AALS Travels: In-Flight Reading Suggestions

For those of you looking for a quick but engaging novel to read on the flight to D.C. tomorrow (ie those who will not be plowing through C.V.s or prospective interview questions), I would recommend the books in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, which, despite being written for teenagers, are engaging and sad and have been enjoyed by many "grown-ups" including myself (if I can really count myself as a "grown up" - well, at least my kids say I am...).

Another short, but engaging read is Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of Prime Numbers. 

All of these are available in e-book formats (easy to carry on the plane) and all are apparently being made into movies so if you want to engage in "was the book better than the movie?" conversations, you should read them now.

I have also intrepidly continued with the Harry Potter series (which I had previously given up on) and I do have one question.  Given the apparent superiority of wizarding methodologies over muggle technologies, why don't any of the wizards have anything like a magical cellphone?  They're always having to "run back to the castle" to talk to someone or find a time to make a secret call from the fireplace.  Am I missing something?

And any other good book recommendations for inflight reading?

Comments

[Michael Lewyn]

I'm reading Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and/or Nicole Garnett's Ordering The City (depending on whether I'm in the mood for heavy or light).

[Jake Linford]

Regarding the cellphone question, the books are set from 1991-1998, prior to the mass onslaught of cell phones in the 00's. Thus, there is little reason within the world for wizards to notice the lack of a cellular equivalent. In the 90's nearly everyone had to hunt up a land line to make a phone call. Wizards do, on occasion, send a patronus (the silver animal image) ahead with a spoken message, but those messages are short - more like a tweet or a text than a cell phone image.

[Jacqueline Lipton]

OK - well color me embarrassed for not being enough of a J K Rowling aficionado to know what years the books are set in! But it is interesting that the wizards didn't invent the cellphone (or its equivalent) before the muggles did, n'est-ce pas? I guess you make a good case for an argument that they really did invent the magical equivalent of the "tweet", but is that really something for the wizarding world to be proud of?