4B - Thursday, November 18, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com RMUGE MADNESS 'IJ spellbound for Potter premiere From Markley to South Quad, students prepare for midnight's moviegoing magic By Jennifer Xu I Daily Arts Writer "Harry Potter" book and movie pre- mieres have long brought out the crazy in our generation, and this is no exception for University students. Tonight, The Boy Who Lived is exploding onto our theater screens for the second-to-last time in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1," bringing a month's worth of par- ties and events to a close. The Michigan Muggles kicked off the adventure two weeks ago with a "Harry Potter" Trivia Night at Buffalo Wild Wings on State Street in Ann Arbor. People signed up in groups of four to par- ticipate, and proceeds went to fund a chil- dren's literacy program. "That was a good way to get warmed up," said LSA sophomore Kristin Harden. Just last year, the Muggles were formed by a small group of students passionate about the "Harry Potter" books and mov- ies, but the club has expanded significant- ly in the past few months. "We filled B-Dubs," Harden said. "I think there are a lot of people that are very open about their obsession with 'Harry Potter.' " The club also holds occasional book talks, in which members discuss what reading "Harry Potter" meant to them as a child and how they got so involved in it. "I started reading 'Harry Potter' when I was in the fourth grade," reminisced LSA senior Kelci Parker. "When I was younger, I didn't really like reading for fun. It was like the first book I could just casually read and enjoy, and after reading books one, two (and) three really quickly, I was hooked." "Also, the seventh book came out right after I graduated high school," she added. "Seventh year was like (Harry's) last year of high school and me and all my friends were like, 'It's for our class. It's for us.' "And it's our senior year right now, and Harry's graduating too - the first half is coming out now in my senior year, and the second half - that's when all the 'Harry Potter' movies are over and I'm done with college. It feels very symbolic." Harden and Parker are both planning on attending the midnight showing of the film tonight. "The week of 'Harry Potter' I'm also planning on watching all the movies," Harden said. "We'll probably split it between a few days since there's so many - I did that for the last movie where (my friends) sat and watched all of the movies in a day." Harden plans on dressing up as a Huf- flepuff student and already has her cos- tume ready. "(I) made it with my best friend for the USED BOOKS From Page 1B fact that I've got the only one in Ann Arbor no longer means anything, because all of the copies that are for sale all over the world are available all at once." Stocking up To keep their walls stocked, used book- stores must constantly purchase books. For most, the majority of these come from customers bringing old books into the store to sell. But choosing and valuing books turns out to be a more complicated process than it seems. "It's such a vast decision-making pro- cess (that) I can think of no easy way to describe it," Gillmore said. But after so many years in the used- book business, Gillmore and his fellow Ann Arbor booksellers can often assess a book's value on first glance. "What one pays depends, obviously, a lot on the book," Platt said. "Some books you think will sell very quickly you're going to pay a higher percentage (of the selling price). And generally the more valuable the book is, the higher percentage you'll pay for it." Shop owners consider the condition of the book, how well the book is made and who the author is. last movie," she said. "I have a blue blaz- er, and my friend actually drew the Huf- flepuff crest, and so I sewed that to the blazer. I have a skirt, a white shirt and I'll probably wear stockings or something." "My best friend is going as a Gryffindor Quidditch player," she added. "She drew out the Gryffindor crest, and she has a cape, which has her last name on it and the number seven. And she has a broom and she even made a little golden Snitch." Harden's passion for "Harry Potter" extends past mere enjoyment of the books and movies - for her, there's also senti- mental value in the series. "It was actually my mom that got me into reading them," she said. "She would read them to me every night before we went to bed, so I fell in love with them through that. Then my mom actually passed away when I was 11, and I just kept on reading them." For those without transportation to Quality 16 or Rave, fear not - most of the residence halls are taking students by university bus to the Saturday showing at varying times during the day. "We're going to have half-off conces- sions, and we're paying for some of the ticket, so it should (be) really nice," said LSA senior and Markley resident advisor Matthew Duprie. Markley's 45 RAs have also divided up the residence hall's four wings into the four houses of Hogwarts, with Lil- lian Madrigal and Brandon Ebenhoeh, both LSA seniors, acting as Head Girl and Head Boy, respectively. If a student participates in an event or wins a compe- tition, that person wins points for his or her "house." "We told everyone before fall break when they went home what their houses were. Then we put up a sign that said, 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened,' " Ebenhoeh said., "It's in red paint and looks like blood," Madrigal added. Markley is sponsoring a pie-eating con- test and a non-alcoholic Butter-Beer Pong tournament over the course of the week. "We found the recipe online. The essence of it is cream soda, butterscotch and vanilla ice cream. Lots of sugar," Ebenhoeh said. On Saturday and Sunday night, the resi- dence hall also plans to have its denizens play a real-life game of Quidditch, bor- rowing the Michigan Quidditch team's brooms and equipment for a big tourna- ment in the Central Campus Recreation Building. "The CCRB is nice because there's that track right above where people can go and "You learn after a while what authors are going to sell and what aren't," Koster said. "After so many years, you're selling the same people over and over, you just don't turn those down." There are several other ways to buy used or rare books, like estate sales, per- sonal collections and public libraries. Some booksellers also attend antiquar- ian book fairs, where collectors and mer- chants gather to talk about and sell books. Platt attends eight to 10 book fairs every year - some as far away as Boston, where he says most of his more expensive books sell. Platt also has hosted his own annual antiquarian book fair on campus for the last 33 years. The fair attracts booksellers from Ann Arbor and all over the Midwest each spring. However, most of the action for those who sell used books still takes place in the store, and with a constant influx of books and tens of thousands to sort and main- tain, it can be hard to keep track of every- thing. Used bookstores are notorious for their lack of organization. It can be a nightmare findingthe book you want,.or even the sec- tion you want. But somehow the owners can pinpoint the location of almost every book in their stores. "You tend to visualize where every- thing is," Platt said. But it wasn't always that easy for him: Platt recalled one of his first experiences in a used bookstore. Each wing of Markley Hall has been decorated to look like a different Hogwarts house. watch, so it kind of creates that environ- ment that they have in the books and mov- ies where people are watching the game from above," Madrigal said. The person who will be playing the Snitch has already been determined. "One of our staff is a cross country run- ner," Ebenhoeh said. "And he has a twin brother, so they're going to swap. It's real- ly going to be quite intense." South Quad Honors kicked off its own "Harry Potter" week last Saturday with the Yule Ball, a charity dance for which the majority of proceeds went to the Ruth Ellis Center, a center for homeless LGBT youth in Detroit. The ball is a continua- tion of the program's charity ball from last year that featured a series of "Harry Potter"-themed food, music and activi- ties. "Last year, we asked residents what they wanted out of next year, and over- whelmingly they wanted the Yule Ball back in addition to other 'Harry Potter'- themed things," Nursing senior Lizzi Shea said. "The Honors kids are really excited about this, and they definitely wanted to see it happen." Throughout the week, South Quad is showing selected films from the "Harry Potter" 'series and scenes from "A Very Potter Musical." There will also be an ethics panel about the decisions Harry makes throughout the books, led by Cen- "I can remember this guy asking for some obscure title," he said, "and the bookseller went up and found it right away, and I thought, 'How did he do that? How did he know where the books were?' Now I know." The magic of book browsing That lost feeling, though, is actually part of the allure of a used bookstore. In the process of looking for a certain book, you discover another one. "I suspect most of the books I sell are things people found but didn't know they wanted, rather than books they came for specifically," Gillmore said. "You literally don't know what you're going to run into in a place like this," he continued. "You don't even know what section you're going to be in in a place like this. You just wander around and see what catches your eye." Browsing, even browsing without the intention of buying, is something booksell- ers encourage, because the magic of find- ing something you weren't looking for can mean much more than pre-meditated buy- ing. It gives what Alvarez calls a "human component" to a purchase. "There are many collectors who, they buy a book, they have a collection, but they want to tell a story about how they got that book. ... Sometimes it is very fascinating ter for Ethics in Public Life fellow Zach- ary Smith. "A lot of people look at Harry Pot- ter and don't think about the immoral and unethical decisions that he makes," LSA senior Samantha Greenberg said. "For instance, when he makes Dumb- ledore drink the potion until he pretty much dies, is it moral, unethical? Yes. But he does it, and in the end there's this happy ending, of sorts. So the idea (is) that this happens in 'Harry Potter' a lot, and nobody takes a sec to look at how it impacts our real life." The week will culminate in a screen- ing of the film at Quality 16, which all the South Quad RAs will supervise and attend. But in addition to going to the movie's Saturday showing, Greenberg, an admittedly huge "Harry Potter" fan herself, is also planning on attending the midnight premiere with her friends. "My best friend and I have always been to 'Harry Potter' since the fourth movie, so there's really no other option than to go at midnight," she said. Greenberg's favorite premiere was the sixth movie, two years ago. "There was a group of 20 kids that all dressed up as something different, and in the hour and a half leading up to the pre- miere they acted out different scenes - they dueled, they had one person conjure up a Patronus and fight a dementor. They had one scene with Harry and Ginny in love," she said. Most students look favorably upon the division of the seventh and final book into two films. "I understand it, because it is a really long book," Harden said. "I just hope they use it to their advantage. I really hope that they include details about the Horcruxes, because that was my only problem with the sixth movie - they didn't go to so much detail about Voldemort and his past. So I hope that since they have so much more time, they are able to be truer to the book." Whether faithful or not, by next July the famed 13-year "Harry Potter" series will have truly come to an end. Many fans, who have grown up reading the adventures of Harry, Hermione and Ron and have shed tears over the deaths of major characters, will finally have to put away their broken glasses and invisibility cloaks, as a part of their childhoods comes to a close. "I remember when I finished the sev- enth book, I was crying," Parker said. "And my mom, who hadn't read them before - she came in, and she was like, 'Are you seriously crying?' It was like six in the morning, because I stayed up all night reading it, and I was like, 'Yes, the seventh book's over and I just don't know what to do!"' 0 David's Books has begun to do business online. browsing," he said. "I think there are still people who really enjoy that part: the hunting," he added. "They enjoy more the hunting than the possession itself." Such serendipity, Platt said, is unique to used bookstores. "A new bookstore is based on books that are just in print now," Platt said, "whereas with a used bookstore, every book that's ever been printed is a possibility. All the millions and millions of books that have ever been printed may turn up." Internet shopping similarly can't pro- vide this experience, Gillmore said. "(Customers) like the accident of finding books they didn't know existed," he said. "You can't look for books on the Internet if you don't know they exist." But despite their charm, the future of used bookstores is uncertain and used booksellers are unsure of their staying power. "I feel a little bit like a buggy-whip manufacturer in the time of Henry Ford," Gillmore said. "I see it becoming more and more and more difficult." His fellow used bookstore proprietors share his sen- timents. "It's tough to make ends. meet, and it could just get tougher and tougher until most (used bookstores) close," Koster said. "Every one or two weeks you read an article in the New York Times about the death of the book," Alvarez said, though he doesn't anticipate printed books dying out any time soon. Gillmore is also confident about the future of print. "There are two things that are going to make books survive. One of them is that a book's operating system will never become obsolete. The other is that books are as much icons as they are things to read," he said. And in talking to these book apprecia- tors, one begins to share their understand- ing that books can have value beyond just literary merit, or the simple transmission of ideas. "Besides the text, there is something else," Alvarez said. "There are more lay- ers that you could discover in a book that in many ways takes you to historical moments." "Now, that world is kind of disappear- ing in many ways. ... But I think there are still people, like me, who like to keep in touch with places and people." This idea of "keepingin touch with plac- es and people" - of experiencinghistory - is embodied in used bookstores. And while the future of Ann Arbor's used booksellers is uncertain, for the time being they are content to see where their businesses will go, as long as the books they love go with them and they can share the used book experience with their custowers. Dawn Treader's collection numbers appreximately 70,000 books.