be a Bestseller
It’s not the first time that the NYTimes has done this, but it’s just pretty glaring when the NYTimes Bestseller list is so far off the mark.
NY Times Bestseller list…has it’s own agenda. During a recent book purchase at B&N, I asked the clerk why one of my favorite authors wasn’t eligible for their “bestsellers” sale price. I was informed that B&N assigned “bestseller” status based entirely on their own sales…they previously used NYT list, BUT…they found that NYT wasn’t particularly accurate, and there were usually several titles listed that didn’t even show up with significant sales in B&N sales data.
Therefore, IMO it appears NYT uses their status to attempt to influence book buyers and promote authors they consider “worthy”…or something. Does this surprise readers of romance?
Got my copy at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, finished at 12:15 Monday morning.
Loved it. Now I want to re-read it to savor it slowly.
Started at 10:15 AM on Saturday, finished at 9 PM the same day. Had lots of breaks for making comfort food.
Started rereading at 10 PM Saturday, and still haven’t finished that (it’s not Monday, 9:20 AM).
Much love.
Got it and finished it yesterday. Loved most of it, but my god, the epilogue. It reminded me all too much of badly written fanfiction, and those names…no. The epilogue officially doesn’t exist for me anymore; the book ends on page 600.
It went on sale in Aus at 9.01 a.m. I had my copy by 9.08 and – with small breaks for food and such – I’d finished reading by 6.30 p.m. 8ish hours all told.
Of course, my children had to fend for themselves while I was reading but as that meant I didn’t growl at them for being on the xbox for hours at a time…
I’m still pondering. Not sure I agreed with great chunks of it (except for Hermione! Awesome!) but, meh, JKR’s world, her rules…
Had a family reunion thing on Saturday so I didn’t get to start until Sunday.
Started at 1:30pm finished at 3:00 am.
Loved it. (I don’t think there was any I way I wasn’t going to if I’m being honest).
Need to read it again to take it in though. I agree the epilogue wasn’t quite what I was expecting but as a reader I’m satisfied.
Sitting at my desk drinking espresso and wondering how long this day is going to feel.
I bought my copy Saturday late afternoon from my favorite local indie, and I finished it last night around 11:15 pm. Blogged about it this morning, so I guess now I’m Pottered out. Overall, a good ending to the series. Big problems with the narrative style, but hell, I’m not her or her editor, so what do I know?
As I sit here and think about it – I’m going to offer an explanation for my own thoughts about the epilogue.
She wrote it years ago. I remember the interview on 60 Minutes when she held up the yellowed pages. She’d written it because she knew she wanted to get to that point someday.
So I wonder how much tweaking she did or how much she kept to her original words. We might have been reading the “end” but we were reading her “beginning” efforts as a writer.
Still loved it.
7 hours and 3 minutes left to go until this day ends.
I read the whole thing in less than a day… just like usual. I didn’t want to, but I just couldn’t stop.
yup, as usual I read the whole thing in one gulp and finished in about 6 hours(?). Overall awesome wrapup to the series, but I have to say I was a wee bit disappointed that the emotional depth of the previous books seemed to be lacking at times. it almost seemed that it needed another hundred pages in there; I think some editor got a bit happy with the weed-whacker. oh, and i have to agree with previous posters that the epilogue left quite a bit to be desired. all that said, i bawled like a baby muchly and also distinctly remember punching my fist triumphantly into the air a couple of times, too. i was hole-ly satisfied.
P.S.(it was too good – i saw more orange covers on the light rail this morning than faces!)
Like Teddy, I read the epilogue first. Mostly to piss off my teenager. Then I read my new Joey Hill….
I’m in mid-Potter. I had an emotional thing on Saturday after I bought it—I didn’t want to read it. The anticipation is what’s so enjoyable, really, that feeling of Christmas morning when you’ve got your first present across your lap and fingers under the tape. I realized that after this book, that’s all gone. The story will be done and written, and the ending won’t be a mystery anymore, and it made me sad.
And then I realized I could get a glimmer of the same feeling with _any_ book I pick up and started it last night at 8, read until midnight, read more on lunch today, up to page 400. I’m finishing it tonight, hell or high water. I’ve got to know, now.
On the upside, I got a complete hat knitted while I was putting off the book. I’ve never done that before—whipped off a whole project while procrastinating. It felt…exciting. 🙂
I finished mine this morning at 12:35 a.m.
Holy cats – great ending! I swore to myself I wouldn’t read any newspaper or go on the internet before I’d finished – which was a good thing since my city’s newspaper posted the ultimate spoilers on the FRONT PAGE THE FIRST MORNING THE BOOK CAME OUT.