In my Monday Tally a few weeks ago I linked to a website called Five Books. The website is a collection of book lists by experts on particular topics and has the tagline is “The best five books on everything.”
One of the reasons I was intrigued by the site is the idea of reading books on a particular topic or theme in order to build an expertise in something. This is a theme that runs through my reading – when I find a topic I’m curious about, I end up reading a lot of books on that subject until I get burned out on it (example: “back to the farm” memoirs). This love of themes is part of why I love putting together Narrative Nonfiction 5 lists.
But could I really be an expert on anything?
Review: I think anyone who really loves books should take the time to read 84 Charing Cross Road. That’s why I’m even bothering to review it, since I sort of feel like everyone has already read it. But, if you happen to be a person who hasn’t yet, go out and find this book pronto.
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. Enjoy!
It’s been like a month since my last Monday Tally… Oops. I blame The Move and then me just being lame. But now it’s back, and I pledge to bring you awesome links. Some of these are a little old, but hopefully still good. Here we go!
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. Enjoy!
Monday Tally might be a bit light this week, since I had to get it ready before my vacation and didn’t read blogs all weekend. But it’s still pretty link-tastic, if I do say so myself!
Since it’s the end of June, now seemed the perfect time to look back at the first half of 2010 and see how my reading is going. The picture above is a Wordle I made for the blog so far, and I love it. I’m glad “books” and “just think” are so big.
But on to the books — so far this year I’ve read 45 books. By this time last year, I’d only read 34 books. Good progress! I made a few tables that breakdown books by a few stats, mostly for my own amusement.
Sometimes I just don’t want to read the book I’m supposed to read.
I want to ignore the shelf of review books (even though I am excited to read them), skip my pile of library books, and avoid the books pulled because of challenges of other book blogging projects. I just want to read something different.
So for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to indulge that desire, since I think reading books I’m “supposed” to read when I don’t feel like reading them doesn’t work for anyone. And my rebellious reads have been a lot of fun.
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!).
Hello to everyone stopping by from BEA and the Book Blogger Convention! This post is just a quick introduction of myself if we didn’t get to chat long when we met. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you can read my plans for BEA and how to contact me.
About a month ago I proposed a personal reading project for myself: read 3,000 pages in the 30 days of my Christmas break. Technically, I still have one magazine story to revise and turn in, but it’s so close to being done with the semester that I’m going to start today, yay!
It hit me a few nights ago just how much I love everything about reading.
I love being asked for a book recommendation, then giving one I think is exactly right.
I love looking at my bookshelves and knowing every book on it, the story, the characters, the cover, the feelings when I finished.
