Now that 2011 is gone and we’re trucking along into 2012, I can finally share with you the nonfiction short list for the Indie Lit Awards. This year, Biography/Memoir got split off from the Nonfiction category, which means our nonfiction list is chock full of intensely long and serious nonfiction reads. Seriously. Every book on this list is more than 400 pages long. So much reading!

Anyway, here’s what I’ll be diving into (but not posting about) for the next couple of months:

• Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe (Putnam Adult)
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (Crown)
• Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper)
• Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku (Doubleday)
• The Social Animal by David Brooks (Random House)

I am really excited about this list. Astute blog readers will note that I’ve already read and reviewed In the Garden of Beasts and Lost in Shangri-La in 2011, but I think for the sake of the awards I’ll be rereading both to keep my memory fresh. They were both excellent books (4.5 out of 5 star reads), so that definitely won’t be a chore.

Physics of the Future and The Social Animal are both books I wanted to read in 2011, but never got around to picking up, so I’m excited to finally have the motivation I need to pick them up. And while I hadn’t heard of Berlin 1961 before it was nominated, it looks like an exciting read as well.

If you’re curious about the other lists, head over to the Indie Lit Awards website for more information. I am especially jealous of the Biography/Memoir short list, which is full of books that I have been dying to read as well. It should be a good start of reading for this year.

Last week I posted a list of mini-reviews to finish out 2011 — books I read but never formally wrote about for one reason or another. One of the books I missed was Priceless by Nicole Richie, which I read as part of a series of literary dares with a dear friend in Madison.

When I was doing some blog maintenance last week, I came across an un-posted “review” that I wrote soon after finishing Priceless (Yes, I did actually read the book!). Rather than let more than 1,100 words of bitter sarcasm go to waste, I turned the review into a post over at Book Riot that went up yesterday where I talked about the Not So Great Expectations Book Club and my thoughts on reading Richie.

Here’s a brief preview, a couple of disconnected paragraphs, which I hope will entice you to click on the link and read my rant in full:

It’s hard for me to express just how low my expectations for Priceless were. I don’t like celebrities or gossip or fashion or reading about beautiful people. I just find it… annoying. And I wasn’t expecting Richie to be a Great Writer or anything. I mean, all you have to do is look at the book cover to know how this book is being sold: the name of the author is about twice as big as the title of the book. This is a book By Nicole Richie… and that’s about the best thing going for it.

…

After Charlotte leaves New York to head to New Orleans, she’s immediately taken in by the woman who cared for her when she was a child. Charlotte worries that she’s only leaving New York with $5,000… how could she possibly survive on that, even when she’s crashing on a couch for FREE? When she goes out to “find a job,” she stumbles into a vintage clothing store and is immediately befriended by one of the most popular girls in New Orleans, the daughter of a rich family in the city. That night, they get dressed up and head to a club. But, it’s different! This time they’re decked out in sweet vintage clothes instead of current designer duds. See, Charlotte is CHANGING! For the better!

I have to admit, sometimes it’s fun to be bitchy and sarcastic about a book, especially when being bitchy isn’t going to hurt this book in any serious way.

Despite the fact that I’m not especially great at keeping track of my goals each year, I always go through the exercise of reflecting on my goals from last year and setting some new reading and blogging goals for the next year.

I set seven goals for 2011, and had mixed results:

1. Catch up on review copies. – This one was a major fail. I ended this year with more review copies on my shelves than I started with… I blame BEA for a lot of that – I brought home 40 books and, if my record keeping is correct, I’ve only read 13 of them. Yikes!
2. Balance personal, review, and borrowed books. – This is an ongoing goal that I never quite meet. This year I wanted to read 40 percent personal book, 60 percent review copies or borrowed books. At the end of the year, I’d read 27 percent personal books and 74 percent review/borrowed books (28 percent borrowed, 46 percent review). That’s closer than I’ve been in the past, but still not quite where I want to be.
3. Give the blog a redesign. – I think I did this. I know I gave the blog a facelift, but I can’t remember when I did it. I did, however, do some shifting around to add space for adds above the header and in a sidebar, so I’d give this goal a complete!
4. Be more consistent about blog features. – I had mixed success with this. I haven’t done a Narrative Nonfiction 5 post in ages… but I did do a pretty good job with Off the Stacks.
5. Write two reviews per week. – I’m pretty sure I did this, most weeks. I definitely averaged more than two reviews a week over the year.
6. Vary up my post types. – I also had mixed success with this one. I had fun varying the way I write reviews this year, but I can’t think if I did much with short posts or other varying than that.
7. Give myself a break. – I think this was a success. I haven’t felt much on-going blogger guilt this year. I’ve taken breaks when I needed them, and things have gone just fine. Still, this is an continual challenge for my inner perfectionist.

This year I decided to set a more reading goals and less blogging goals since, for the most part, I’m comfortable with where the blog is at right now and where I might try to go with projects in the new year. Here’s what I’m trying to do in 2012:

1. Complete my Essay a Day Project. – You can read more about this project I’m doing with Ash (English Major’s Narrative) at this post. Since it’s announced, it’s obviously a goal to complete it. You can keep up with my progress on my Tumblr, A Little Bit of Dorkiness.
2. Complete the 2012 TBR Challenge. – This is my other reading challenge for the year. You can read my sign-up post here. I decided to start the year reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood — so far, so good.
3. Re-read the rest of Harry Potter. – This is one of my reading goals for my Day Zero project, and I would love to be able to finish it in 2012. I re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone this summer, so I just (ha!) need to read books two through seven this year.
4. Balance review, library, and personal reading. – A new year means new goals for how I balance out my reading life. This year I’m going to go for something that seems realistic: 40 percent review copies, 30 percent library books, and 30 percent personal books. That’s relatively close to what I did this year, which means it should be achievable?
5. Write reviews within two weeks of finishing a book. – I’ve gotten good a taking notes when I read (a goal from 2009, I think?), but often take a looong time to write reviews. I want to work on being more prompt in writing up thoughts on what I read.
6. Give myself a break. – Just because I did it this year, doesn’t mean I don’t need a reminder for 2012. This blog is a hobby that I love, but all hobbies sometimes take a back seat to real life… and you know what? That’s ok.

Title: The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Author: Sandra Newman
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a TLC Book Tour
Rating:

Review: Just about every English major has to take some version of a survey class as a freshman or a sophomore — a look at the major authors and works in the Western (British and American) canon. Although there are many critiques of the canon (it’s not inclusive, the author aren’t relevant, the books are boring…), the point of studying the classics as an English major is to get a good basis for where our major literary traditions came from and how they make an impact today. At least, that’s what I took from my English major.

Another good thing about a survey class is that tackling some of the major classics can make reading classic  literature seem less intimidating. I don’t especially love reading William Faulkner or T.S. Eliot, but having read them in a class where I was guided through helped make me more confident I can take on those books myself (if I feel like it, which, admittedly, isn’t that often).

For people without that background, the classics can seem intimidating, boring, or both. Sandra Newman, author of The Western Lit Survival Kit, argues that reading the classics has shifted from being an activity we do for fun to an activity with Greater Meaning and Significance:

Even people who don’t want to read the great books will read about the Great Books. In fact, reading about the Great Book is now a votive act, like buying a gym membership although you never go, or separating your recyclables before jumping in the SUV.

To combat that sense of the classics as a chore, The Western Lit Survival Kit offers a compact, stand-up comedy look at Western canon that explains why these books are important, what the books are about, and which books are worth reading and why. Covering the Romans all the way up to contemporary American authors like William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Western Lit Survival Kit is a good book to grab for a light-hearted and unpretentious look at the Great Books.

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