Another Field Guide to Little-Known & Seldom-Seen Birds of North America

#62 Title: Another Field Guide to Little-Known & Seldom-Seen Birds of North AmericaAuthor: Ben, Cathryn,  John Sill
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Year: 1980
Genre: Parody
71 pages

Marcia handed me this on Thursday. Thanks, Marcia! This is a hilarious little send-up of field guides to birds and, though probably funnier for those with experience using field guides, is still accessible to everyone. In addition to very nicely rendered illustrations of such birds as the Mangrove Penguin (Tuxedo verdantus) and the Greater Noxious Grossbird (Incredibilus disgustus), the authors also include helpful charts showing the correct assembly of bird parts, nesting success of the Nearsighted Bat Owl (the news isn't good, I'm afraid), and the feather count of the Rear-Tailed Evader to name a few. I particularly enjoyed such sage advice as:

At the SeashoreDon't Say: Golly days, all those little birds look just alike! Do Say: We need better light to identify those peeps.

Wiser words were never written.

Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince: Lead-up to the 7th Harry Potter

Jul. 14th, 2007 | 09:48 pm

                       

#60 [a re-read]Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixAuthor: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2003
Genre: Children's/Young Adult Fantasy
870 pages

#61 [a re-read]
Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceAuthor: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2005
Genre: Children's/Young Adult Fantasy
652 pages

You don't really need reviews of these, do you?  Instead, I'll offer a few observations and predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
1. The organization of the series as a chiasmus demands a return to some of the circumstances and themes of Book 1: Who is Harry? Where does he come from? Who will he be now and will he choose good or evil? Less existentially, it ought to show Hermione's use of logic and Ron's of strategy. Some resolution with the Dursleys must be reached.

2. Snape is innocent. I used to think that the mythic structure demanded that Harry sacrifice himself; I now believe that he must be willing to do so, and may even intend to do so, but that Snape is, in fact, the interrex of this tale and, sneeringly and contemptuously, will sacrifice himself in a way that proves his loyalty to Dumbledore and utter contempt for Harry.

3. Harry will have an opportunity to kill Draco; as in his Book 3 encounter with Peter Petigrew, compassion must stay his hand.

4. I was very disappointed that the film of OOTP, which was released last week, showed Harry handing the prophecy to Lucius Malfoy. Harry is not Frodo. A conclusion in which he proves fallible and Snape has to perform the moral equivalent of biting off his finger to seize the One Ring would be deeply unsatisfying. Since we have already seen Snape commit an analogue of this act by killing Dumbledore when Draco could not, perhaps Rowling has already pre-empted this possibility.

5. One hopes that Dumbledore's efforts on behalf of magical multiculturalism have some bearing on the action in the last book.

6. Is some aspect of Lily encapsulated in Harry, whether by accident or design? Did Voldemort's killing curse, intended to create a horcrux for himself, instead send a part of Lily's soul into Harry? We know he has his mother's eyes (not on a salver like St. Lucy, of course, but more than metaphorically). What else of Lily's does he have?

7. Though Dumbledore is dead, he will communicate with Harry through his chocolate frog card.

8. Parenthetically, Tonks and Lupin? Come on. This only works if they're both bisexual, and both seem a lot more on the gay end of the spectrum to me.

The Unauthorized Harry Potter

#59Title: The Unauthorized Harry PotterAuthor: Adam-Troy Castro
Publisher: BenBella for Borders
Year: 2006
Genre: Literary criticism, Harry Potter
205 pages

Another of those "Borders Exclusive" buy-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace Harry Potter literary criticism books. Purchased at Borders but no longer available on their website.

It should be said up front that Castro hits and holds an annoying, intended-to-be-jocular tone through much of the book, as if he is speaking condescendingly to middle schoolers, though the content and cover price argue against this. He also has a very disruptive habit of writing in single-sentence paragraphs. This reads like pornography or other bad genre fiction. In addition, he refers to himself throughout as "Your Friendly Host." For some reason, he spells portkey as "Port Key" throughout. If you can ignore all of this, and I'm not suggesting it's easy, you will enjoy the book more. It's worth the effort as Castro has reasonable ideas; when he gets rolling the reader has a much better sense of his skills as a writer.

Castro asks, as do other Harry Potter commentators, how the social worlds of wizards and Muggles can coexist yet barely intersect. Has Castro never been to Burning Man, a gay bar, a crack-of-dawn birdwatching expedition, a synagogue? Plenty of groups live side-by-side without knowing very much about each other at all. Throw me into my neighbor's house and I'd be as lost with his Wii and circular saw as Mr. Weasley is with a fellytone.

Castro's thinking about the books themselves is good; like Orson Scott Card's section of The Great Snape Debate or Langford's The End of Harry Potter? (both reviewed below), it's a pleasure to read plot speculations from an author in a related genre.

The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More

#58Title: The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is MoreAuthor: Barry Schwartz
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Year: 2005
Genre: Sociology, Psychology, Culture
283 pages

Schwartz, with whom I had a pleasant chat at American Psychological Association a while back, contends that while having choices is valuable, more choices don't appear to lead to greater happiness, and may be psychologically detrimental. I enjoyed his arguments, which are closely associated with sociological and psychological studies, and recommend reading this book in conjunction with Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking or The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, or even Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (since you may recall that I didn't care much for the latter, you may shelve Schwartz near it without reading it if you so choose).

Though I agree with the conclusions drawn, in general, Schwartz's arguments seem reductive at times, and without seeing the studies themselves I can't evaluate whether other elements that may be important have been accounted for. Thus, choices are often presented as all-or-nothing, and research participants' pragmatic economic decision-making seems to be overlooked. For example, in studies where a sure bet of receiving $100 is set in opposition to a slightly better-weighted double-or-nothing option, participants' more common choice of $100 is not discussed in relativistic terms (such as would be familiar to readers of Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg) that include the participant's pragmatic life experience of needing to take a safe bet rather than a risky one with the potential for more gain but that might also cause loss.

In addition, those for whom the process of shopping or questing is enjoyable, and those who approach such activities with mindfulness and attention, are not well-represented in Schwartz's argument. Schwartz does allude to a related issue when he notes the possibility of history and cohort effects (though he doesn't say it that way); what is overwhelming for one generation (such as a cell phone) may be par for the course for the next (such as watching a video on an iPhone while texting about something else and pretending to be paying attention in class).

A Thousand Splendid Suns

#57Title: A Thousand Splendid SunsAuthor: Khaled HosseiniPublisher: Riverhead
Year: 2007
Genre:  Fiction, Afghanistan
384 pages

As easy to enter into and as absorbing as The Kite Runner, Hosseini's second novel is again set in Afghanistan over a long enough period for readers to absorb the flavor and preoccupations of several recent governments and upheavals. Hossneini's writing is descriptive without being over-elaborate, and his characters are psychologically coherent. I enjoyed the converging tales of two women's lives, and I thought the Naomi and Ruth reference worked well. A number of the locales and experiences described in the sections taking place in the Taliban's Kabul evoked the CNN report Beneath the Veil, Saira Shah's 2001 undercover documentary. Perhaps because I had images from this program in mind, these sections of the book were particularly vivid.

The plot was sometimes predictable and contrived. I found the last several sections rushed in a way that decreased their resonance and interfered with my suspension of disbelief, and reader buy-in is critical to accepting some rather increadible events. I would not characterize the novel as uplifting, but perhaps as ultimately emotionally triumphant.

As an aside, a mention of Laila and Mariam's "three cups of tea" made me think to move Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time forward in my queue, despite its unfortunate misuse of ellipsis right out there in front of god and everybody.

100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C: A Lahey Clinic Guide

#56Title: 100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C: A Lahey Clinic GuideAuthors: Stephen Fabry & R. Anand Narasimhan
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Year: 2007
Genre: Medical, disease, Hepatitis C
186 pages

The Lahey Clinic guides, all in the 100 Questions and Answers about X format, provide overviews of gastroenterological disorders in a way that is accessible to non-medical readers. The level of detail is good for a non-medical reference book, and the language is sufficiently technical to align with medical reports and resources. Terminology is defined in sidebars. I would have liked more extensive coverage of liver transplantation, but Lahey does have a book solely devoted to this topic. I appreciate that both of these volumes are current and cite reasonably up-to-date studies. 100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C is a good starting point for people unfamiliar with the disease. Readers may want to follow it with a more technical or more specific book, depending upon their reasons for reading.

Flyte (Septimus Heap, Book 2)

#55Title: Flyte (Septimus Heap, Book 2)
Author: Angie Sage
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Year: 2006
Genre: Children's fantasy
532 pages

The second book in the Septimus Heap series. Flyte relies a little more on deus ex machina than did the first volume, but generally speaking is still an above-average children's fantasy. Picking up about a year after Magyk, the plot is perhaps both a little too complex and, at times, a little too obscure for its payoffs. As in the first book, older readers will quickly figure out the major plot points, but if you enjoy spotting foreshadowing you won't be troubled by this.