The time is nearly upon us. After months of hype, rumours, strange betting patterns and an alleged shoot-out, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will finally be released to the muggle world at one minute past midnight tonight.

Whatever you think of the Harry Potter phenomenon, the arrival of JK Rowling's latest is undoubtedly the biggest event in the books world this year both in terms of sales – 1.4m copies have been pre-ordered on Amazon's UK and US sites – and general fevered excitement.

And so Culture Vulture will be covering it, in the muggle form of Arts editor Andrew Dickson and me. We'll be joining the over-excited ankle-biters in our local branches of Waterstone's – Notting Hill and Brighton – to report on the atmosphere in the bookshops as the frenzied hordes of youngsters up well past their bedtimes and their long-suffering parents queue to get their sticky mitts on the first copies of the book.

Then we will be speedreading the book through the night – blogging as we go - to produce the first review of the book anywhere in the world (we hope. If we can stay awake).

So, if you too are staying up to read HP6 we invite you to join us in this Potter marathon. Read and comment along with us here, tell us if the excitement of the book is enough to sustain you or if copious amounts of coffee/beer/Ribena are keeping you up and let us know what you think of the latest adventures of the boy wizard.

And don't worry, we'll be flagging up any spoilers in our blogs so you won't find out about crucial plot twists before you've read them yourself.

Who will reach the end first? The race is on! Here's hoping it's not as long as the last one…