It’s over: The hugely anticipated release of the newest Harry Potter book occurred this past weekend, and it was everything it was predicted to be. “The new Harry Potter book sold an astonishing 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours, smashing the record held by the previous Potter release,” reports Hillel Italie in an Associated Press wire story. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince averaged better than 250,000 sales per hour, more than the vast majority of books sell in a lifetime.” But what did the critics think? An Agence France Presse wire story notes that “not even Harry Potter’s magic could deflect the withering verdict from some British literary critics on his latest adventure: ‘wordy, flabby and badly edited.'” Things were a little different in the U.S. — in her New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani limns why she loved it.

• MORE: In a commentary at Bookninja, Toronto bookseller Paul Vermeersch says the business of selling the new Potter book was much more involved than the explosive one-day lay-down: “For me it began several months ago, in April of this year, when we began taking pre-orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (herein referred to as HBP) . . . “