I'm re-reading the first four first, but...

So gjstruthseeker calls me up at ten-to-nine from the Hollywood Barnes & Noble and tells me it's dead there and I should come down to have dessert and keep her company while she waits. So I do. She hadn't been able to find a green-and-white-striped tie and had settled for a yellow and maroon one, but I've promised to crochet her a scarf in Slytherin colors. If she wears it and the tie at the same time, my theory is she'll be annihilated in a burst of energy.

At the bookstore there was first coffee and a game of war. Then there was bookmark-making involving themed stickers and glitter glue, and a very creepy man who was supposed to be dressed like a character from the new book, but who mostly looked like a walking disco ball. He was handing out Harry Potter glasses of thick black plastic, overlarge and perfectly round. I wore a pair; Jules had a lightning bolt stenciled on her forehead. A reporter from our local ABC affiliate was circling, inteviewing the kids.

Jules: Now, why wouldn't the local news be talking to some of the older kids? I mean, they know why the younger ones are here.
Me: Maybe they're afraid of what we're going to say. "Well, you see, we were drawn in by the homoerotic subtext between Harry and his nemesis Draco Malfoy, and the resulting tension that drives that particular subplot, plus the possiblity it creates that one day in the future, after the war has been fought and won, they will shag like rabbits." You know, 'cause what then? "Back to you, Bob"?

In other personal literary news, aside from being utterly fascinated by and halfway through The Language Instinct, I'm sixty pages into Sharpe's Tiger, and he's a butch Billy Budd! The young, prettyhandsome sailorsoldier who everyone adores and wants to fuck, except for the one evil guy who hates him and wants to fuck him. But I'm pretty sure this one will end better. I mean--there are sequels.