Books That Speak Volumes

-- Evelyn Small

The Life of Reading

Leafing through Reading Women, by Stefan Bollman (Merrell, $24.95), made me want to find a comfy chaise lounge, put up my feet and pick up a book. Reproduced beautifully here are artists' works through the ages -- paintings, drawings, prints and a few photographs -- depicting women in various states of reading. Here are the well-known (Rembrandt's "The Prophetess Anna," Whistler's "Reading by Lamplight," Fragonard's "A Young Girl Reading"), the lesser-known (Franz Eybl's "Girl Reading," Aleksandr Deineka's "Young Woman with Book," James Tissot's "Stillness") and the eye-popping (Eve Arnold's 1952 photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses). Your own reading pleasure is also informed by Karen Joy Fowler's foreword, in which she elaborates on her notion that "the woman who reads has a complicated history." Put yourself in good company with this lovely collection.

-- Evelyn Small

For the Birds

Ruby-throated Hummingbird( - "Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song")

Two new books by the ornithologist and bird biologist Les Beletsky, Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song (Chronicle, $45) and Birds of the World (Johns Hopkins Univ., $50), are likely to be on the wish lists of bird-lovers everywhere. The former is a kind of alternative play station for adults: A "push and listen" digital audio display features audio from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and listeners can hear warbling, wup and caow notes, as well as a multitude of other screeches and trills, "sometimes rendered as pump-er-lunk or dunk-a-doo." Tune in to hear, as the foreword notes, "the wailing laugh of a Common Loon, the bugling of a flock of swans . . . the honking of a flock of Canada Geese." Four different artists render illustrations of the birds, and Beletsky's expertise and lively writing provide clear and insightful accounts of each bird's ecology, behavior and "vocalizations," from the Eared Grebe to the Ruddy Duck to the Worm-Eating Warbler to the Indigo Bunting (whose songs would actually make for a nice CD).

The latter book is a 500-page collection of Beletsky's authoritative descriptions of birds and their families, along with more than 1,600 paintings and illustrations. These volumes are for birders everywhere, but also for those of us who just like to know -- and wonder -- about these beauties.

-- Evelyn Small

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