While most Dartmouth students may spend this Friday evening like any other, a group of 100 enthusiasts will pull an all-nighter at the Top of the Hop in anticipation of the release of J.K. Rowling's latest sensation, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."
The Harry Potter Up-All-Night event, hosted by the Student Activities Office, will supply a free copy of Rowling's sixth installment to the first 100 students who signed up for the reading. The program and reading will begin at 11:45 p.m. and continue until dawn on Saturday morning. The night will be filled with late-night snacks and free-flowing coffee, a costume contest and a discussion led by Philosophy Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
Student Activities is "really looking forward to bringing a piece of Harry Potter excitement to Dartmouth," organizer Eric Ramsey said.
According to Ramsey, anticipation is high among students as well; the event was fully registered within hours.
Those who did not make the Top of the Hop registration can venture to the Dartmouth Bookstore's release party on Friday instead. The bookstore will close at 10 p.m., and a "Midnight Madness" celebration will begin 45 minutes later, complete with trivia, Quidditch games, wand-making, snacks, raffles and a costume party ending with a free book awarded to the best costume. The book will go on sale at the stroke of midnight, and the bookstore's extended hours will last until 1 a.m.
The familiar Barnes and Noble environment has also been transfigured -- the entrance has become Platform 9 3?4, the information desk labeled Privet Drive, the caf renamed the Leaky Cauldron and the register titled Gringott's Bank -- all places familiar to the avid Potter fan.
The Dartmouth Bookstore has been promoting the release of Harry Potter for some time with posters advertising pre-orders and islands of books labelled "what to read while waiting for Harry Potter." More recently, pumpkins have been hung from the bookstore's ceiling, baskets of "July 16, 2005" bracelet bands have popped up and Hogwart's house banners are hanging from store walls.
Some find the Harry Potter mania unnerving and are suspicious of the hype for the children's novel. However, as of July 11, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" has become the best-selling pre-order book of all time.
Both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com have received over one million pre-orders each. Scholastic, the book's publisher, has ordered 10.8 million copies for the initial print run -- the highest order in history. Industry experts project 50,000 books will be sold per hour in the novel's first 24 hours of release.
The popularity of the novel is not merely a product of savvy marketing, nor is it a flash-in-the-pan success. While it may be listed as "juvenile fiction" suitable for children ages 9 through 12, people of all ages seem enchanted by the magic of the Harry Potter series.
"I'm excited... it's such a good series, very different from a lot of other things out there. I like reading [Harry Potter] because I can disappear into a different world," Elise Morrison '07 said. "I always thought I would study harder if I was learning how to levitate things or how to wand duel."
The content of the books has been closely guarded as the sorcerer's stone.
J.K. Rowling's website offers only a short excerpt describing the Half-Blood Prince, which reads: "He looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks of grey in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace even though he walked with a slight limp."
It has also been disclosed that the text will consist of 672 pages, with Harry enrolled for his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Additionally, three chapter titles have been released -- "Spinners End," "Draco's Detour" and "Felix Felicis."
To find out more, enthusiasts will have to wait to get the novel, along with millions of others, at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
