Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:22 PM

[Title courtesy of fasterthanlight]

Yes, I've read the book. Just finished it about ten minutes ago.

I've also seen two plays in Lenox which I have to review.

I'm off to catch up on the last two days worth of LiveJournal and see what everybody else has to say, before I have anything more to write...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

My Free Will Astrology horoscope of the week said to meditate on what I pretend to be.

I have absolutely no interest nor intention of leaving my current employer, but sometimes I just see a job posting and have to sigh for what might've been.

CBS NEWS REFERENCE LIBRARY
NEW YORK, NY

RESEARCH LIBRARIAN

CBS News has an immediate opening in its editorial Reference Library for a Research Librarian. Hours are 9:30 am - 5:30 pm, with an 11:00 am to 7:00 pm shift at least one day per week. Holiday coverage as assigned, also 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. Will be assigned extended hours and weekends as breaking news events demand.

Skills/Requirments: MLS/MLIS degree. Minimum two years reference/research experience, preferrably in a corporate or news environment. Ability to work under tight, frequent deadlines. Working knowledge of major commercial database systems: Dialog, EBSCO, Factiva, Gale, Nexis, ProQuest, etc. Knowledge of public records research mandatory. Strong knowledge of current events, popular culture, and a broad range of interdisciplinary print and electronic resources. Ability to make decisions regarding editorial value of information and evaluate information for accuracy and relevance. Ability to work independently, collaboratively, and respond to change and assignments positively and productively. Technical knowledge of intranets and supervisory experience an advantage. Excellent desktop, interpersonal, and communication skills.

General Responsibilities: Perform reference and in-depth research for CBS News production units and other CBS departments and entities. Manage futures/daybook calendar. Develop product and web search guides for end-users and assist in training. Participate in intranet project team. Supervise one paraprofessional.

Apply online at: www.cbscareers.com. Include salary requirements and referral source.

CBS News is an Equal Opportunity Employer/AA.

Doesn't that just sound so dreamy?
I mean, most of those skills and duties are things I already do every day in writing this blog.

Of course, I also realize this is just one of many potential paths I could see myself pursuing, avenues that would suit my interests and aptitudes.

For now, I still hope to make a lifetime career at my current employer. [Given the number of coworkers celebrating anniversaries of a decade or longer, that seems likely unless something drastic happens.] I really feel like I'm making a difference, and am able to contribute with skills and knowledge I've picked up all over my academic and work history. Plus I get frequent opportunities to exercise my research skills and I have access to reading materials from an unbelievable variety of disciplines. In short, I'm happy here, and hope they feel the same about me.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:54 PM

When Robert Novak blew Valerie Plame's cover, that also revealed that the company she was working for was a CIA front, thus jeopardizing everybody who worked there. From Seeing the Forest:

Plame's association with a non-official cover (NOC), by default, means that she was covert, pure and simple. Brewster Jennings reportedly "suffered greatly" as a result of the disclosure, according to a knowledgeable source. Another source reported that at least one Brewster Jennings NOC operating in a hostile intelligence environment was executed by counter-intelligence agents as a result of the White House disclosure. Other B&JA assets were forced to abandon their ongoing operations to identify networks involved in weapons of mass destruction proliferation. The CIA has been working on a damage assessment report on the Plame/B&JA disclosures.

As Arthur Silber summarizes the whole situation: Karl Rove endangered America. There's your talking point. Motive doesn't matter: we are less safe because of his actions.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:11 PM

Big bombshell (no pun intended) in this evening's news:

ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.

Meanwhile, did you know the Pentagon has had a blueprint of al Qaeda's plans for a couple of years?

Our nation's leaders are responsible to confront problems, not pass them on to others. And to lead this nation to a responsibility era, a president himself must be responsible.

          -- George W. Bush, August 2000

Of course, the big story in the blogs remains Karl Rove. Here are a few items I thought worth sharing:

Josh Marshall notes the similarities between the current attacks on Wilson and the attacks on Richard Clarke last year and offers some instructive lessons.

Dave Johnson thinks this will all boil down to how well Fitzgerald can "withstand the kind of intense pressure and character assassination" he will receive. As Dave points out:

Rove "burned" a CIA agent working to keep WMDs out of the hands of terrorists during a war against those terrorists, and you can't find a single Washington Republican willing to say that was wrong. That is beyond just cultish ideological loyalty, that is pure fear.

I'll conclude with a history lesson from Kevin Drum to put this in perspective:

To understand just how reckless and venomous Rove's actions were, let's take a trip down memory lane. The year is 1960. John F. Kennedy was running against Richard Nixon for the presidency and making much electoral hay over the "missile gap," a supposed disparity between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the quantity and quality of ballistic missiles at our disposal. The Reds, Kennedy claimed, were kicking our butts, and he promised to fix this pronto if he was elected president.

Except for one thing: there was no missile gap. What's more, Kennedy had received top secret briefings from the Pentagon and knew this. Did that stop him from talking about it? Not at all. It was one of the big issues of the campaign.

Richard Nixon lost that election by a hair, and public perception of the missile gap was probably one of the reasons. Despite that, he never revealed - either publicly or privately - the classified information about Soviet capabilities that could have saved his campaign.

Think about that. This is Richard Nixon we're talking about. His opponent was spreading clear misinformation that he knew to be untrue. And there was a presidential election at stake!

Even so, he kept classified information classified and went down to defeat. Maybe this was because he took national security seriously or maybe it was just because he was too smart to use classified information in a pissing match. Who knows? By contrast, when Karl Rove was faced with a trivial piece of unfriendly spin that had no major consequences for anyone, his first instinct was to systematically call half a dozen reporters and peddle classified information to them even though he didn't need to. With no apparent qualms at all, he did something that even Richard Nixon with an election on the line wasn't willing to do.

From the first day of this campaign I have talked about the goal of a responsibility era for America. [...] For too long our culture has sent this message: if it feels good, do it. And if you've got a problem, just go ahead and blame somebody else. Each of us must understand that's not right. Each of us must understand that we're responsible for the decisions and choices we make in life.

          -- George W. Bush, October 2000

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:05 AM

Just got the latest calendar/schedule for the Brattle Theatre in the mail. Grumble. It never fails to arrive halfway thru the schedule, after I've already missed several nifty films.

Still, Dark Crystal/Labyrinth double feature with rare Henson shorts!

Anyway, as I was reading the calendar, Ian started Oohing over an ad on the back. The Brattle's Third Annual Guaranteed Request Raffle. The winner gets to select two films, and the Brattle will obtain prints and schedule a custom double feature.

That sounds like a meme: If you could pick any two films for a double feature on the big screen, what would they be?

So what double feature would you choose?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 AM

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;

Just as I was about to go to bed, I decided on one last check of my LiveJournal friend list.

And the very top post was matociquala on Marlowe's biography. And, of course, I had to kibbitz, particularly since I'd been meaning to respond to Bear's earlier post about Will in the World and hadn't gotten around to that.

So, I stayed up far far too late gabbing about Elizabethan playwrights and swapping scurrilious historical rumors (Shakespeare was Davenant's daddy; Marlowe wrote Cervantes) with folks on the West Coast until I finally dragged myself away about 12:45 AM.

But so much geeky fun. I posted the quote that starts this entry as we were mourning all the lost plays of the period, those we knew about and those whose very existence was lost to history. And I started thinking about how publishers are still churning out new V.C. Andrews books twenty years after her death.

So let's revisit my last post last night. My horoscope said to meditate on "You become what you pretend to be."

So I suppose we have to add ‘expert on Elizabethan playwrights’ to the list of my pretentions this week.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:50 PM

The new Free Will Astrology horoscope is up early. Let's see what inspiration he offers me this week:

What a week for me to get this horoscope. Just look at my blog and upcoming calendar:

• Yesterday I was a reporter and political activist.
• Tonight, I seem to be imitating an academic. [And this is whetting my aspirations again, barely a day after I wrote someone that a PhD isn't for me, and I was happy as a diletante.]
• This weekend, I pretend to be a drama critic.
• And after that, I intend to lose myself in a several-hundred-page YA fantasy novel.

Who am I?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

Last week The Wall Street Journal printed an article on exotic cocktails being concocted in trendy restaurants nationwide:

The bar at Ken Stewart's Grille in Akron, Ohio, serves a $10 martini with a pickled baby octopus draped over the side. In Kirkland, Wash., Jager Bar & Restaurant recently added a cocktail of cucumber, sake and vodka topped with lumps of wasabi and seared sushi tuna.

The Jager restaurant in Washington offers a beverage they call the "Hunter": "horseradish-infused vodka with Grand Marnier, garnished with a grilled beef tenderloin tip." If you find the prose a bit thick, they offer a table at the end of the article summarizing the strange cocktails described in the article.

Of everything they mentioned, what interests me most is the Museum of the American Cocktail whose bar "will soon serve only 'authentic' drinks, made from 19th-century recipes." If I ever get down to New Orleans again, I'll have to stop by.

[Link courtesy of Obscure Store and Reading Room]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:55 PM

As part of my thought process, I've been scouring the literature for the latest research on how people search.

A few years ago, I did a lot of reading on the subject, but I've fallen behind.

This list of journal articles and papers is a first pass, for my own personal use. You may all safely ignore the rest of this post.

(Follow the fake cut-tag for a list of journal articles)

Damn, but there's a lot of good stuff in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology! And they don't make their content freely available online. I may have to consider joining again, though since I no longer qualify for student discount, the price seems prohibitive.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

On Monday a coworker asked if I could help with “tips and tricks for researching topics, finding out "what's hot" in a particular area etc. I'd be interested in understanding how you approach your research of a topic, where you go first and why.”

Search is something I generally do without thinking, so unpacking it in this manner is difficult. I often find it easier to organize my thoughts by writing them out, so that's what I'm doing here.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

Oh, I know there are lots of good quotes out there, such as Josh Marshall describing the Washington press corps as "[s]ort of a mix of Dangerous Liaisons and Elmer Fudd" and a CNN anchors describing the situation as a "major smear campaign" against Rove.
Plus this from Christian Coalition objections to a DVD intended to teach kids about tolerance and diversity: "The controversy stems not from any explicit mention of homosexuality in the video -- there isn't any -- but from its theme that people are all part of one big family, a message that, critics contend, could be construed to include pedophiles and other criminals. They also fear that the video could blunt other important messages for kids of that age, like the importance of being wary of strangers."

But Molly Ivins' latest column begins with a statement both generally applicable and worth remembering for the long-term:

The trouble with deregulation is that it always takes some disaster like Enron before we realize there was a reason for the regulation to begin with.

[Thanks to yehoshua for drawing my attention to the article, though he was pointing out something else entirely.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:11 PM

That was my first reaction to this from Bookslut:

Can't decide which comic book to read? The lovely and amazing website gurl.com (if you know a tween or teen girl, you should buy them a copy of Deal With It, the book based on the gurl.com website, immediately) has the Comic Book Selector all ready for you.

Poking around the site, I also found this Summer Lit selector. I don't quite care for their limited topic choices, but some nifty suggestions that I may consider my next library trip.

While this may be a nonthreatening approach to avoid overload, on the whole I'd rather see the full list of all comics or books rather than having to navigate through the different options.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:54 PM

I just got a phone call solicitation from the National Republican Congressional Committee. Though I normally don't give telemarketers the time of day, when he announced where he was calling from, I was curious as to his pitch and decided to listen.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:40 PM

So, thanks to http://www.sonician.com/live8/list.html I finally caught the video clips from Live8 of Robbie Williams singing Queen (in honor of their performance at the original Live Aid).

During "We Will Rock You," large portions of the audience were doing the "Radio Ga-Ga" hand-clap. It just struck me as odd.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:54 AM

I almost didn't blog this because it's not my usual subject matter, but then again it's not Amptoon's either:

here in montreal we have this big mountain/parc called the mount-royal. think of it as central parc as mountain. and every sunday for the past 20-something years thousands of hippies converge and play tam tams for hours. over the years all sort of other things started happening. most people just lay in the grass and smoke some pot while the cops turn a blind eye. people sell bracelets and piantings while some DnD nerds fights with big duct-tape swords.

thats what we were interested in. what would happen if an army of zombies came out of the woods and attacked the duct-tape fighters?

You have to read it to believe it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:54 PM

With all the petitions going around in the wake of recent discoveries about Rove, the lawbloggers at TalkLeft have an important warning:

Don't call Rove at the Congressional Hearings!

Here's why:

Congress's institutional memory may be too short. Remember Oliver North? He testified under compulsion at the Iran-Contra hearings and succeeded in excluding that evidence at retrial. United States v. North, 910 F.2d 843 (D.C.Cir. 1990). [...]

Please investigate. Investigate the entire mess, and start with the leak and move to Cheney's profiteering, and then to impeachment.

But, if you expect any one to prosecute, do not call the target as a witness and make him or her testify and compromise any prosecution. Back during Iran-Contra, I couldn't tell whether Congress was handing Oliver North a "get out of jail free" card, trying to get at the truth to embarrass the administration, or both.

Capiche?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:42 PM

According to Andrea at Pandagon, the American military has been using napalm in Iraq in violation of UN conventions. The Pentagon has confirmed not only its use, but lying to our allies about it.

The saddest thing is, as appalled as I feel, I'm not really surprised our administration would stoop to such levels. Are you?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 PM

One of this administration's talents is controlling the news cycles. The president's polling numbers are falling, so *wham* some major announcement or event comes along to push that off the front pages and keep him afloat. And bad news is invariably pushed off until late Friday afternoons where fewer people will see it, and it'll be old hat by the Monday papers.

Today's stories about Rove sure look bad, so what could distract the punditry from that?

Any bets Bush'll name his Supreme Court nominee and/or rumors will prove correct and Rehnquist resigns real soon now? Gearing up for a Court fight will distract folks from Rove...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 PM

Courtesy of Corrente:

I understand, I really do. I mean, it's easy to see how a kid growing up in Bush's privileged position would come to think that the law was optional—the drunk driving thing, the TANG thing, Leadfoot's little episode, those lovable twins with their fake IDs, even Bush vGore—but Bush really needs to understand, now that he's an adult, that when Congress passes a law that applies to the Executive branch, he needs to remember his oath of office and carry it out.

For example: Last week, David Broder (of all people) drew our attention to this law in particular:

President Bush is facing an early legal deadline to deliver what he has been most resistant to providing: a set of specific benchmarks for measuring progress toward military and political stability in Iraq.

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a "comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security" two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(via WaPo)

July 11? Why, that would be today! And has Bush obeyed the law? What do you think?

Kennedy protested that the Bush administration did not meet Monday's deadline for a report on the war in Iraq. In the report, required as part of a war spending bill passed two months ago, the Defense Department was supposed to update the progress of training Iraqi security forces and give Congress an estimate of how many troops will be needed in Iraq through 2006.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the report is in the final stages and that Pentagon officials are consulting with Congress about the timing for submitting it.
(via AP)

Gee, I guess I must be really confused about how our Constitutional system works.

Congress (and a Republican Congress, mind you) passes a law saying deliver a report by July 11.

So Bush (a) doesn't deliver the report on time and (b) is "consulting" with Congress about when to submit it. But the law is the law; what's to consult about?

Meanwhile, Interesting Times notices what the First Daughters have been up to:

Remember when they made such a fuss about Bill Clinton allegedly shutting down LA airport because he was getting a haircut?

Remember when they made such a fuss about Al Gore allegedly releasing water from a damn during a drought just so he could have a photo-op of him rafting on a river?

Well, I wonder how much a fuss they will make now that Laura and Jenna Bush shut down the Grand Canyon just so they could go on an unannounced rafting trip?

Unbelievable.

And don't forget, this is the same party that brought us this infamous quote:

When [House majority leader, Tom DeLay] tried smoking a cigar in a restaurant on federal property, the manager told him it violated federal law. His response, according to The Washington Post, was, "I am the federal government."

Folks, Independence Day was only one week past. Remember the old Schoolhouse Rock song? No more kings!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:15 PM

Blogosphere is full of news about Rove, McClellan, and the Plame investigation. Check Americablog, Atrios, Crooks and Liars and Talking Points for more on what's going on.

Having followed this case since the beginning, I am just so glad that the arrow is pointing to Rove, rather than Cheney (as it used to). Because Cheney always has the option of stepping down for "health reasons" (and it would be cruel to pick on an invalid, so Bush would have to pardon him) therefore giving Bush the chance to choose another VP, nicely putting one of the many GOP hopefuls above the primary fray for 2008.

But Rove is closer to the President and more important.

And it looks like the press corps is finally fed up with being used and growing a spine (get a load of today's press briefings and/or the explanation why Matt Cooper finally decided to speak).[*][*]

It's going to be a bumpy ride, but maybe we can finally start extricating our country from this gang of criminals.

How scummy are they? Via Kevin Drum:

Praktike is reading Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory:

One story that really got me was the tale of former ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine suggesting to Rumsfeld in March of 2003 that it would behoove the Bush administration to develop a plan to pay Iraqi civil servants. Rumsfeld replied that American taxpayers would never go for it and that he was not concerned if they were paid for several weeks or even months; if they rioted in the streets in protest, he said, the US could use such an eventuality as leverage to get the Europeans to pick up the tab.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:25 PM

Got an email from a coworker this morning that literally made my jaw drop:

Hi Lis,

I was wondering whether you ever thought about a meeting that offers tips and tricks for researching topics, finding out "what's hot" in a particular area etc. I'd be interested in understanding how you approach your research of a topic, where you go first and why. I'm in the process of researching what's happening in the world with [subject] and I keep thinking that you might have tips about where to look and how to approach it.
Research is such a critical part of our job and I think we all could learn a bit from you. Is this a topic that you think could warrant a session and it something you'd be interested in running?

Thanks

I responded that I needed time to think about it. Not that I'm reluctant, but just because I do it so instinctively that I can't put it into words.

Now I find myself trying to unpack what it is I do without falling prey to the centipede's dilemma.^*

Maybe I'll use the blog to explore some of it here before presenting it to coworkers. Anybody interested?

Meanwhile a couple days ago, in response to my comments in May regarding Hunting and gathering on the information savanna: conversations on modeling human search abilities, I just got a very lovely reply from the author/editor, who is also director of the Interdisciplinary Information Science Ph.D. Program at the University of North Texas.

I suppose this is nature's way of telling me to resume and refresh my old research in these areas... [As if I weren't feeling busy enough facing two Shakespeare plays to review and a new Harry Potter novel next weekend.]

^*"The Centipede's Dilemma"
   A centipede was happy quite,
   Until a frog in fun
   Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
   This raised her mind to such a pitch,
   She lay distracted in the ditch
   Considering how to run.
     - via The Wondering Minstrels and New Scientist (and Spider Robinson)

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:50 PM

Well well well. Less than one week out from the Half-Blood Prince release and it's time for the obligatory commentary piece describing adult fans of the series as "stupid... morons... should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty" and so forth.*

Honestly, the article is mostly just a litany of insults. Earlier pieces by Byatt and Harold Bloom at least managed to be witty with their disdain.

For those who doubt the notion of intellectual depth in/from Harry Potter, I invite you all to peruse HP_essays, a LiveJournal community for in-depth examinations of the texts in matters of morality, character, culture and complexity.

*Discovered the article via Kevin Drum who points out that this inane article is just part of the mosaic of a new section of the LA Times that manages to be mostly subpar.

Added later: Alex Knapp found a marvelously appropriate quote by Orson Scott Card:

“So when you hear someone sneer at the Harry Potter books, either they haven?t read them, and are therefore too ignorant to be listened to, or they haven?t understood them, and are therefore not clever enough to take part in serious adult conversations.&rdquo

He (Knapp not Card) also provides his own perfectly pithy takedown of the L.A. Times article.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:10 PM

Poking about library catalogs and Books in Print, I've found a number of books about reviewing. Many are old but I'm not dismissing them outright because the authors seem respectable. I haven't checked any out yet, but I'd love further recommendations about these or other works:

• How to see a play by Richard Burton (1914)
• The craft of the critic by Samuel Stephenson Smith (1931)
• Advice to a young critic by Bernard Shaw (1955)
• Critical writing for the journalist by Roland Edgar Wolseley (1959)
• Responses to drama; an introduction to plays and movies by Thelma Altshuler (1967)
• The student journalist and the critical review by Albert Shaff (1970)
• Writing opinion, reviews by William Rivers (1988)
• How to read and write about drama by Gary Vena (1988)
• Theatre criticism by Irving Wardle (1992)
• Writing about theatre by Christopher Thaiss (1998)
• Reviewing the arts by Campbell B. Titchener (1998+)
• Everyone wants my job! : the ABC's of entertainment writing by Diana Saenger (2000)
• Ways in : approaches to reading and writing about literature and film by Gilbert Muller (2002)

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:03 PM

Earlier today I posted a whole mess of updates to Bard In Boston. I've also got a reader survey underway, if anybody would care to share their opinions to help me improve the site.

The summer Shakespeare season is upon us.

Since I've actually started getting press tickets (as opposed to merely announcements and press kits) I've tried to take a more serious approach towards reviews.

Measure for Measure was the first play I attended knowing I had to review it. That obligation imbued me with a very different feeling than the mere awareness that I was going to review a play: I mean, the moment I heard Dido was playing in the area, I knew I would write it up. But with Measure, I had a responsibility to review it, in exchange for the complimentary tickets I received.

And I noticed differences in myself when I watched it.

How do professional reviewers learn their craft? Anybody with a background in journalism or theater care to share some pointers (advice or books to read). [A while back, I found a discussion on the current state of theater criticism going on among SpearBearer Down Left, Parabasis and George Hunka. I intend to contact them for their suggestions.]

For those who have read my reviews, what do you think? Any areas you think I'm particularly weak -- or particularly strong? Any aspects you think I'm giving short-shrift to? [No sense fixing things that aren't broken.]

Thanks for listening.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 AM

If I were in Boston the night of the Potter release (explanation here), I'd be at Pandemonium, which is holding a Potter Party for adults only. Here's a transcription of the flyer for those who might be considering:

Hogwarts Alumni Reunion

Put on your spiffiest wizarding robe or witching cape and join us in the Hogwarts Library for the "Hogwarts Alumnni Reunion" and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince release party.

Doors open at 9:15pm and no guests will be admitted after 10:30pm. Pre-ordered copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be available at midnight. Please note that the Reunion is limited to Staff and Alumni; no Students (children) will be permitted to attend.

Headmaster Dumbledore notes:
"Various spells and enchantments will be in place to prevent any Muggles or students from accidentally wandering in. We would like to avoid the unfortunate events of lsat year. Despite our best efforts, the Muggle involved still believes herself to be a small flock of geese. To prevent confusion on the part of the guardian beasts, Muggle attire is strongly discouraged."

The flyer goes on, but you get the idea. Costumes encouraged, Trivia contest, Word association games, "Lightning-Quick Fan-Fic" sounds interesting, as does the chance to talk to representatives of The Witching Hour.

For anyone who is interested and able, they request you RSVP to general@pandemonium.com by July 12th. Include the following inforation into your RSVP:
 • Name:
 • Hogwarts Name:
 • House:
 • Graduation Year: (I hear 1812 was pretty interesting...)
 • Staff/Alumni (choose one)
Plus contact information if you want to pre-order a copy.

For non-Bostonians or Bostonians with kids, PotterParties.com has over 2100 others listed.