A bookworm journalist blogs on literature and life
Two Sentence Summary: From the book jacket — “On June 8, 1966, an EF-5 tornado cut a 22-mile swath across eastern Kansas and straight through Topeka, Kansas’s capital city. When it was over, 16 people were dead, more than 500 were injured, and property damage had reached $100 million.”
One Sentence Review: The level of detail and strong use of visuals make this book an impressive and engrossing read.
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One Sentence Summary: Journalist Joshua Foer spent a year immersing himself in the art of memory, culminating in competing in the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship.
One Sentence Review: Foer’s book is wonderful when exploring the ideas of memory, but lacks the same sort of passion when Foer focuses on himself and tying his experiences to broader themes.
Why I Read It: I usually enjoy books written by journalists who spend a year immersed in a quirky subculture, so this book seemed right up my alley.
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My Writings on the Interwebs
I recently finished a story for work about the redesign of the Perkins Brailler, a product that hadn’t been redesigned since 1951. I think this article turned out well.
I also did a freelance piece of Readers’ Advisor News about Book Blog Basics for Librarians. A big thanks to Sarah at Citizen Reader for helping me set up this story, and Jenn at Jenn’s Bookshelves for being interviewed.
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Because I’m woefully behind on writing reviews, I’m combining a few of them to try and get caught up. These are three nonfiction books that I enjoyed, for the most part, but ended up not having a ton of stuff to say about. Click the photos to head to the reviews!
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One Sentence Summary: Laurie Hertzel joined the Duluth News Tribune in the mid-1970s as a clerk, then found herself sucked into the life and career of a journalist.
One Sentence Review: Hertzel’s memoir is a self-deprecating and charming coming-of-age story about life in the newsroom, but I’m just about the ideal reader for the story so might have a hard time assessing it objectively.
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Wednesday’s Topic: We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?
In a weird way, I think my reading has actually gotten more selective since BBAW last year. After I was nominated for Best Nonfiction Review Blog in 2009, I started reading more and more nonfiction, since that seemed to be what people expected. I did read a lot of nonfiction before, but the choice has seemed more deliberate since then.
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Monday Tally is a weekly link round-up of some of my favorite posts discovered over the week.
Monday Tally is a day early this week because tomorrow is my discussion for Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I can’t wait!
Top Picks
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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!
Top Picks
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Summary: New Yorker journalist David Grann set out to solve one of the biggest exploration mysteries of the last 100 years: What happened to explorer Percy Fawcett when he headed into the Amazon to find the mythical Lost City of Z?
Book Review: Some parts of The Lost City of Z are quite good, but the whole isn’t as entirely satisfying as I hoped it would be.
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Over the last few weeks I got to work on a freelance story for our local newspaper about summer reading trends and approaches. I interviewed local librarians and other readers to try and write about why people choose the books they choose in the summer, and about the idea of taking on summer reading projects versus “beach reads.”
I’d love it if you went over and read the article and let me know what you think. There’s also a sidebar of suggested summer reads in a variety of categories that I think turned out well too. And there’s a story on e-readers (by another editor), that I think is good too.
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