Communities

This weeks Weekly Geeks post was inspired by author Shannon Hale and some questions she had about book reviews and going beyond just saying whether you liked or disliked a book when reviewing. There were three ways to respond, and I’ve chosen the third — to respond to six questions posed on the Shannon’s original [...]

Wow! I am so excited to share that Sophisticated Dorkiness has been shortlisted for Best Nonfiction Review Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I was so excited to be nominated in the first place, and I’m even more excited to make the shortlist! If you’re new to my blog or are just curious, here are [...]

I wasn’t sure what to write about for Sunday Salon today because my reading life has felt pretty stagnant this week. But then @thebrainlair tweeted a blog post from Jim Burke at The English Teacher’s Companion called Remember to Read which gave me some inspiration. The post is about why English teachers need to make [...]

I finished Infinite Jest this morning, all 981 pages plus all 98 pages of footnotes. I’m not sure how I feel. Excited. Tired. Accomplished. Confused. As soon as I got to the last page, I turned to the beginning and read the entire first section (17 pages) over again because those scenes are actually set [...]

I realized this morning that I have not finished a single book in the month of August. Part of it’s because I’ve been slogging along with Infinite Jest, which takes a lot of time. Even though Infinite Summer officially ends September 22, my goal is to finish the book before classes start just because I [...]

First of all, I’m annoyed Wordpress failed to auto publish my posts over the weekend. What is up with that? Anyone else have problems auto posting? This was supposed to post yesterday… From what I can tell, I haven’t written a Sunday Salon post since June 21 — that’s absurd, right? The biggest reason I’ve [...]

Since I started Infinite Jest, my goal has been to suck it up until page 223. I kept telling myself that if I could just get to page 223, everything would be good. Why? Because the Infinite Summer blog told me so :) In their posts on tips for reading the book, the guides (four [...]

In order to finish up the Spring Reading Thing 2009 Challenge (results posted soon), I had to read The Year of Magical Thinking and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close back-to-back in the last week and a half. Both were great books, but also emotionally draining books. I finished ELAIC on Thursday night. About 50 pages [...]

This week’s Weekly Geeks topic is to get caught up on reviews. We’re supposed to list the reviews we’re behind on, then solicit questions from readers to help write the reviews. We’ll then link back to the people who asked the questions for the review. I’ve loved this topic since Dewey first suggested it for [...]