We were in Davis and my wife is in today's Sacramento Bee article (bolded)!
We were about #343 in line and they were letting you get one or two copies - we got two, one for my mother-in-law as well. We got out of there as quickly as we could and it was still about 1:20 am.
http://www.sacbee.com/145/story/284546.html
Magical moment arrives
Fans flock to bookstores for final 'Potter' volume
By Bobby Caina Calvan - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:56 am PDT Saturday, July 21, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1
To the very end, Harry Potter's spell on the Muggle world would not be broken. The fate of the boy wizard weighed heavily on the minds of millions of booklovers, young and old from around the globe, who at the stroke of midnight began devouring the pages of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final installment of the wildly popular series about the orphan boy's epic battle against the forces of evil.
What would become of Ron and Hermoine? Would the evil Voldemort be vanquished? And what fate would befall Harry, the bespectacled hero with the lightning-bolt scar? The answers were to come page by page on a journey of twists and turns.
"I don't want him to die," said Elizabeth Kroll, 11, of West Sacramento. She prepared for that possibility, she said. She vowed to flip the pages -- in order — from start to end.
She clutched the book in her arms. "She won't even let me hold it," complained her younger sister, Sarah.
The crowd surged as the clock neared midnight.
The release of the book marched across time zones, hour by hour.
Anticipation thickened through the night. At a block party in Davis, outside the Avid Reader on Second Street, so did the suspense.
Colin Unger, 8, of Davis, wearing a wizard's cape, couldn't wait to get his hands on his copy. He spent recent days rereading previous installments, the first published a decade ago.
He dove right in.
He read the book's opening sentence, "The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow moonlit lane." More would be read on the ride home under the family car's dome light.
"It's summer vacation, so he can stay up as late as he wants," said his dad, Dirk. Dad will have his turn at the book, too — "It's not just a kid's book," said the elder Unger.
A block away at the Borders bookstore, Stephanie Loutzenhiser, a Galt kindergarten teacher, fought temptation.
"I'm so tempted to skip to the end, then go back to read the rest of it," she said.
To while away time before the book's release, a crowd of 300 sat atop the asphalt of Second Street watching the movie "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" -- the fourth book -- on a screen set up outside the Varsity Theatre.
Set in an other world of dragons, magical cloaks and flying broomsticks , "Deathly Hallows" promises to be the ultimate confrontation between Harry and his nemesis, the wicked wizard Voldemort.
Some book reviews hint at heartache, advising readers to keep tissues at hand.
Whatever Harry's fate -- does he live or die? -- there were expressions of sadness that the series was at its end.
"I don't know what happens, but I'm sure some kids will have sad feelings. He was like a friend they've had for years, and having the series end would be like a deep loss," said Judith Blum, a family therapist in Davis, former school counselor and a grandmother of six. "I don't know if he lives or dies. I'm going to have to read it, too."
Copies flew from shelves with lightning speed in Britain and across the Atlantic then across the Pacific. The Internet, already flush with theories about how the series would end, fluttered with excitement. Spoilers ran rampant on the Web.
Series author J.K. Rowling, who created the magical lad in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" a decade ago, gave a midnight reading to 500 competition-winning children in the grand Victorian surroundings of London's Natural History Museum.
Bookstores across the capital area held parties Friday night, counting down the long awaited release of the novel, the seventh in the Harry Potter series.
Earlier in the day, a line of 50 people, mostly adults such as Danika Recore, waited outside the Borders bookstore in Natomas to receive bracelets entitling them to go to the head of the line once the book was released at midnight.
With her son and daughter, 3 and 5, too young to read, the book was for her, she said.
Friday night was relatively quiet at her household. No television, no Internet -- and no conversation that could possibly spoil the suspense.
"I don't know how it ends ... I want to get there myself," she said.
Rowling's books about the bespectacled orphan with the lightning-bolt scar have sold 325 million copies in 64 languages.
Hopefully the 405 is actually not busy for once.
