Communities

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!

BookClubSandwich: We’re Heading Into The Jungle


The book readers voted on for our next BookClubSandwich read is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I’m excited about this pick – it should be easy for everyone to find and, even though it’s a novel, is often cited as one of the big books in journalism history.

In case you missed the first round, BookClubSandwich is an online book club hosted by me and Andi at Estella’s Revenge. A few times a year, we’ll be selecting a book to read that has something to do with food. For our second pick, Andi and I decided to open up the selection process a little bit with some voting on a few books we’re excited to read. The official poll for voting is over at Estella’s Revenge (on the top right side of the site).

In order to pique your interest, here’s a list of the books we’re voting on. I wanted to go with books that were more “foodie” than “farmie” this time, so we tried to pick books that look at food in a different way.

Friday’s Topic: We’ve been visiting each other and getting to know each other better…now is your chance to share what you enjoyed about BBAW and also what your blogging goals are for the next year!

This post ended up being a little bit more, something, than I intended it to be. I’m not normally this navel gazing (I think), but I hope you’ll bear with me as I meander through a big lesson that BBAW helped me remember.

Wednesday’s Topic: We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?

In a weird way, I think my reading has actually gotten more selective since BBAW last year. After I was nominated for Best Nonfiction Review Blog in 2009, I started reading more and more nonfiction, since that seemed to be what people expected. I did read a lot of nonfiction before, but the choice has seemed more deliberate since then.

This morning I found out that Sophisticated Dorkiness was voted the Best Non-Fiction Review Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2010. I can’t even begin to tell you what a huge smile that put on my face.

And then all the congrats from friends and other book bloggers on Twitter — that was just awesome too

Tuesday’s Topic: Post the interview you did with your BBAW Interview Partner.

My partner for this year’s BBAW Interview Swap was Donna who has a couple of blogs – Holocaust Resources and LibrarysCat Book List: Reading in 9 Lives. My partner e-mail mentioned Holocaust Resources specifically, so that’s what I asked about.

Monday’s Topic: We invite you to share with us about a great new book blog you’ve discovered since BBAW last year!  If you are new to BBAW or book blogging, share with us the very first book blog you discovered.  Tell us why this blog rocks your socks off and why you keep going back for more.

I’m going to bend the rules a little bit on this one and share three new blogs I found since last BBAW that I really enjoy.

This week I made the decision that I was going to re-read both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins before I jumped into Mockingjay. I made the decision sort of last minute – the day Mockingjay came out – so I ended up having to wait a few days for my books to get delivered, but once they arrived I read though all three books in three days.

About three months ago, Boyfriend and I were invited to join a wine tasting group here in Madison called WASTED – it’s an acronym for something, but no one can see to remember what!

We’re heading off to another WASTED meeting this afternoon, which made today seem like the perfect time to review a narrative nonfiction book I just recently finished about the history of wine in the United States, The Wild Vine by Todd Kliman.