A bookworm journalist blogs on literature and life
From the category archives:
I finished The Hunger Games Trilogy yesterday, after what was a pretty crazy month of reading. I finished 14 books in August, which amounted to just over 4,500 pages. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reading month that productive. But it was also exhausting! Especially reading the Hunger Games books straight through, three days [...]
{ 1 comment }
I am not the world’s most impressive chef, but I’ve always wanted to be a good cook. I’ve debated signing up for cooking classes, but end up skipping it because of expenses or time.
As a cook I like to have recipes, but tend to not follow them exactly. It drives my boyfriend crazy when I don’t measure – too lazy to wash all the measuring utensils – or just guess on how long something should cook. This works out for me about half the time, and the other half I get something weird that doesn’t quite seem right.
{ 12 comments }
A few months ago I read and reviewed Sheena Iyengar’s recent book The Art of Choosing. It’s a great book, but if you don’t have the time to read it, you should at least take time to watch this 25 minute TED Talk, where Iyengar covers many of the points in the book.
The talk focuses mostly on the assumptions that we all have about choices and how those assumptions impact what we think.
{ 4 comments }
As part of the little reading project/discussion I’m hosting for Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I decided to post some discussion questions I found at Reading Group Guides.
You DO NOT have to answer these questions in your review or to participate – I’m just posting them for people who are interested. I’ll be basing my review around these questions because I think they’re good and I hope they’ll spark some thoughtful discussion.
{ 8 comments }
Of all the books Tim O’Brien has written, I think The Things They Carried is the most well-known and well-read (but that’s just me). When I said I planned to read all of Tim O’Brien this summer, there was a lot of enthusiasm for this book in particular.
Because of that, I decided to encourage more people to join me in reading the book. My plan is to have it read by Monday, July 26 and put up a post that day. I’ll do a Mr. Linky so others can leave reviews or discussions, then I hope we’ll have a good chat in the comments.
{ 32 comments }
I’m so excited to get to announce the that Andi (Estella’s Revenge) and I are starting an online book club about food, BookClubSandwich.
We’re going to read all sorts of things — memoirs about food, nonfiction on seasonal food and food politics, fiction with a strong food element. There are a ton of food books out there, so I have no doubt we’ll be able to pick some interesting ones.
{ 14 comments }
Today I was lucky enough to guest post for Florinda over at the 3 R’s Blog.
My post is about something I’m calling “nonfictional fiction,” which includes books like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger.
{ 6 comments }
Monday Tally is a weekly link round-up of some of my favorite posts discovered over the week. If you have suggestions for Monday Tally, please e-mail sophisticated [dot] dorkiness [at] gmail [dot] com. This week features people who study sleep and some great books for my TBR. Enjoy!
{ 27 comments }
I didn’t get to BEA until Thursday around 1:00, so I don’t have much to say about that other than that the expo is huge, I still got a few cool books and thank goodness Jill (Fizzy Thoughts) was around to help Care and I navigate!
My favorite BEA books were Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky, The Company Town by Hardy Green, and The Angel of Grozny by Asne Seiestad (thanks to Jill for snagging that one for me!).
{ 30 comments }
This semester I’ve been working with two other students and a professor to put together Corkboard, an online journal of literary journalism. Our first issue went live today and I would love it if you headed over to take a look.
{ 8 comments }
This blog, Sophisticated Dorkiness, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
