It’s been a pretty crazy week. Awesome. But crazy.

Thank you, everyone, for your nice words on my big announcement this week, and for my blogiversary the week before. (I’m going to draw winners for the Readers’ Survey giveaway soon, I promise!) It’s been a couple weeks of feeling warm fuzzy feelings everytime I come online. And all of this talk and general good cheer has made me even more excited for Book Expo America in a couple of weeks — fun plans are already starting to come together, including hanging out with many of my favorite bloggers. If you’re going to be at BEA, let me know so we can make sure we’ll get to connect!

However, BEA is still a couple of weeks away; or, perhaps more accurately, BEA is just a couple of weeks away. Until then, I have plenty of errands and lists and projects to work on. This Sunday finds me mobile blogging at a coffee shop about 45 minutes from home after an early afternoon of shopping for some new shoes and other random travel necessities. Apparently, I’m not following my own advice from last year, when I promised to take care of my feet before BEA rather than breaking in news shoes.

Luckily, my reading mojo has come back a little bit this weekend. I’m at the point I’m supposed to be for my readalong of Catch-22 with Jill (Fizzy Thoughts), and I managed to finish a book — The Ball by John Fox. I also started reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, which is absolutely awesome so far (and where the title of this post came from).

One thing that’s cool about reading The Sparrow (other than it sucking me in completely because the plot is so totally awesome) is that I started reading it without knowing much of anything about the the book. I didn’t have a good idea of the plot, the characters, or even any detailed opinions about what other people have thought about the book. Now that I get so many of my reading recommendations from reading reviews online, I rarely go into a book without some ideas about it. Reading a book with fresh eyes has been fun.

This week, I’m planning to finish The Sparrow and perhaps get a start on a couple of books I was sent for review in advance of BEA or Toni Morrison’s Home, which came from the library this week. I decided that I’m going to save Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for my read on the plane to New York, so I’ve got some open reading time. For now, however, I need to get some reviews done! Happy Sunday, everyone!

Title: City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
Author: Gary Krist
Genre: Narrative nonfiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration
Rating:

Long Review: The twelve days of disaster that gave birth to modern Chicago started with a blimp crash. A crew from the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company were testing one of their new airships, Wingfoot Express, with a well-publicized flight over downtown Chicago. But just minutes into the flight, the blimp caught on fire, plunging through the glass ceiling of a bank near Grant Park. And that wouldn’t nearly be the end of it. In the next two weeks, the citizens of Chicago would be shaken by a race riot, a transit strike, and a shocking child murder. By the end,

The unbridled energy and ambition that had been fueling Chicago’s transformation turned into a frenzy of violence and destruction that would leave dozens dead, hundreds injured, neighborhoods destroyed, and a city scarred by crime, corruption, and racial and ethnic hatred.

In City of Scoundrels, Gary Krist brings these 12 days to life in vivid detail, writing as effectively about the political decisions that led up to and, in some cases, exacerbated the disasters and the people on the street who had to make their way through Chicago in the midst of the crisis. Krist has a gift for plot, moving the story along quickly without glossing over any of the important (and gory and exciting and tragic) details. And his writing style is clear and accessible, making this an easy book to read. City of Scoundrels is a great narrative history that I couldn’t put down.

Other Reviews: Devourer of Books |

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!

You may or may not have seen that Goodreads and the American Association of Publishers announced the four winners of the first annual Independent Book Blogger Awards this afternoon… and I’m one of the winners!

What? I know, it’s crazy.

Backing up… In April, book bloggers were invited to submit their blogs to the contest in one of four categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Young Adult & Children’s, and Publishing Industry. There was a round of popular voting, after which 15 finalists were judged by “a committee of industry representatives” to determine the winner. I took a little while to pick some favorite posts to submit, but ended up going with these five:

• Review: ‘Methland’ by Nick Reding
• Adjusting My Thoughts on Essay Expectations
• A Supposedly Funny Author I Might Try Reading Again
• ‘Here Is a Human Being’ by Misha Angrist
• Review: ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ by Rebecca Traister

After I picked those posts and submitted my name, I basically forgot about the contest because I never thought I had a chance of winning. On Monday afternoon I got a wake-up call in the form of an e-mail from AAP asking me to call them about news on my entry to the contest. After a short bit of phone tag, I found out that I was winner in the adult nonfiction category. Holy cow!

[continue reading…]

Title: The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Author: Johnathan Gottschall
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a tour with TLC Book Tours
Rating:

One Sentence Summary: Human beings love stories… but why?

One Sentence Review: The Storytelling Animal makes a solid case of the evolutionary necessity of fiction, but seems to smooth out some of the complexity of the science exploring storytelling.

[continue reading…]