Harry Potter: The Countdown Begins

February 2, 2007 - 2:31 PM by Sarah

OK, so I haven’t really seen any hype, yet, in Jerusalem about the announcement that the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series is set to be released on July 21.

But I live here, and this is my reality, for Israelity:

My sister sent me a link to a major bookseller’s website, through which I could pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But if I pre-order it that way, then what MAY happen is that the book arrives in Israel late on Friday or on Saturday morning, and I wouldn’t be able to get it from the post office until Sunday — a full 24+ hours after it is released! I can’t wait that long.

More likely, the book would arrive a few days after the release, since it would have to travel all the way from England or the US to Israel. No way. Uh-uh.

So, what I’m hoping will happen is what happened when Book 6 came out. Steimatsky’s, a local chain of bookstores that sells English as well as Hebrew books, took pre-orders, and I was able to pick up my book as soon as Shabbat ended. I then stayed up all night and had finished it by 10 am the next morning, resulting in my looking like a train wreck when, who should walk into the cafe where I was sipping coffee with a friend, but a guy from my past whom I hadn’t seen for over 2 years . . . but anyway, that is neither here nor there.

The real problem with reading the whole book in one gulp the day it comes out is that I now don’t really remember the details of the story, because I inhaled it in one go. For Book 7, the plan is to pick it up on Saturday night (if Steimatsky’s comes through on this again), and ration out the reading over, say, three days. That’s the plan, anyway. It could be that Harry Potter books are like Tootsie Pops: After taking a few licks, you just can’t help but to bite into the rest. But this time, if I look like a train wreck, I’ll be sure to stay away from public places.

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