Fine dining versus swallowing whole

[Skimmel_98]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C3640
From: Skimmel_98
Subject: Fine dining versus swallowing whole
Date: 7/9/00 4:10 pm  (ET)

Good grief. Has everybody already finished the book? Did you guys read
the thing or swallow it whole?

I'll second the suggestion to hold off posting story related messages
for a week. It'll take me at least that long to finish it because I plan
on savoring every page of it... something I find difficult to do if I
blast my way through it.

My story of how I acquired the book. I was coming home from vacation
last night and drive as hard as we could it was 1:00 AM before we got
back to Houston. I expected to be simply too late to get a copy. Then
in this morning's paper... nice story and a nice quote for our fearless
leader... there is an advertisement for Best Buy. You know. The cheap
computer and electronics people. They have the Harry Potter book on sale
for $13. A quick call confirmed that they didn't open until 11:00 AM
and they hadn't been open late the night before. I quickly arranged to
be at the neighborhood Best Buy at 10:45 AM. I was third in line. The
doors opened promptly at 11:00 AM and we rushed in. Best Buy has the
least useful staff I've run into in a long time and none of them had
any idea who or what a Harry Potter was much less where it was in the
store. (Highest concentration of Muggles in quite a while too.) So
there are a dozen or so of us racing through the store searching for
the book. I happened to find the four copies they had first. I gave the
first copy to an elderly lady who was buying the complete set for her
grandchild and I took the second one.

In four minutes they were sold out. But I had my copy.

Now for the rest of the story. My 10 year old who has been flomping
around for the last several days disappointed that she wasn't going to
get to read Harry Potter IV before anyone else was a curious mixture
of delight and horror when she saw the book. Her first words... God
that's a big book. For a few minutes she sat and stared at it trying to
decide whether to start it or finish her TV program. Ten minutes later,
she turned off the TV and plunged into it.

That alone is worth the price of admission.