The summer of 2003 will always be remembered as the summer when children and children-like adults everywhere got swept away by two wildly entertaining works of magical fiction. Of course, I'm talking about J.K. Rowling's action-packed fantasy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ann Coulter's Treason, a hilarious novel about a magical world where everything is black and white and there's always only one solution to any problem and anyone who disagrees with today's administration (not the last one and not the next one) is unfoundedly and beyond-stupid-ly guilty of a very serious crime whose specific definition does not even apply in said cases. Doesn't that sound magically unbelievable?
In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix young wizard Harry Potter still, somehow, after four adventures, hasn't quite settled into a wizard groove yet. Therefore, misadventure follows. It's delightful when mysterious and magical things happen to Harry and his friends.
Ann Coulter's Treason is about a most-likely-a-speed-freak would-be housewife who attends Cornell and a top ten Law School and some how magically avoids learning anything about Logic (the book's antagonist) anywhere along the way. After having graduated from a very liberal Law School that's mostly hype, the book's heroine, Little Annie O'NotAsPrettyAsEveryonePretends, realizes that she just spent seven years of her life biting her ignorant tongue, wanting to speak up and challenge the dreadful Logic monster. From there, she embarks on a life-long quest to destroy anything that bows to Logic. I don't want to give away the ending, but it definitely involves embarrassment and Annie's much anticipated return to the righthand side of Satan.
If you're interested in finding out more about these two great summer reads for your uneducated, socially immature children, check out some of the reviews. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Something or Other is getting pretty good reviews almost everywhere. And Ann Coulter's Treason, though probably recommendable for a younger age group than Potter, is a fantastically amazing work of fiction that explores a world so unlike the real world that you wonder how Ann Coulter could have dreamed it up. Some critics, like Brendan Nyhan over at Spinsanity, have some pretty negative things to say about the book, though; it's almost as though he doesn't know it's a work of fiction! Duh!
Enjoy your summer reading, kids.
