The half-way point of The Half-Blood Prince

Just finished the Chapter 16 (of 30) of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which puts me at page 348 out of 652. I started reading about 1:30 a.m. this morning, right after we got back from the "midnight party" at the local Border's bookstore. Will have photos up from that soon, but at the moment I'm too engrossed in this book. Finally put it down for the night at 4 and then picked it right back up around 10 this morning. I might have it finished very late this evening, after which I'll try to knock out a report. Suffice it to say, it's a good book: maybe the best one to date. It has a lot of the good elements that Prisoner of Azkaban had going for it... yeah, that's the one book already in the series that this one is reminding me of. It hits the ground running from Chapter 1 (which answers a LOT of questions that readers might have had about the wizarding world over the past several years) and doesn't let up. Lot of mysteries getting resolved, new ones cropping up, and something that I don't think any Harry Potter fan ever, ever expected to happen (all I'll say is, it involves Professor Snape, so that could mean anything). Anyhoo I had originally thought about posting "updates" to this blog after every few chapters but it's proven impossible to stop for even that much. So, expect another post after I'm done reading Half-Blood Prince along with photos from last night's festivities :-)