What Kids Are Reading, covered in a WaPo front-pager, would be better titled "What Renaissance Learning Quizzes Kids Are Taking," but I still found it interesting that, in the breakdown of the 592 kids in the top 10% of high-schoolers (who read over 25 books each a year, more than four times the average), Elie Wiesel's Night was #2 and Chaim Potok's The Chosen was #14, suggesting something about the demographics of the top 10%.

The headline emphasis is that the Harry Potter books are not the most read, but I question that conclusion: J.K. Rowling appears in the top ten for each grade between fourth and twelfth, and is five of the top nine books for eighth graders. And the study seems to be time-bound to cut off those who read the seventh book, perhaps because a quiz wasn't readily available after the book was released in the summer of 2007. Further, the study is biased towards books assigned in class: if some teachers are using the testing software for just in-class assignments, out-of-class reading and summer reading will not be fully captured. Since few teachers dare assign J.K. Rowling in a public school lest parents complain about the wizardry theme, Rowling's performance is all the more spectacular.

Fanboys complaining about continuity problems in their favorite mass media entertainment have always been an issue. Over 2000 years ago, Horace wrote in the Ars poetica

...indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus

presumably complaining about Pylaemenes being killed in combat by Meneleaos but then showing up many books later to witness the death of his son. (From this passage, we get the phrase "Even Homer nods.") Christian scripture and religious writing are full of retcons reconciling the Gospels with contradictory passages in the Jewish bible, but perhaps the first secular retcon comes from Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism:

I know there are, to whose presumptuous Thoughts
Those Freer Beauties, ev'n in Them, seem Faults:
Some Figures monstrous and mis-shap'd appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion'd to their Light, or Place,
Due Distance reconciles to Form and Grace.
A prudent Chief not always must display
His Pow'rs in equal Ranks, and fair Array,
But with th' Occasion and the Place comply,
Conceal his Force, nay seem sometimes to Fly.
Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.

I'm appalled by the massive amounts of carbon wasted by all the white pixels on Chris Goodall's website. Plus, it should be all text with no fancy graphics, so less energy is used in downloads and programming.

Cowen: Goodall "can mail back his Harvard MBA by boat."

Slim and I had a 6:30 am Saturday morning flight to the West Coast. I didn't pre-reserve Book 5 or Book 6, and each time finding them on opening day took a bit of a trek to multiple stores. Rather than risk being without the new Harry Potter book before all the spoilers leaked, we were one of the 800+ or so waiting in line at the Clarendon Barnes & Noble, who did a spectacular job given the constraints the publisher put on them: we were out of the store with copies in hand at 12:18 am, a half hour before our most optimistic estimate.

Still, it was annoying to see dozens of copies piled up in the airport bookstore ready for sale at five in the morning. I really could've used the extra few hours of sleep.

Slim, who reads faster than me, and had the advantage of being able to read the book while I was driving through a California traffic jam, finished before 5 PM Eastern; I got through the last couple of hundred pages at the wedding reception.

Spoiler: I don't mind ambiguous endings, but it seemed anachronistic to have Harry and his friends sit in a diner eating onion rings. More accurate discussion here: I think Rowling cheated with her disposition of the Elder Wand.

He writes, perhaps only a little tongue in cheek:

What would be the welfare gains if we banned customers from talking to the sales clerks, and vice versa? I find that at least once a week I am frustrated, waiting in line, while the customers and sales clerks chat merrily. They don't seem to care. They don't know how truly important *I* am. They think their little conversation means something in the broader scheme of things.

And he has an ingenious idea: don't tell people where the secret blog is unless they buy his book, which I did before he announced this scheme, and which I am eagerly awaiting. It will be interesting to watch the sales rank climb.

Via Slim, a quiz: machine-translation of German text or Faulkner prose?

Tom Stoppard's "Coast of Utopia" has apparently increased sales of Isaiah Berlin's previously-out-of-print "Russian Thinkers" more than 50-fold. (via Marcotte)

Tyler Cowen is very impressed with Mumbai-mean-streets novel Sacred Games. [MR; NYT]

A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (via MR). [Princeton U. Press]

Side-note: My Lord, the Barnes & Noble web-site is poorly designed. But their gift cards aren't good on Amazon.

"Next week's 'Sacred Games,' a 916-page novel described as the 'Godfather' of India and set in the seamy underworld of Mumbai, comes from a relatively unknown author. Last year, it became the subject of a bidding war that won author Vikram Chandra a $1 million advance." -- WSJ

Movie version of "A Confederacy of Dunces" in development hell.

Notwithstanding Michael Crichton, blondes aren't dying out.