The movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One opens in 72 days.

The complete series of Harry Potter novels on audiobook (American edition) runs approximately 116 hours, 20 minutes (4.85 days).

If you are the kind of insanely hard-core Harry Potter fan who plans to attend a midnight screening of the movie on November 19 and plans to re-listen to the entire seven book series in anticipation of the movie release, here is when you need to start listening based on how many hours per week you expect to be able to devote to the audiobooks:

20 hrs/week:    October 8.
15 hrs/week:    September 25.
10 hrs/week:    August 29. (You're already behind! But don't worry; you can catch up!)


Notes:

1) Twenty hours a week sounds like a lot, but it's totally do-able if you combine listening with routine household tasks and errands and you don't watch a lot of TV. (It also helps if you don't really have a life.)

2) These dates assume you own your own complete set of the audiobooks. If you have to check them out from your local library, allow extra time, especially as the date approaches, since the release of movie versions of popular YA novels tends to cause a run on the library copies of said books. In fact, if you're relying on library copies, it may be advisable to listen in reverse order and start with book seven now -- it's probably available this week, but by early November the waiting list for that volume in particular may extend into 2011.

3) Yes, I know this level of devotion to a popular children's series is absurd.