This is the story of Alex, an African Grey parrot who was the subject of Irene Pepperberg’s 30-year experiment in animal intelligence.

As someone who is convinced we humans do not give other animals due credit when it comes to intelligence, I was ready to be wowed by Alex. While Alex’s intellect was impressive, Pepperberg’s writing left something to be desired. To start, it takes her 50 pages (of a 226-page book) to actually begin the story, and spends entirely too much time talking about herself. I was disappointed in the book’s brevity and overall lack of detail about his leaning progress, particularly when it came down to technique and the methods used to test his intelligence. I would happily have digested a book twice this size in exchange for more fascinating detail.

For another, better written take on avian intelligence, try Wesley the Owl.

After learning she’s pregnant, Ruth Cleary reluctantly agrees to abandon her career in the city in order to move with her husband Patrick to a cottage adjacent to his parents’ property in the country. When her son Thomas is born, Ruth feels a disconnect between herself and the infant, and finds the responsibilities of caring for a sleepless baby and running her household alone overwhelming. Her perfect in-laws interpret her struggles as an embarrassing indication of mental instability, and Ruth agrees to spend a few weeks under a doctor’s care. Returning rested and optimistic, Ruth soon realizes that the task before her of proving herself “well” again to her husband and in-laws will be endless.

I am of two minds about this book. The plot itself is not wholly engrossing or compelling, but I enjoyed the ambiguity of the characters’ personalities. There were several times that I thought I knew exactly where the story or someone’s personality was going, but then something else would happen to check my assumptions. It was tempting, but ultimately impossible, to make black and white characterizations. For that, I rate the book higher than I might otherwise have.

One of Snow Patrol’s better CDs, I think, along with A Hundred Million Suns. I’d heard several tracks on the radio previously (Hands Open, Chasing Cars), and the rest combine to make a pretty well-rounded album.

When Clarkston, Georgia, became a favorite for refugee relocation organizations, it started a chain of events that would change the town irrevocably. It’s one thing when a refugee population originates from the same country; but in Clarkston’s case, most of the refugees had little in common with each other, much less with Clarkston’s American citizens. Seeing the many children in need of safe recreation choices, Luma Mufleh, a passionate soccer coach and an immigrant herself, decides to organize several soccer teams just for refugee kids. In addition to providing instruction in the game, Luma also requires that her players spend a portion of practice time getting tutored with schoolwork. Her biggest challenge, however, is breaking through the Clarkston red tape and suspicion just to find fields for her kids to practice on.

I’m not really a soccer fan, but this is more than just a story about kids playing soccer. It’s inspiring to see the kids bonding despite having vastly different cultural, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. However, the seeming lack of overall support these kids and their families receive, as well as the cold reception, as they are just plopped down into an American town is also disheartening.

An OK album, though not nearly as enjoyable as Little Earthquakes. Several of the tracks were kind of catchy (Strange Little Girl, New Age, I Don’t Like Mondays), although I really couldn’t stand ’97 Bonnie & Clyde.

What a charming book! When an owlet with nerve damage shows up at the Cal Tech laboratory where Stacey O’Brien works, a colleague encourages her to adopt it and care for it at home. With the understanding that raising an owl is a potential commitment of over a decade, O’Brien nevertheless agrees, and proceeds to document all aspects of Wesley’s (the owl) incredible, 19-year life with her.

As a reader, I greatly appreciated O’Brien’s background in biology. Without it, this would merely have been another story about a human and a pet. Instead, she is able to offer frank, scientific insight on Wesley’s behavior and intelligence. I definitely have a newfound admiration for owls.

In their book Send, Shipley and Schwalbe pick apart email as a communication medium, including deciding when it is appropriate and how to use it productively. They also examine email anatomy and provide tips for how to compose more effective messages.

While it was fairly comprehensive, as a seasoned email user I didn’t find very much new information that I didn’t already know or hadn’t already figured out myself. One good point that struck me, however, was the section on Cc:ing and the phenomenon where the more people copied on a request for action, the less likely any one of them is going to act. I’ll be keeping that in mind!

When Stephen Winters meets Lily, a young theater singer, he thinks she’s just the woman he needs to make him forget about the horrors he experienced during WWI. Lily isn’t particularly attracted to Stephen, but after her mother dies, marrage - despite threatening her suddenly promising career - seems like the best of her very few options.

As a reader, I didn’t find many compelling reasons to like either Stephen or Lily, and found by the end of the book that I didn’t care what happened to either of them. Unfortunate, since I’ve enjoyed some others of Gregory’s works.

This is one of those books where, about halfway through, I began to wish I’d been taking notes. Thomas Friedman argues that due to universal increases in access to technology, the earth - if not physically - is flattening with respect to growth and opportunity, becoming a much more level playing field.

It took a few chapters for Friedman to really engage me, but I was soon both engrossed and alarmed. It becomes crystal clear that in order for the US to maintain its powerhouse economic leadership in the world community, it must adopt a much more active, rather than complacent, attitude or eventually be trampled by any of several other rapidly growing economies currently nipping at its heels.

Not quite as catchy as their album ’Folie a` deux,’ but worth a listen. Although Pete Wentz gets all of the glamor attention, vocalist Patrick Stump clearly has most of the talent.