Sophisticated Dorkiness

Winning a Prize and Saying Thank You

Kim — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:55:15 +0000

You may or may not have seen that Goodreads and the American Association of Publishers announced the four winners of the first annual Independent Book Blogger Awards this afternoon… and I’m one of the winners!

What? I know, it’s crazy.

Backing up… In April, book bloggers were invited to submit their blogs to the contest in one of four categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Young Adult & Children’s, and Publishing Industry. There was a round of popular voting, after which 15 finalists were judged by “a committee of industry representatives” to determine the winner. I took a little while to pick some favorite posts to submit, but ended up going with these five:

After I picked those posts and submitted my name, I basically forgot about the contest because I never thought I had a chance of winning. On Monday afternoon I got a wake-up call in the form of an e-mail from AAP asking me to call them about news on my entry to the contest. After a short bit of phone tag, I found out that I was winner in the adult nonfiction category. Holy cow!

But… I had to keep it a secret! So all of this week I’ve had to silently “Squee!” to myself and a couple of confidants (you ladies know who you are!) as the details about the prize (a trip to Book Expo America!!) got worked out and we got the thumbs up to say something today when the press release was posted.

A totally awesome but also unintentionally hilarious part of today, with all the press releases and whatnot, is that AAP sent me a second version of the announcement tailored specifically to me that can be used to send to my local media about the award. Except since I’m the editor of my local newspaper, I am the local media (and, therefore, not really able to put a story in my newspaper about me that announces “Morris Journalist Chosen as One of Four National Winners of Publishing Industry’s Independent Book Blogger Awards”). That just made me laugh.

Anyway, I’m totally flabbergasted and honored and humbled to have won this award. To even have made it past the first round of voting is amazing to me, since even though I’ve been blogging for four years I still feel like small potatoes a lot of the time. So thank you, so very much to anyone who voted for me — I’m so grateful and surprised and happy to be recognized.

I’d also like to recognize the other awesome finalists in the nonfiction category, some that I know and some that are totally new to me: The Girl from the Ghetto; Jeannie Walker – Award Winning True Crime Author; The Parchment Girl; Reading, Writing, Working, Playing; Misfit Salon; At Home With Books; A Novel Affair; Scandalous Women; The Feminist Texican [Reads]; The Dunce Academy;World War ll London Blitz Diaries 1939-1945; The Well-read Naturalist; Janet Boyer Reviews; Notes From The Parsonage.

And, of course, the other winners in their categories:

Insatiable Booksluts - Adult Fiction
Nerdy Book Club - Young Adult & Children’s
Writer Beware Blogs - Publishing Industry

Nice job all, and I can’t wait to meet you at BEA!

So, finally, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is just so very cool, I don’t even really have words.

Review: ‘The Storytelling Animal’ by Jonathan Gottschall

Kim — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Title: The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Author: Johnathan Gottschall
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a tour with TLC Book Tours
Rating:

One Sentence Summary: Human beings love stories… but why?

One Sentence Review: The Storytelling Animal makes a solid case of the evolutionary necessity of fiction, but seems to smooth out some of the complexity of the science exploring storytelling.

Long Review: Human beings love to tell stories. Our history, religion, sports, commercials and entertainment all invoke elements of story to feed our imaginations. In The Storytelling Animal, literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall argues,

The human imperative to make and consume stories runs even more deeply than literature, dreams, and fantasy. We are soaked to the bone in the story.

But what is the purpose of telling stories? Why has the human brain evolved to love stories so much? And what does this love of story tell us about ourselves? These are the questions that Gottschall tries to answer using anecdotes and the most recent research in neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology to explore why humans evolved into “the storytelling animal.”

The Storytelling Animal is a pretty slim book — just about 200 pages, before the notes and bibliography — which means Gottschall tries to do a lot in very few pages. For the most part, his fast-paced look at the way we react to stories and the way stories impact our minds (and why we may have evolved to react that way) makes his argument clearly and conversationally. For long-time readers, his assertions that we empathize with fictional characters in a way that helps us understand and manage the challenges of real life will absolutely make sense (even if you don’t have a background in the science he covers).

But the book’s rapid-fire pace does have a downside. I think Gottschall has a tendency to simplify otherwise complex research and research findings to fit into his point. I don’t have enough of a scholarly background to make this argument for the entire book, but I have spent some time reading literature about the impact of violence in mass media (a topic Gottschall explores briefly while arguing that, in general, fiction has the ability to mold our minds). Although he says the research on the topic controversial (which it is), he goes on to suggest that consuming a lot of violent fiction will make us more violent. That’s a deep simplification of the research findings, which are far from absolute and don’t necessarily all come to that conclusion. It’s a small point in a chapter that explores some much bigger questions, but it made me think there are probably other moments where the book smooths out the rough edges of scientific questions (much like other popular science books seem to do).

The Storytelling Animal is a brief book trying to make a big argument. Although Gottschall does an admirable job of pulling an immense volume of research together and presenting it in an engaging and understandable way, I think serious nonfiction readers will want a little more than the book has to offer. But for casual nonfiction readers (or, perhaps, serious fiction readers), The Storytelling Animal is a readable justification for the evolutionary necessity of an addiction to fiction.

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

The Sunday Salon: Too Many Books for My Brain

Kim — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:23:07 +0000

Last month I read 14 books. So far this month, I finished one. What’s going on here?

I have a theory: I think my brain can only handle a certain number of books over a set period of time. If I go over that number it rebels and decides to fill itself with old episodes of Dorm Life and New Girl rather than pick up many of the books I would like to be reading. Anybody else have that problem?

I don’t know if that’s a real thing, but I do know that I haven’t felt like reading much at all this month. I finished Homicide by David Simon on May 7, and haven’t finished anything since. I’ve been slowly making my way through Catch-22, but I can’t read than during my normal reading time (lunch, before bed) because I get to distracted or to sleepy to get what’s going on.

Anyway, I do actually need to finish a book today — The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall for my stop on a TLC Book Tour this week. And write some reviews. And keep working on my plans for Book Expo America. I already made a sweet Google Map with all of the places I might be going, but I still need to work on looking through the schedule to find author signings and whatnot.

But first I’ll probably finish getting caught up with New Girl, which is much more enjoyable than it used to be (see this article in The Atlantic, “The End of Adorkable: New Girl Grows Up”). Happy Sunday!

Happy Fourth Blogiversary to Me!

Kim — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. I can’t believe that as of today I’ve been blogging for four years. I’m late getting this up, but I think that’s probably apt given how my reading and blogging life has been for the last nine months — always a little behind what I want to be doing. But I’m here, still trucking on as best I can.

I haven’t talked about my job much on the blog, so for those who don’t know, here are the basics: last August I took a job as the editor of a small, weekly newspaper in rural Minnesota. It’s exactly the job that I hoped to get when I finished grad school, which I love, but it’s also a lot of work. I spend most of my day out covering events, doing interviews, or writing stories for our print edition and website. It’s a challenging, awesome job, but it also takes a lot out of me. Blogging, and all the things that go with it, have taken a back seat more often than I care to admit.

But honestly? Even when I’m exhausted and can’t think of what to write about and don’t want to sit in front of a computer screen, I wouldn’t want to give this up. But I’m just not totally sure what direction I want to take the blog in that will keep it fun and manageable with this job. I’m pondering, a lot.

Rather than doing a Year in the Blog wrap-up like I’ve done in the past (Happy Third Blogiversary to Me!, My Two Year Blogiversary!, and Happy One Year Blogoversary!), I’m going to ask you all for some feedback in the form of a Reader Survey so that you all can help me out a little bit.

If you follow this link it will take you to an eight question survey. And as an incentive, I’m offering two $15 electronic gift certificates to the bookseller of your choice to two people who complete the survey. So that’s cool, right?

Anyway, this is a pretty anti-climactic post, I guess, for being a blogiversary celebration. Four years is a long time to do anything, long enough that there are inevitably going to be some growing pains. That’s what I’ve been feeling lately, growing pains. Can you have those online? I think so.

But this blog, and all of you, have grown with me, and I’m so grateful for that. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thanks for being here. That’s really all!

(And take a minute to take my Reader Survey! It will make me happy!)

Photo Credit: Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

Review: ‘The Reading Promise’ by Alice Ozma

Kim — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Title: The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
Author: Alice Ozma
Genre: Memoir
Year: 2011
Acquired: Bought
Rating:

One Sentence Summary: In fourth grade, Alice Ozma and her father made a promise to read together every night for 100 nights; 3,218 nights later, The Streak finally ended.

One Sentence Review: Although The Reading Promise is, ostensibly, a memoir about books, it’s really more of of a series of essays about how a daughter and her father bonded over a shared love of reading.

Long Review: When Alice Ozma was nine years old, she and her father made a promise to read together every night for 100 nights. At the end of 100 nights, curious to see how far their could push their project, they decided to try for 1,000 nights. A thousand nights turned into 2,000, then 3,000, and eventually 3,218 nights, ending The Streak the day Ozma moved into her dorm to start her freshman year of college. The Reading Promise is the story of The Streak, but also a story about a father and a daughter and their shared bond over books.

For a memoir about reading, books are pretty absent from The Reading Promise. This isn’t a memoir about what Ozma learned in the books she and her father, a single dad and elementary school librarian, read together. There are lessons from books and reflections about what certain books meant to each of them over time, but that’s not really the focus of the memoir. Instead, the memoir focuses on Ozma’s relationship with her father, a how The Streak helped bring them together.

Although Ozma was only 22 years old when The Reading Promise was published, I think she writes with a much more mature sense of self than your average recent college graduate (and I say that as a relatively-recent college grad myself). There are some really touching moments when Ozma looks back at moments when her behavior, understandable for a teenager, was deeply hurtful to her father or changed their relationship in a significant way. It takes a lot to find those moments and learn to accept them, so I’m glad Ozma didn’t shy away from sharing that.

I was charmed by this book. I even cried when Ozma wrote about the last night of The Streak, trying to find a quiet place in her freshman dorm to read together for the last time, because it reminded me so vividly of the moment my parents dropped me off for college. We didn’t read together, but there was this sense of irrevocable change coming that Ozma captures in her essay. The Reading Promise is a lovely ode, both to reading and to reading together, that I’m glad to have read myself.

Other Reviews: Book Chase | My Cozy Book Nook | A Literary Odyssey |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Monsters of Templeton’ by Lauren Groff

Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:00:57 +0000

Title: The Monsters of Templeton
Author: Lauren Groff
Genre: Fiction
Year: 2009
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Two Sentence Summary: A small town’s wayward daughter returns home in disgrace, only to discover the story she’s always been told about her absent father is a lie. As she digs into her hometown’s past, the young woman uncovers many dark secrets.

Two Sentence Review: I thought The Monsters of Templeton was totally and absolutely delightful. I’m becoming addicted to literary mysteries.

Summary (Source): One dark summer dawn in Templeton, New York, at the moment an enormous monster surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, twenty-eight-year-old Willie Upton returns pregnant and miserable to her hometown of Templeton, N.Y. Willie is a descendant of the creator of the town, Marmaduke Temple, and she expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for centuries. But the monster changes the fabric of the village, and Willie’s mother, Vivienne, has a surprise that will send Willie careening through her family’s history to dig up clues about her heritage. Spanning two centuries and based on Cooperstown, New York., the story is told through two centuries of voices, from Templeton ghosts to residents, masters to servants, natives to interlopers, and historical figures to literary characters.

Review: I’ve put off writing anything about Lauren Groff’s debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, for a long time because it’s one of those books that makes me inarticulate with how much awesomeness it contains. This is one seriously amazing book.

First, I just loved the way the story shifts voices and perspectives. Willie has the main voice of the story, but Groff intersperses so many other voices and sources — diaries, newspaper articles, family trees — that the novel just grows and grows as you keep reading. And the other characters are so juicy and interesting, bastards and murders and black widows and unethical newspaper publishers and former football players. They’re just so much of what makes this book rich.

Second, I loved the monster. I’m still not exactly sure how the sort of mystical monster meshes with the more down-to-earth part of this book, but every time Groff wrote about this monster that arose from the lake, I couldn’t help getting a little teary-eyed thinking about this beautiful creature being dead. It’s totally bizarre, and I can’t even tell you quite what it looks like or what this monster was doing, but I somehow fell in love with this creature.

And third, I loved the mystery. Well, mysteries. The Monsters of Templeton opens with many, many unanswered questions and, for the most part, Groff answers them effectively and in good time. I never felt like the plot was stringing me along without a destination in mind, or that the mysteries that got set up early weren’t going to have a sort of payoff in the end. On the whole, it’s remarkably well-plotted, which I appreciated.

I want to shove this book into the hands of as many people as possible. I even went out and bought myself a copy right after I finished it because I know it’s destined to end up on my shelf as a long-term favorite read. I can’t wait to read more from Lauren Groff.

Other Reviews: Books Distilled | Shelf Love | Fyrefly’s Book Blog |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

April Wrap-Up and a Look to May

Kim — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I had a ridiculously, amazingly good month of reading in April — 14 books for a total of 4,794 pages read and 16.5 hours listened. That’s a ton of reading for me. A ton!

I don’t think the quality of the books was quite as high as March, but that would have been pretty hard to do, since half of the books I read in March received five-star reviews. On the whole, average for April was probably 3.5 or four stars each. Here’s what I finished in April:

Green, John: The Fault in Our Stars (YA fiction)
Krist, Gary: City of Scoundrels (nonfiction)
Gawande, Atul: Complications (memoir)
Davis-Gardner, Angela: Butterfly’s Child (fiction)
Peters, Elizabeth: Crocodile on the Sandbank (fiction/mystery)
Martin, George R.R.: Clash of Kings (fiction/fantasy)
Speart, Jessica: Winged Obsession (narrative nonfiction)
Moriarty, Laura: The Chaperone (fiction)
Nicholls, Davis: One Day (fiction/audio book)
Lancaster, Jen: Bitter is the New Black (memoir)
Ozma, Alice: The Reading Promise (memoir)
Bergstein, Rachelle: Women From the Ankle Down (nonfiction)
Miller, Jennifer: The Year of the Gadfly (fiction)
Fadiman, Anne: Ex Libris (essays)

I didn’t read any poetry, which is a bit of a bummer. But, I did get ahead on some of the books I accepted for review for May, which means I have more flexibility for my book choices this month. Here’s what I’m hoping to get to:

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones — A “comedy of manners” and “frightening yet delicious drama of dark surprises” I received from the publisher for review consideration. It just sounded fun!
The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall — I’m on a book tour with TLC Book Tours for this book in a few weeks. It’s nonfiction about why we tell stories, which sounds fascinating.
The Ball by John Fox — An anthropologist asks, “Why do we play ball?” Sounds quirky, right?
The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum — This is a leftover from April that I didn’t get too: the story of three men (a detective, a gold-discovering former Marine, and a predator-conman with a vast criminal empire) during the Yukon Gold Rush
The Forgotten Founding Father by Joshua Kendall — This is a leftover from February, all about Noah Webster and his impact on the nation through building our first dictionary. I started it, but got side-tracked about 40 pages in.
Homicide by David Simon — The boyfriend and I just recently finished watching The Wire on DVD, which made me want to read Homicide; the author, David Simon, was one of the creators of The Wire, which was inspired by Homicide, which is about Simon’s year of being embedded in the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Division.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller — Jill (Fizzy Thoughts) and I are doing a buddy read of Catch-22, which is fun. I love getting to talk through books like that one, even virtually, with another reader.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell — In a post-blogiversary post, Florinda (The 3R’s Blog) said this was one book she wanted to make everyone read. Since we’re going to be roomies in New York City next month, I decided to try and read it before my vacation so we can have a book chat in person.
Rebecca and/or Macbeth by William Shakespeare — One of my other big NYC activities is to go see Sleep No More a crazy experimental “immersive theatre installation” with Florinda and Teresa (Shelf Love). The play is inspired by both of these books, so I want to read Rebecca for the first time and do a quick re-read of Macbeth before the show.

I’ve already started Homicide and Catch-22, and I’m enjoying both so far. I don’t expect to finish another 14 books this month. My usual goal is between eight and 10 books, but with some thick ones on the pile (Homicide is more than 650 pages!), I don’t know if that’ll happen.

One other thing I noticed when checking out book stats for this month: I’m basically running even between review copies (15 books), library/borrowed books (14 books), and my personal stash (14 books). That’s fantastic, since one of my goals for this year (and for probably the last two years) has been to read more of my own books. I’m sure going to BEA (Book Expo America) and seeing all the upcoming books will shift things, but for now I’m really pleased with that.

Photo Credit: Rob Warde via Flickr

Review: ‘Winged Obsession’ by Jessica Speart

Kim — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Title: Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler
Author: Jessica Speart
Genre: Narrative nonfiction
Year: 2011 (Paperback 2012)
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration
Rating:

One Sentence Summary: A novice U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent tries to take down the Indiana Jones/Hannibal Lecter of the illegal bug smuggling world.

Analogy Review: The Orchid Thief : The Wire :: Winged Obsession : White Collar

“[Book] collecting is as obsession, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.” – Jeanette Winterson

Long Review: I don’t think there’s any way to read Winged Obsession and not constantly compare it to The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean’s 1998 look into the world of the illegal orchid trade. Like The Orchid Thief, Winged Obsession explores a subculture of well-respected activity — in this case, bug collecting — to try and understand what would make a participant make the leap from collector to criminal.

The difference between the two books, however, is that Winged Obsession seems to revel in the drama and entertainment of this story, really playing up the fun of the cat-and-mouse chase toward the criminal in the moments when The Orchid Thief would have stepped back towards a more subtle conclusion. If I had to compare each book to a favorite crime drama, The Orchid Thief is like David Simon’s ode to Baltimore, The Wire, while Winged Obsession takes it’s cue from USA Network’s eye candy, White Collar. I love both, but for very different reasons.

The hero of Winged Obsession is novice U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Ed Newcomer, who finds himself on the trail of the flamboyant kingpin of butterfly smugglers, Yoshi Kojima. Newcomer befriends Kojima by posing as a novice butterfly collector. For whatever reason, Kojima grabs on to Newcomer’s undercover identity and pulls him further and further into his butterfly smuggling operation through short face-to-face meetings and extensive Skype conversations filled with awkward sexual advances from Kojima to Newcomer. It’s a strange game of back and forth over multi-million dollar endangered species.

Winged Obsession is Jessica Speart’s first foray into book-length nonfiction. She’s primarily known as a mystery writer, with some background writing about the environment for magazines, which I think makes her the perfect author for this story. Speart clearly understands both the science and legal facets of this tale, and has the fiction writer’s talent for storytelling, even when giving the necessary background information for the story:

Butterflies are beautiful, ethereal creatures. They’re fluttering tapestries of color, magically moving canvases, and tiny aerial dancers. … Butterflies are everything we seemingly long to be, young and exquisite forever. …

However, the real life of butterflies isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. They’re beset by creepy predators, eaten by birds, chased by humans, squashed on windshields of cars and caught in their grilled. Only 2 percent of the eggs laid by a female butterfly ever make it to adulthood. Perhaps because of this, many of them also have a dark side, along with rap sheets that can seem unbelievable.

Butterfly society is filled with various forms of brutality, from cannibalism and cyanide-poisoning to molestation of minors and outright rape. They have more in common with humans than we might like to admit. Their actions can read like a tragic Shakespearean play. They’re Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear all rolled into one big chrysalis.

Don’t let the rather generic title dissuade you from this book. Winged Obsession is a finely-researched and well-crafted tale that doesn’t shy away from the fun and discomfort that can be found in the strangest of criminal cases.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Chaperone’ by Laura Moriarty

Kim — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Title: The Chaperone
Author: Laura Moriarty
Genre: Fiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a TLC Book Tour
Rating:

One Sentence Summary: A summer in the city chaperoning a wayward teenage starlet becomes the opportunity for a 36-year-old woman to have her own coming-of-age story.

One Sentence Review: The Chaperone sticks out to me because of the unexpected protagonist, an everywoman who learns to push convention in small ways and find what she wants in her life.

Why I Read It: I’ve been on a bit of a historical fiction kick lately, so when I got an e-mail from TLC Book Tours suggesting this book, I thought it sounded like fun. After I accepted, I remembered that enjoyed Moriarty’s debut novel, The Center of Everything.

Long Review: In the summer of 1922, future movie star Louise Brooks, then 15, leaves her home in Wichita, Kansas for New York City to spend the summer training with the Denishawn modern dance company. Her chaperone for the trip is 36-year-old Cora Carlisle, a married mother of grown twin boys with a secret past of her own in New York. The women couldn’t be more different — Louise rejects all trappings of a conventional life, while Cora can’t help but be bound by her choices and her allegiances. But, as might be expected, the summer manages to change both of their lives forever.

The thing I found most fascinating about Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone was the way Moriarty chose to shift the focus of her story away from the expected protagonist — Louise — and on to her chaperone, Cora. In most cases, this summer-in-the-city story would have been a coming-of-age tale for Louise, a young girl in the big city for the first time. Instead, Louise is almost an antagonist in the story, provoking Cora and challenging the older woman at every turn. The Chaperone is really a coming-of-age story for Cora, and I liked that a lot.

Cora, in a lot of ways, reminds me of a sort of everywoman — a person who is living her life the best way she knows how, but feeling uncomfortable at many of the restraints that society puts on her, both physically (corsets) and socially (the terms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior). As she spends her summer in New York, investigating a link to her past and trying to keep Louise safe, Cora gradually opens up and starts to see the world differently. Eventually, she brings that new awareness of herself and society back to Wichita and her old life, continuing to push conventions in small ways.

There’s more to be said about the book than just this one observation, but at this moment it’s what sticks out most to me. The Chaperone won’t be out until June 5, but I hope you’ll consider grabbing a copy if historical fiction like this floats your boat. And, be sure to check out the rest of the reviews as part of this TLC Book Tour (which I’ll link to when they’re available), for other opinions.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

April BAND Discussion: Quirky Nonfiction

Kim — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

BAND — Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees — is a group organized to promote the joy of reading nonfiction. We are “advocates for nonfiction as a non-chore,” and we want you to join us. Each month, a member of BAND hosts a discussion on their blog related to nonfiction.

It looks like I’m sneaking my post in for our April BAND discussion is just the nick of time, which is pretty silly since I’m really excited about the topic that Care (Care’s Online Book Club) suggested for this month: quirky nonfiction. Care explains:

How do you define QUIRKY? and do you read it?

quirky |ˈkwərkē|
adjective ( quirkier, quirkiest )
characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits : her sense of humor was decidedly quirky.

I like to read nonfiction on odd subjects. I define quirky as a book about a single subject that at first thought might prompt a question of how anyone could find enough stuff to write an entire book?

I love, love, love quirky nonfiction. Whenever people ask what kind of nonfiction I like to read, I almost always respond that I’ll read books on any topic as long as the writing is good.

Since I started blogging, I’ve read quite a few books on what I think are strange topics:

Plastic rubber ducks – Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn
The birth of modern computers – The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Evolutionary biology as applied to modern neighborhoods – The Neighborhood Project by David Sloan Wilson
The making of a memory champion – Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer
The world of candy — Candyfreak by Steve Almond
The world of competitive Scrabble – Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis
The world of competitive bird watching — The Big Year by Mark Obamscik
The world of lobsters — The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson

I think what I love most about quirky nonfiction is that it teaches me about something or someone that I otherwise would never learn about. And more often than not, the people or subjects that become the center of a quirky nonfiction book are people who are pursuing a passion with such relish that I can’t help but cheer for them. I always find those books a lot of fun, and a nice break from nonfiction on more serious topics.

I also have quite a few quirky nonfiction books on my shelves just waiting to be read. Some of the ones I”m most looking forward to are:

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky — As the title suggests, a history of salt
My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs — Testing out lots of weird and random stuff
Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger — The story behind a three-game baseball series
Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart — Behind the scenes of the flower industry
Home by Tracy Kidder — The story of building a house
Eels by James Prosek — The history and story of freshwater eels
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg — A memoir of being a prison librarian

So there you have it, some of my favorite quirky reads and some of the possibly-strange topics I want to read about next. What are some of your favorite quirky books to read?