Living the Fictional Dream

I love it when people get excited about reading stories! For the most part, it really doesn’t matter what novel, short story, etc., that they are excited about. Just the fact that people are so excited about fiction that they have to talk about it and share it with their friends is great. It helps balance out all the depressing stuff you read all the time about the horrible state of publishing today and how TV and video games have totally replaced reading in the lives of most people.

My first “midnight madness” party for a book release was for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I read the first three HP novels in a row. A lot of the kids that I worked with at church were talking about it, and I wanted to see what the big deal was. I loved it, and, luckily, Goblet of Fire came out fairly soon after I was introduced to the series, so I didn’t have to wait that long for it. OotP, however, was a long, long wait.

When the big day finally approached, it seemed that all the local bookstores were trying to out-do each other by putting on the best release party for it. Even better, the release parties took place at midnight, so it felt like you were getting your copy early (a few hours early, but still… I was one of the first to have a copy in my hands!). My local Borders is my store of choice, so I signed up for an advance copy (which, of course, helps them know how many copies to order) and headed over to the party that night with such excitement that I didn’t even notice that my husband (who’d been so dead asleep on the couch when I told him I was leaving that he didn’t even respond) running out of the house and yelling for me to wait. To this day, he still talks about how I love HP more than I love him (of course, since he’d been so dead asleep, I didn’t even think to look for him in my rearview mirror and I had the radio cranked up so I didn’t hear him if he yelled, but that is apparently beside the point!).

The party was fun! People (not me, but some people) went in costume. There were exhibits of animals found in the HP books (owls, snakes, etc.). There was fortune telling, tarot card reading, and free samples of bookmarks, stickers, chapters of other new releases, and more. I had such a good time, that I went again for both Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The best part of these midnight madness parties, though, is the vibe of excitement in the air. Excitement about a book! Previously, I’d only seen such excitement on opening day movie releases (like when my friends and I sat in long lines to go to the first showing of the re-release of Star Wars: a New Hope when it came out during my college days).

At the midnight parties, I got to talk to other HP fans, theorize about what might happen in the next book, relive favorite parts of the past book, debate relevant HP issues, such as who is the best Quidditch player and whether Hermione was destined to be with Harry or Ron. That was the very best part of the whole thing!

Of course, now that the HP series has come to its grand conclusion, I wondered if that was it for the midnight madness parties at Borders. It made me a little sad, honestly, but what book could fill that void enough to warrent such a shindig? If they had midnight release parties before HP, I never heard about them (though, if they had done that for a book I liked as a kid, I bet my mom would have taken me to the party — too bad we didn’t have Borders and B&N in Waco when I was young!).

The other day, I found out what series has replaced HP in the midnight madness release party queue — Breaking Dawn, the newest book in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. My friend Sandra and I are going to go to the party this Friday night, and I’m looking forward to it quite a bit. I really enjoy Meyer’s novels. Are they as good as HP? I don’t know… I find it hard to think the crowd will be as big as it was for HP, if only because the book series is really more girl-oriented. I don’t know that the series has quite the broad appeal to male readers as HP did.

But, you know, I don’t care. A midnight madness party is people who are excited about reading. They are so excited about a new book, that they will forgo sleep and stand in line for a few hours just to get their hands on a new, hardback book. They defy all those people who think that reading is going out of style. So, I say yay to Borders and yay to Meyer — thanks for bringing us all together.

Let’s get excited about reading. And, you know, even if the book you are excited about reading isn’t big enough for Borders to give it a midnight madness party, that’s OK. Be excited anyway. Blog about it. Talk about it. Tell other people that they need to read it to (and buy their own copy if they like it). Let’s all be excited about reading fiction! C’mon… it’s fun!