Harry Potter and the Wait for the Postman

I've done something foolish, I'm afraid. I ordered HPatDH off Amazon to be delivered first thing tomorrow morning. It seemed a good idea at the time, but now as I write this -- 46 minutes to midnight -- I realise I could be at the 24 hour Tesco down the road, where they'll surely have a billion copies on hand.

Such foolishness means I'll have to wait for the postman(woman) to arrive tomorrow -- meaning I'll start reading about the same time all you Calgary folks are at Diagon Alley/McNallys picking up your copies...

Of course, I could just cut my losses and go buy it... the temptation is rather overwhelming, I admit. But no, I'll calm myself by blogging for now, but with all the theories floating the interwebs, I'd better unplug come midnight lest I be spoiled.

So some thoughts, before I get to read the thing...

1) If Dumbledore isn't dead, or somehow rises, oh, I don't know, Fawkes-like from the ashes, I'm going to be disapointed. Much as I love Albus, his rebirth would ruin HPatHBP as a stand-alone forever...

2) If the photographed ending I read online -- I assumed it was fake, but the NYT says otherwise, but they also claim they bought the real book Wed, which is a lie -- is real, then JKR has ended on one hell of a sappy note. Just saying.

3) That said, I hope for a happy ending simply because they're children's books, which should end in happy ways. And don't go telling me they're adult books, just because adults read them. They're kids books. Just very good ones, that's all.

4) And RAB -- no real theories on that, other than the ones I've heard by accident. (People should learn to speak less loudly in public when discussing spoilers....) It better not be a randomly inserted character tho, as that would annoy me. She's pretty good at putting hints in early on, which leads me to believe the aforementioned overheard spoiler might be true...

Anyway. Can you believe this shit is really coming to an end? I mean, this has to be the biggest event in publishing ever. When has a book ever been more eagerly awaited? People lining up to buy it, staying up til midnight, contemplating purchasing multiple copies because of their impatience to get their (my) hands on it -- it really is extraordinary. Movies inspire this, some music has. But a book?

And can you believe, with the internets and all, people were predicting the death of the novel, the death of reading off of lowly paper? The billions of dollars Ms Rowling is about to earn suggest otherwise...