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.
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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.
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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.
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In the last month I’ve missed two of my favorite blogging community events — the Bloggiesta and the Read-a-Thon.
I had big plans to participate in both, but then a few days before the Bloggeista my grandpa was unexpectedly hospitalized. He’s been in and out of the hospital since then, so I’ve been home with my family more often than normal. He’s doing much better, but it was pretty scary for awhile. We didn’t know how well he was going to recover, physically or mentally, or if he’d ever really be able to go home. But it sounds like he’s coming home from the transitional care facility tomorrow and we’re just going to see how it goes from there.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post. The boyfriend got scheduled to work 18 hours this weekend — 12 today, six tomorrow — and the weather outside is frightful, so I decided to make this my own personal Read-a-Thon and Bloggiesta weekend.
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At the end of 2011, I stole an idea from Lu (Regular Rumination) to write super-short reviews for books that I hadn’t written full reviews about. I liked that idea so much, that I’m going to try to keep it up this year and do some summary posts of short reviews every three months. These are books that, for whatever reason, I didn’t feel like writing full reviews for but still wanted to at least mention.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Adventures by Brian Konietzko — This book is a collection of short comics set during the time covered during the television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was obsessed with this series last summer, so of course I was excited to pick up this comic to revisit that world. I think anyone who is familiar with Avatar will find something to enjoy with this book (it’s quite funny, and answers lots of little questions that cropped up in the series), but if you’re not an Avatar fan it’s probably not worth picking up.
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl — Garlic and Sapphires is restaurant critic Ruth Reichl’s memoir about her time as the restaurant critic for The New York Times. To help keep her identity a secret and get a more honest look at how restaurants treat the average customer, Reichl adopted a series of disguises that she wore while eating out for her reviews. As one might expect from a restaurant critic, Reichl writes beautifully and seductively about food, but the book also explores issues of identity and family quite well.
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