A bookworm journalist blogs on literature and life
Title: What It Is Like to Go to War Author: Karl Marlantes Genre: Nonfiction Year: 2011 Acquired: Book Expo America Rating: Review: I think one of the reasons I’ve procrastinated on writing this review is because I just don’t quite know what to say about What It Is Like to Go to War. Karl Marlantes’ [...]
{ 10 comments }
Title: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Notices into Fearless Home Cooks Author: Kathleen Flinn Genre: Nonfiction Year: 2011 Acquired: Library Rating: Review: Fresh from her stint at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris (chronicled in her first memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry) [...]
{ 17 comments }
Title: Oryx and Crake Author: Margaret Atwood Genre: Fiction Year: 2003 Acquired: Bought Rating: Summary (Source): Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive [...]
{ 26 comments }
Title: Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys, Lost at Sea and of the Beachocombers, Oceaongraphers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them Author: Donovan Hohn Genre: Nonfiction Year: 2011 Acquired: Library Rating: Review: Confession time: I picked up this book because I fell in love with the subtitle. [...]
{ 20 comments }
Title: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee Genre: Nonfiction Year: 2010 Acquired: Bought Rating: Review: I bookmarked so many fantastic passages from The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, it’s hard for me to pick just one to start this review with. But really, if there’s one quote that [...]
{ 30 comments }
When I was doing some blog maintenance last week, I came across an un-posted “review” that I wrote soon after finishing Priceless (Yes, I did actually read the book!). Rather than let more than 1,100 words of bitter sarcasm go to waste, I turned the review into a post over at Book Riot that went up yesterday where I talked about the Not So Great Expectations Book Club and my thoughts on reading Richie.
{ 18 comments }
Just about every English major has to take some version of a survey class as a freshman or a sophomore — a look at the major authors and works in the Western (British and American) canon. Although there are many critiques of the canon (it’s not inclusive, the author aren’t relevant, the books are boring…), the point of studying the classics as an English major is to get a good basis for where our major literary traditions came from and how they make an impact today. At least, that’s what I took from my English major.
{ 12 comments }
My first short list of favorite reads in 2011 — which covers everything I read this year, regardless of when it was published — was more than 25 books long. I managed to cut down my list to five fiction and five nonfiction favorites. Since I don’t think I’ll be finishing any more books this year, I’m posting my fiction picks today and nonfiction picks tomorrow. Let me know what you think!
{ 36 comments }
Lu (Regular Rumination) had this great idea to do a “Great Review Catch Up” post to quickly sum up the books she read this year but never wrote reviews for. I liked the idea so much that I decided to “borrow” the idea myself and do a quick post about the books I read this year but never reviewed on the blog.
It’s a rather mixed bag of books, but there were definitely some good ones that I passed over because I just didn’t have anything (or, in one case, too many things) to say about them.
{ 20 comments }
 |
 |
 |
This blog, Sophisticated Dorkiness, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
