Harry Potter self-control

The f*^#king New York Times has POSTED A REVIEW OF THE HARRY POTTER BOOK. I'm not going to link to it lest I encourage their bastardishness. Apparently they bought it at some soon-to-be-smote-by-lightning bookstore that's ignoring the embargo.

Normally I do not avoid spoilers; I'll read reviews of anything, and will even go to spoiler sites for TV shows and such. I generally feel that if a movie/TV show/book is really good, then knowing how it ends won't ruin it for me. Also, I have an unusual ability to suspend disbelief and to be shocked by an ending even if I had already read about it.

But the end of the Harry Potter series, and all the anxiety about such matters as who dies, who's really a bad guy, and whether good or evil will eventually triumph in the world, is such a huge cultural phenomenon that I feel like knowing what happens ahead of time would totally screw it up. How could I go to Kramerbooks on Friday at midnight, and be near all those nerdy hyperactive children, if I'd read a review that alluded to the ending? What if my non-innocence infected all those little wizard-costumed chimps?

The problem is that I have absolutely no practice in avoiding spoilers. I wasn't tempted to go looking for the supposed photographs of the pages of the book, because it would take a long time to read them--but the NYT! It's right there, staring me in the face! Even the intro sentence, starting with: "J.K. Rowling's spell-binding epic ends . . ." BASTARDS!