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

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!

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.

[continue reading…]

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:

1. Green, John: The Fault in Our Stars (YA fiction)
2. Krist, Gary: City of Scoundrels (nonfiction)
3. Gawande, Atul: Complications (memoir)
4. Davis-Gardner, Angela: Butterfly’s Child (fiction)
5. Peters, Elizabeth: Crocodile on the Sandbank (fiction/mystery)
6. Martin, George R.R.: Clash of Kings (fiction/fantasy)
7. Speart, Jessica: Winged Obsession (narrative nonfiction)
8. Moriarty, Laura: The Chaperone (fiction)
9. Nicholls, Davis: One Day (fiction/audio book)
10. Lancaster, Jen: Bitter is the New Black (memoir)
11. Ozma, Alice: The Reading Promise (memoir)
12. Bergstein, Rachelle: Women From the Ankle Down (nonfiction)
13. Miller, Jennifer: The Year of the Gadfly (fiction)
14. 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