In less than a half day, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince goes on sale, finally and legally. To the many booksellers who have worked hard to put together some amazing parties and events--facing pricing, security, logistical and top-this pressures--we wish you the best of luck. If you're not too exhausted afterward, please write us about your experiences. What follows is our last column of Potter news before the big event.

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In order to help member booksellers who may run low on Harry Potter tomorrow, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association is stocking some 1,400 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in its San Francisco offices that booksellers can draw on beginning today. NCIBA executive director Hut Landon thanked Gloria Genee at Partners/West, who "wanted our booksellers to have quick access" to the book for restocking. Stores must have Partners/West accounts. NCIBA offices will be open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

That's not all Partners/West is doing. The wholesaler will keep weekday working hours this weekend at its Renton, Wash., warehouse to allow immediate restocking of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Booksellers who want to pick up copies of the book at the warehouse should call 800-563-2385 between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. to schedule a time.

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As we noted earlier this week, the promising remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which opens today, threatens to be overwhelmed by Pottermania, an issue explored by yesterday's Wall Street Journal. After noting the film industry's long slump in box office sales, the piece enumerates some of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's special challenges: a "dark take" on the material that might not please parents; a Johnny Depp performance that "evokes comparisons to Michael Jackson"; and most ironically, "intense competition from one of the world's most antiquated consumer products: a book."

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This evening Northfield, Minn., transforms itself into the village of Cowsmeade. Among the highlights: ArtOrg is becoming Station 9 3/4 and will exhibit original artwork by Mary Grandpre, illustrator of the Harry Potter books. Some of the artwork displayed involves Harry Potter. River City Books will open at 10 p.m. as Flourish & Blotts and hold a costume contest and offer treats.

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Branch's Bookshop, Chapel Hill, N.C., which closed last weekend but is putting on a Harry Potter party at a nearby toy and hobby store (Wednesday's Shelf Awareness), hopes to raise some money at the party "for the store's possible reopening," according to the Daily Tar Heel.

The student paper also reported that the store lost its lease after falling behind on rent payments, an amount that reached $90,000, including late fees.

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In addition to contests, food and games at its Harry Potter party tonight, the University Bookstore at the University of Oregon, Eugene, will offer a 20% discount on all general books excluding textbooks. The event runs from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Barnes & Noble College is opening a store August 15 at the South Campus Gateway development next to the campus of Ohio State University, Columbus, that will incorporate several veteran bookstores: Long's Bookstore and the Health Sciences Bookstore, according to the Lantern, the student newspaper. The nearly 50,000-sq.-ft. store will be called Barnes & Noble: The Ohio State University Bookstore. The other campus bookstore, the OSU Bookstore, which B&N has managed since 2000, will stay in the Central Classroom building. B&N has operated Long's Bookstore under lease from its owner, Campus Partners, which is also the developer of South Campus Gateway.

Sales in bookstores in May dropped 1.4% to $1.06 billion compared to the same period last year, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. Still, there was good news: sales rose over April, whose adjusted figure is $940 million. And the comparison to last year improved: April sales were down 5% compared to April 2004.

For the year to date, bookstore sales are $6.03 billion compared to $6.24 billion during the first five months of 2004, a 3.7% drop.

Total retail sales in May were estimated at $318.5 billion, up 6.2% over May 2004.

Early reviews of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are mixed.

Ebert & Roeper offer two sweet thumbs up.

A.O. Scott in the New York Times calls the movie "wondrous and flawed," lamenting the major digression from the book: "a psychological back story pulled out of a folder in some studio filing cabinet" to explain Willy Wonka. "Luckily, though, the sumptuous, eerie look and mood of the movie make it possible to ignore the dispiriting and superfluous adherence to convention. There is simply too much pleasure to be found in Wonka's world to get too hung up about his relationship with his dad."

Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal doesn't like the movie ("engagement without enjoyment") and so makes some particularly withering comments. For example, mentioning "rigidly structured sequences," he suggests director Tim Burton "could become the Albert Speer of whimsy."

Monday evening at 11 p.m., part two of the three-part series Guns, Germs, and Steel airs on PBS. Featuring Jared Diamond and based on his bestselling book of the same name (Norton, $16.95, 0393317552), this episode focuses on the overwhelming advantages Europeans had against other peoples as exemplified by Pizarro's swift, total conquest of the Incas.

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What pairings. Scheduled for tonight on Charlie Rose:  Stanley Crouch, author of The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (Basic Books, $24, 0465015158), and Christopher Hitchens, author of Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (HarperCollins Eminent Lives, $19.95, 0060598964).

Cody's Books' San Francisco outlet should open September 1, "give or take a week," according to owner Andy Ross. The 22,000-sq.-ft. space, once a Planet Hollywood and vacant and dilapidated for several years, is being completely renovated. "It's a very expensive project," Ross told Shelf Awareness.

Currently Ross is devising a color scheme "inspired" by the columns of the Palace of Knossos in Crete (l.) for use in the new space (r.), as it looked earlier this summer.

Ross waxed enthusiastic about the store, Cody's third after its two smaller stores across the Bay in Berkeley. "It's a gorgeous space," he said. Near Union Square at Stockton and Market, the store is in the same building as Virgin Records and a half block from Macy's. Most of the space is in the basement (which has a lower rent), but the main entrance is at street level, where an escalator will whisk customers down to the main level.

Seeking to make use of the somewhat impractical big wall at the top of the escalator, Ross has come up with an idea that "no one's ever done," he said: an "ongoing literary slide show" that will project "hundreds of slides of people reading at Cody's" over the years as well as images of "good visual books" coming out. He laughed as he added, "I don't expect anyone to copy this for a month and a half at least." (Ross has been taking pictures at Cody's events for 30 years and plans "to keep shooting.")

Under manager Patrick Marks, who was the Cody's buyer for 20 years and earlier managed a Books Inc. store on Union Square, the new Cody's will have a "wide range of books and try to emphasize literary titles." Considering that a Borders is nearby, Ross said, "We want it to be a Cody's. We don't want to try to out-Borders Borders." The store will eventually have about 100,000 titles.

Business in the Berkeley stores has been somewhat slow, he said, because of the state of the California economy, but is "beginning to come back."

Asked about hot titles in the People's Republic, he raved about the slim, updated volume Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives by U.C. Berkeley cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff (Chelsea Green, $10, 1931498717). "Most political books are dead, but this is hot, hot, hot," Ross said. "It's offers a very sophisticated analysis."