A bookworm journalist blogs on literature and life
From the category archives:
Title: The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession Author: Mark Obmascik Genre/Format: Narrative Nonfiction Year: 2004 Acquired: Bought Rating: One Sentence Summary: Competitive bird watching is a real thing, and 1998 was a banner year for one of the sports’ oddest competitions. One Sentence Review: The Big Year is an entertaining [...]
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About three months ago, Boyfriend and I were invited to join a wine tasting group here in Madison called WASTED – it’s an acronym for something, but no one can see to remember what! I’m not a big wine expert, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to know more about. There’s something sophisticated and classic [...]
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One Sentence Summary: At 14-years-old, Finny Short runs away, and the boy she meets while on the lam changes her life for the better.
One Sentence Review: Finny was the perfect light but impactful read that I wanted while on vacation at the lake.
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One Sentence Summary: Unable to afford school, 14-year-old Malawian William Kamkwamba pursued his education at his village library where his life was changed by a book called Using Energy.
One Sentence Review: William’s memoir was the perfect combination for me – compelling story, strong narrative voice, and connections to real life.
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This post is part of Diana Wynne Jones Week, August 1-7, hosted by Jenny at Jenny’s Books. Head over there to see a whole lot of posts by this really lovely YA fantasy author.
When I think Diana Wynne Jones, I usually think back to the first series I read – The Dalemark Quartet. I only have hazy memories of the plot, but remember loving the adventuresome kids, use of myth and magic, and four separate but interconnect stories about the world of Dalemark.
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A Note from Kim: After the Book Blogger Convention, I came home with a pretty sweet bag of books. Not all of them were really my thing, so I passed on a few to my sister to read and review. Jenny’s been on the blog before – last summer we did a series of Sister’s Reviews – but this is her first solo review. Please give her a warm welcome back!
I will start my review by saying that Deb Caletti has been compared a lot to Sarah Dessen. If you recall from our Sister Reviews last summer, Sarah Dessen has written one of my favorite books ever The Truth About Forever, so I had high hopes for The Secret Life of Prince Charming going in.
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One Sentence Summary: A bunch of well-off California kids and their parents stress about the college application process for elite universities across the U.S.
One Sentence Review: Good writing saves what is otherwise an average book full of people with very few actual problems.
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One Sentence Summary: Parallel stories look at people damaged directly or indirectly by lightning.
One Sentence Review: The book flips between competing storylines with ease and lets every character, however small, have a space and story in the novel.
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Hello and welcome to my post on The Things They Carried, and what I hope will be a good discussion of the book. I’ve never done this before, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.
I’d love the discussion in the comments to be between all of us. I encourage you to read the previous comments and respond to them — don’t be afraid to leave multiple comment at a time. There’s a REPLY link underneath each comment, so you can reply to specific posts. I’ll be at work today and can’t really blog, so responding to others will keep the discussion interesting.
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The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts is a book of literary criticism looking at the role of time in memoir (duh, I guess). It also explores why memoirs are important and gives a defense of memoir against some of its common criticisms.
As Birkerts explains it, most memoirs have at least one thing in common:
They all, to greater or lesser degree, use the vantage point of the present to gain access to what might be called the hidden narrative of the past. Each is in its own way an account of detection, a realized effort to assemble the puzzle of what happened in the light of subsequent realization.
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