lasultrix has given zorac socks! zorac is free!This post is SPOILER FREE - mainly as it is DISCUSSION OF THE BOOK FREE.
So, I t00bed into town at around 8 yesterday evening, to meet up with
cygnusfap for a spot of food, and we were soon joined by owlman. After eating we retired to a now empty Cygr00m for a chat before going to scope out the bookshops (yay! piles of OotP!) then moving on to G&D's where we met up with kay_taylor. After ice-cream we proceeded to the coach station to collect lasultrix, then back to Borders to join the queue. There was no queue. A short while later, a queue was created with us at the front of it. We then had a 40 minute wait observing the t00by wizard costumes of the staff and their giant quaffle, and squeeing when boxes of books arrived. Cyg tried to attract the attention of other fandomers in the queue - to discover that the girl immediately behind us was a fan of thegraybook's work...Finally, the announcer came on the tannoy and got us to count down the final 10m seconds of the wait before we lead the stampede to the checkouts - and I go to be the first person out of the store proudly brandishing a copy of the book :-). Outside, I was impressed by the length of the queue to get into the shop (in addition to what was inside), and the similar length queues at Waterstones and Smith's down the road. Soon we were on the bus in the direction of Chez Zorac - Las already ready the book, while the rest of us held back for our Evil Scheme. A couple of the folks behind us suggested that possibly we were a bit Sad. HP Gay porn was mentioned. They shut up.
Back home, Cyg, Kay, Simon and myself started our reading plan - one chapter at a time, stopping after each one for discussion. This may sound a bit longwinded (it took us around 17 hours to get through the book, including lunch break), but I though it worked really well, helping to build the tension - plus other people's insights are always interesting. As we were all reading at slightly different speeds (and Las was going straight through the book as she needed to leave early), there was considerable squeeage and wibbleage - accompanied by page numbers for reference. I shall definitely be reading books 6 and 7 in a similar fashion if at all possible.
This post was brought to you by Tesco's Kick (Red Bull, but at 98p for 2 litre bottles) and T00blerone (yes the one where each triangle weighs about 1lb).
