It’s Coming
I’ve been looking for it.
The tell-tale signs of it coming, like paperback versions of the earlier books in the series appearing in people’s hands, spines bent and edges worn. These are the people brushing up on what happened in the last book so they can be prepared for the new one. Oh, it’s coming, even if I haven’t seen it yet with subway readers.
The seventh and final Harry Potter book is on the way. Pre-publication orders are being taken, marketing plans being laid, publishing reputations put on the line. Subway readers’ page-turning fingers across
New York City are starting to itch.
When there’s a book out that everybody’s reading it spreads to subway readers just as it does to the rest of the world and it’s a fascinating experience of pop culture. For a while there was The DaVinci Code, with three or four people on a crowded subway car reading it in paperback and one person reading the hard cover, smiling at each other when they noticed they were reading the same thing–every once in a while someone asking one of them, “It is any good?”
I can’t think of another book that this has happened with since the last Harry Potter. Sure there’s some Maeve Binchy out there and lots of Nicholas Sparks, but there’s no one book that’s had five or six readers on one car, together, their noses deep in the recycled paper.
But this one I can feel. Not quite three months away. When the kid with the lightning bolt scar on his forehead ships into town for his seventh and final book I’ll see it on the subway. And I’ll see the knowing smiles of fellow readers as we exchange glances, then turn the page.
–Joe Lunievicz