Communities

I haven’t done The Sunday Salon in a long time, and I’ve found myself really missing it. I liked having a space and excuse to do just have a sort of personal musings and readings post, so I’m going to try and start up again.

Right now seems like a good time for a general reading and life update, if you’re interested in this dork’s life, with pictures!

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is coming up from September 17 – 17, 2010. As part of the process of being part of the directory and being able to vote on awards, as well as being eligible for awards, bloggers need to register.

I’m just sneaking this in a day before the deadline, which is tomorrow (July 7). If you haven’t registered yet, you should do it — even if you don’t want to be nominated for an award, registering helps put your blog in a category and be part of choosing blogs in your peer group.

I’m so excited to get to announce the that Andi (Estella’s Revenge) and I are starting an online book club about food, BookClubSandwich.

We’re going to read all sorts of things — memoirs about food, nonfiction on seasonal food and food politics, fiction with a strong food element. There are a ton of food books out there, so I have no doubt we’ll be able to pick some interesting ones.

Sometimes I just don’t want to read the book I’m supposed to read.

I want to ignore the shelf of review books (even though I am excited to read them), skip my pile of library books, and avoid the books pulled because of challenges of other book blogging projects. I just want to read something different.

So for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to indulge that desire, since I think reading books I’m “supposed” to read when I don’t feel like reading them doesn’t work for anyone. And my rebellious reads have been a lot of fun.

This week I got to read two memoir/travelogues that were also graphic novels — Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson and Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle.

I’m going to try to review them together because what I thought was most interesting was the way the graphic novel format allows for two pretty similar stories to be told in very different ways.

Over the last few weeks I got to work on a freelance story for our local newspaper about summer reading trends and approaches. I interviewed local librarians and other readers to try and write about why people choose the books they choose in the summer, and about the idea of taking on summer reading projects versus “beach reads.”

I’d love it if you went over and read the article and let me know what you think. There’s also a sidebar of suggested summer reads in a variety of categories that I think turned out well too. And there’s a story on e-readers (by another editor), that I think is good too.

Life got in the way this weekend and I couldn’t participate in Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-Thon. My friend Amanda came to town to look for apartments next year, which took most of Saturday. Luckily, we did find a great place close to where I live now that has a nook area, wood floors, a decorative fireplace, and built in bookshelves. It’s awesome. I can’t wait to move in August and share pictures.

Thanks to everybody who voted on which books I should read on my bus ride home. I ended up taking Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl.

I finished Honeymoon in Tehran this morning, and although I didn’t love it as much as I loved Moaveni’s first book, Lipstick Jihad, I think it’s a book worth checking out. I decided I’m going to do a Q&A review about the book, since there was so much interest, so leave any questions you have in the comments and I’ll use them as I write.

Sometimes I think a book comes along at just the right time — it hits a chord you didn’t know needed to be hit, or speaks on some way that makes the impact of the book more than the sum of it’s part. That doesn’t diminish how good the book is, just amplifies what it’s about.

This week, I had one of those books — Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt.