Harry Pottter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling, 850 pages

Harry whines quite a bit at the beginning of this, the longest in the Harry Potter saga, but once he settles down he has to deal with the fact that he knows that Lord Voldemort has returned and that few of the people in the wizarding world believe his story. As Delores Umbridge, undersecretary to the Ministry of Magic, attempts to corral power at Hogwarts, Harry, Hermione, Ron, and a group of like-minded students form a group to practice their defense against the dark arts. They call it the DA, short for Dumbledore's Army. Hagrid's relationship with his half-brother, and the interactions between the DA and the Order of the Phoenix (adults who fought against Voldemort last time around) are all interesting. Fred and George Weasley play strong roles in this one, too.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, 114 pages

A brilliant little novel, told in verse, unfolds in the voices of a man recently widowed, his two young sons, and Ted Hughes’s Crow. The man and his sons take turns talking about the hole in their lives the death of their beloved wife / mother has left. The man, a Hughes scholar, is grief-stricken, lost and longs to live in the past. The boys are wildly undone, confused about what has really happened, saying,

“Where are the Fire Engines? Where is the noise and clamor of an event like this?”
They are the best characters, they retain their brotherly separateness, their special shared grief, to adulthood.
The Crow, well I haven't read Hughes, and have only read a little Plath, so I don't understand him, but he's a interesting voice. Crow explains and probes and protects. He's there until the man and the boys no longer need him. Crow picks at the wounds, but keeps stronger mythical beings who mean the family more harm, at bay.
It's a moving book, it packs so much into such a small volume. It's really well worth a read.

The sleep revolution

The sleep revolution: transforming your life one night at a time / Arianna Huffington 392 pgs.

Arianna Huffington was a regular at the sleep deprivation scene.  She decided to change her ways after passing out from exhaustion, hitting her head on her desk and breaking her cheekbone.  It was a wake up call that she was awake too much.  Since then, she has devoted time to getting proper rest and educating others about what she calls a sleep crisis.  Too many people are shorting themselves at night in the hopes that they can accomplish more.  Huffington points out that we are much more efficient when rested and thus more productive.  This book covers a multitude of reasons to make sleep a priority and suggestions on how to sleep better.

There are probably better books to read to help you past a bout of insomnia but this book gives a great overall picture of how important it is to your health to sleep well.

Yes, my accent is real

Yes, my accent is real: and some other things I haven't told you / Kunal Nayyar 245 pgs.

Nayyar plays Raj on the Big Bang Theory but as with everyone, he has a back story.  This short memoir tells us some of the highlights.  First, he spent most of his formative years in New Delhi where he dominated the amateur badminton circuit.  He came to America for college and ended up a popular actor.  That is the short of it.  The long of it is fun and interesting.  I listened to the audio version of this which is read by the author and confirms that yes, that accent is real.

Jonah's gourd vine

Jonah's gourd vine / Zora Neale Hurston 316 pgs.

The story of John Pearson's rise and fall post Civil War.  Pearson is a powerful African American preacher who is riddled with weakness and shortcomings.  This story is based on Hurston's parents which makes the narrative compelling.  Young John leaves his family of sharecroppers by crossing the creek into the wealthier (and whiter) area.  Like the saying about being from the wrong side of the tracks, John's youth is spent in a place that is so isolated, there were not even tracks.  He is shocked by his first sighting of a locomotive.  John falls in love with Lucy Potts, who he marries. Lucy believes in him and makes him a better man but he continues to fall short and can't stop himself from partaking in sins of the flesh.  When Lucy dies, he marries Hattie, a woman who is as bad for him as he is for her.  Their divorce leads to his expulsion from his church.  He moves on and starts over, once again finding a good woman who helps him make something of himself.

I read this book long ago but that was before I knew the back story of the author and the significance of the work.  I enjoyed it then but got much more out of it now.

Into the Wild, Yet Another Misadventure

Into the Wild, Yet Another Misadventure by Doreen Cronin  93 pp.

This is another zany installment in "The Chicken Squad" series. In this episode the four chicks of the squad, Dirt, Sugar, Poppy, and Sweetie investigate the strange new box that has been built in the yard. Sugar is convinced it holds a dangerous wild animal and organizes a surveill.../spying expedition (she can't spell surveillance). Armed with fake mustaches, an observation log for notes, and a belt made of marshmallows they set out to discover the identity of the "beast". This series is funny and full of great lines ("Poetry is never an accident, kid.") and goofy dialogue. One warning: if you see chicks hanging on a clothesline, don't get too close.

Lunch with Charlotte

Lunch with Charlotte by Leon Berger  404 pp.

Charlotte Urban nee Goldberger had lunch with the author every Friday for the last 25 of her 91 years. In that time she told the story of living through the rise of the Nazis in her home city of Vienna and surviving Kristallnacht with her mother. Through contacts of her father who was trapped in England when the borders were closed, the Rothschilds, and lying about her age, Charlotte gains a place on the Kindertransport which evacuated Jewish children out of the Nazi territories. Charlotte reveals what her life during the war was like, not as a concentration camp prisoner, but as young Jewish woman living through war-time on the side of the Allies. Her story is one of strength and sorrow offered in an honest, straight-forward way.

H is for Hawk

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald  300 pp.

This book is an unusual combination of memoir, grief, falconry, and author T.H. White. Helen MacDonald, a naturalist and falconer, is devastated when her father dies suddenly. While coping with her grief and other personal crises she takes on the task of using her falconry skills to train a notoriously difficult raptor, a goshawk. She uses training methods learned from other falconers and from the writings of T.H. White, author of the Arthurian novels The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King. White wrote about his ultimately unsuccessful experiences with his bird called Gos and MacDonald comments on him and the errors he had made. Meanwhile she and her bird, Mabel, are having mixed results in training due, in part, to MacDonald's shaky emotional state. I'm having a hard time deciding if I like this book or not. I enjoy reading about and watching birds of prey so the details about the bird were fascinating. The rest...not so much. I give it a mixed review.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, 330 pages

When precocious eighth grader Bee chooses a family trip to Antarctica as a prize for perfect grades, her quirky, agoraphobic mother Bernadette is thrown for a loop. Told in a mostly epistolary form consisting of emails between Bernadette and her Indian online assistant, and between snooty moms at Bee's school, this is a fantastically funny book. I'm glad I bought it, as I intend to read it again whenever I need a laugh.

The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck

The life-changing magic of not giving a f*ck: how to stop spending time you don't have with people you don't like doing things you don't want to do / Sarah Knight, 208 p.

Yes, this book has the same basic cover design (and trim size!) of Marie Kondo's better-know book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Sarah Knight isn't making fun of that book, though; she talks about Kondo-ing her husband's sock drawer. But rather than discussing how to rid your life of physical things, Knight talks about how to rid yourself of obligations that sap your time, energy and money--obligations that you don't really care about. Her advice is all about how to determine what you actually care about, and how to jettison pretending to care about the other stuff. (She's very clear that you're not allowed to be a jerk about it.) I wish some of her examples of how to handle letting other people you don't care were a little less trivial--I know she's doing it to be funny, but it sort of undercuts her more serious points. Still, an enjoyable and useful book, assuming you don't mind salty language.