{"id":958,"date":"2007-07-22T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=958"},"modified":"2007-07-22T21:02:05","modified_gmt":"2007-07-23T02:02:05","slug":"book-excitement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"Book excitement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday<\/em><\/p>\n

On a quiet side street in Somerville, Mass., two pre-adolescent girls were slowly pushing themselves along on their scooters. They were deep in conversation, ignoring the middle-aged woman walking just behind them (their mother?) — not ignoring the woman, but so engrossed in their conversation they weren’t aware of her. I barely caught the murmuring of their voices, but as they passed me I heard one of them say, “…but then in the sixth book, he….” Of course:– they were talking about Harry Potter.<\/p>\n

Saturday<\/em><\/p>\n

I was browsing in a used bookstore in Central Square, Cambridge. Two twenty-something clerks were chatting with each other.<\/p>\n

“Did you hear that yesterday, some guy with a bullhorn was standing in Harvard Square shouting spoilers to everyone who walked by?”<\/p>\n

“That’s just –” and the tone of her voice tells reveals how despicable she thinks it is. “People should be allowed to read the seventh book on their own.”<\/p>\n

“I heard someone grabbed the bullhorn away from him or something.”<\/p>\n

“Good.”<\/p>\n

Sunday<\/em><\/p>\n

J—-, who is headed off to college next fall, came to church. During social hour he was in a corner reading a large book. “The last book?” I asked him.<\/p>\n

“No, I’m rereading the sixth book first,” he said. He had gotten his copy of the final Harry Potter book at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday from Baker Books, an independent bookseller near New Bedford. He arrived at about ten, and was first in line. He said Baker Books was extremely well organized — the books were pre-ordered and pre-paid, the staff talked to everyone in line and checked them off on their master list, and when 12:01 came, everyone filed in and just picked up their book. “It was over really quickly,” he said. “But I heard the Barnes and Noble in the mall wasn’t well organized, and it took forever.” We agreed that independent bookstores are the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday On a quiet side street in Somerville, Mass., two pre-adolescent girls were slowly pushing themselves along on their scooters. They were deep in conversation, ignoring the middle-aged woman walking just behind them (their mother?) — not ignoring the woman, but so engrossed in their conversation they weren’t aware of her. I barely caught the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}