staying.cool

its finally done. harry potter 7 is out. 72 million copies have been sold in 72 hours, including nearly 150 copies a second in the first hour of release.

i still remember my mom plonking down books 1-4 all the way back in 2000. ’twas when ‘the goblet of fire’ was released, and i plunged into the world of wizards, witches and magic. for a kid who has long tried to levitate playing cards having seen kered do it in the strips, this was a bit of a dream. my sis and i launched into a reading competition, to which there was an obvious winner.

the world was beautifully detailed, something i recognized as being a gift of tolkein. and now that the series is done, i can say that it contained something more too, the additional element of the jigsaw puzzle. and dollops of my beloved sense of english humor.
mind you, no real comparison can be done to tolkein though: similar worlds, but the approach and the audience are very different.

i did not anticipate book 5 and 6 like everyone. there was no pre-ordering for me. get the books within the first week seemed good enough. then of course, a 2 year wait for the seventh ensured much more on my part.

one very obvious point i realized within 30 pages of the book is that ‘this is a book‘. to me the sixth was a glorified screenplay. the work and effort in this book are obvious from the word go. this has been in the making since book one. most importantly, this was probably part of the sixth book before she realized she had put too much into it (or maybe it was the publisher). and so we had an average sixth with choppy writing, obvious screenplay notions etcetera. and now the seventh. in all its grandeur. and completely worth it.

the series is finally over. the fifth and sixth undoubtedly had some very heavy-heart moments, but this one - this one had shock and sorrow unmatched. i had to re-read some passages to let them sink in completely.

i’m sad.
but now i’m trying to figure a way to read all 7 together. for the sake of some very memorable characters. and some great page-turning.

after all, it always about finding that little bit of magic.

as most of the sentient world not living under a rock knows… harry potter’s final instalment came out on saturday.
given my luck in such matters, i’m reading the book on monday.

having pre-ordered the book almost 5 months ago, i had decided to ship it to my college.. seeing as i wasn’t too sure of my address.

then, last week, amazon hooked me with an offer for $5 for receiving the book on the day. naturally, i suckered.
naturally, i missed the fact that i had shipped the book to college. on a saturday. in summer.

i wasn’t seeing the book anytime soon.

i went back to change the book - duh - but duh me, i remembered this fact on the day they finalized the order. good job, sev.

desperation dictated that on friday i attempted to track the book. it was in NJ, no details where… UPS only undertook shipping on this one. USPS was obviously sketchy about details given the 10m pounds invested in security. even in response to possibly holding the package for me. possibly if i called on saturday morning at 1030am i could know more ?

saturday, 10am. i called.
the supervisor is put on.
i check about the package headed for my department on a day that my college is closed.

matter-of-factly, i was told that my package was picked up by the rutgers postal service, which apparently functions even when rutgers is closed to the world.
oh, and it had been picked up half-an-hour ago. possibly an earlier call could have saved me the trouble of waiting until monday.

DAMNIT.

i tried desperately. to no avail. whoever the pickup was, they weren’t near any phone i could reach.

and so, monday it was. i spent the weekend playing incommunicado to the internet.
and monday, playing incommunicado to everyone.