Drooling, Dozing, Disorientation: 'Potter' Was Worth It

July 21, 2007 — -- I had planned to read this book deliciously slowly -- going over page after page, knowing that it was the last time I would truly enter a world so clearly painted, one I might even feel a part of.

But after I elbowed my way to the front of the Borders line in New York's Columbus Circle, managing to buy the book by 12:07 a.m., get home by 12:33 and start reading around 12:57 a.m., I have not lifted my eyes from it until just now at about 2:46 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

There were four hours or so I believe where my eyes did close, and I used the book as a pillow and my drool marked the where I left off reading -- at the top of page 437. But when I opened them again at about 8:15 a.m. or so, I picked up the book and started reading again like I had never stopped.

And now, 13 hours after I began, I have a few empty bottles of water and seltzer by me, and my left foot has fallen asleep, and I don't quite know where I am. I feel like if I turn and look out the window from the back of my eye, the outlines of Hogwarts would be seen, peaking through the trees and the dappled shade cast by their leaves.

I feel tingly and warm like I've bewitched, enchanted, or, as they say in the book, "confunded" by a twitch of a wand. Maybe I've been given some kind of love or happiness potion or maybe the book lying open on the sofa next to me emitted some magical enchantment that allows everything to seem right with the world.

Rowling's seventh novel, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," is a fast-paced thriller that leaves no stone unturned or question unanswered for those who have followed Harry from his first year at Hogwart until his last.

The action sequences often need rereading because it is finely detailed and rarely pauses. Readers dive back into Rowling's wizarding world with a lurching aerial battle that quickly plunges Harry and his best friends into the quest set for them at the end of the sixth book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."