The host for our August nonfiction discussion is Amy of Amy Reads, who asks:
How did you get into reading nonfiction? Do you remember your first nonfiction book or subject? If so, do you still read those subjects?
It probably won’t surprise anyone reading this post that I’ve almost always wanted to be a writer of some kind. When I was in elementary school, I imagined that I’d be a novelist… not because I had great stories to tell, but because that was the only kind of writing I could wrap my brain around. As I got older, through middle school and high school, it dawned on me that I didn’t have the imagination to write fiction. I loved the techniques of fiction — strong characters, well-imagined settings, dialogue, plot, and conflict — but just couldn’t invent stories to save my life.
Writers in the Real World
A friend from college, Ben, has been blogging about his experiences in an MFA writing program. He’s had a couple really thoughtful posts recently about the idea of casting nets widely, or read broadly to experience different types of books. His second post is a little more formal look at the idea and some of the short stories that helped him read widely this semester.
Anthony Bourdain came to Madison a few weeks ago, and my friend Lindsay wrote up her impressions of his speech. I got to go too, and will have some thoughts about it soonish… I hope!
One Sentence Summary: A community college writing seminar is terrorized by a prankster with nefarious intentions.
One Sentence Review: Willitt’s book mixes genres and structure to deliver a well-written mystery novel and fun example of metafiction without being too thinky.
Why I Read It: I read a lot of good reviews and finally decided this would be a book to read during the Halloween season.
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts is a book of literary criticism looking at the role of time in memoir (duh, I guess). It also explores why memoirs are important and gives a defense of memoir against some of its common criticisms.
As Birkerts explains it, most memoirs have at least one thing in common:
They all, to greater or lesser degree, use the vantage point of the present to gain access to what might be called the hidden narrative of the past. Each is in its own way an account of detection, a realized effort to assemble the puzzle of what happened in the light of subsequent realization.
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
Top picks are my three favorites of the week – links here, explanations later in the post.
One of my goals in the last two years has been to take good notes while I read. I’ve found having notes helps when I start to write reviews because I have ideas, quotes, and impressions jotted down already.
A few people have mentioned they can’t seem to take notes while they read, so I wanted to write a post with five easy tips on how to get in the habit.
I was first introduced to writer Anne Lamott during a creative nonfiction class I took as a junior in college. We read her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, as a way to learn how to write narrative essays without getting bogged down. When I’m stuck writing I love to go [...]
Still having some writer’s block, so here are a few more interesting links I came across over the last couple days. Nintendo and HarperCollins announced a deal where they will make 100 classic book titles available to read on the Nintendo DS game console. Sadly, these DS books will initially only be available in the [...]
I’m feeling in a bit of a blog funk lately — I blame the end of the semester and a hangover from NaBloPoMo — and can’t seem to think of anything original to write. However, yesterday I found a great post at Critical Mass that contained John Updike‘s six rules for reviewing books that I’d [...]
Comments, Categories, and Social Media — Oh My!
by Kim on March 4, 2010 · 14 comments
I’m combining three of blog-business posts into one with this, because I don’t like it when my blog gets overrun with posts not actually about books. This week, Weekly Geeks wanted to look at commenting, a topic I think is really important to think about as a blogger. The task for the Blog Improvement Project is to look into categories and tags — two administrative tools that help keep blogs organized and can help search engines find you blog. And finally, a few bloggers (My Friend Amy, Beth Fish Reads, others?) posted social media policies yesterday, which inspired me to do the same
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