Musings

One thing that’s been interesting to me lately is the way that digital media is changing the way we can tell stories. Sites like Facebook and Flickr and Twitter or even personal blogs give people space to tell their own stories. And storytellers like journalists can use these same spaces to tell stories in new ways.

I think that’s why I love this video — The Digital Story of the Nativity — so much. Times change and the way we tell stories can change, but there’s still something fundamentally awesome about a good story that can stand up to these changes, and even be enhanced through news ways of storytelling. I think that’s pretty cool.

Instead of doing a bookish holiday swap this year — because I need more books like I need a hole in the head — I signed up for the Book Blogger Holiday Card Exchange, a really brilliant idea from Anastasia at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog, where bloggers sign up to send cards with book recommendations. I signed up to send two cards, and got to very exciting ones in exchange.

Sometimes, I am the queen of being totally oblivious. Here’s my most recent story.

On Wednesday, two of my male coworkers both asked me for book recommendations, and let me tell you, I was thrilled! I love giving book recommendations.

The first said his mom was into nonfiction on education and sociology, so I went with my old standard, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, along with a couple more recent books: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Waiting for “Superman,” edited by Karl Weber.

Both Care (Care’s Online Book Club) and Jeanne (Necromancy Never Pays) said The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was a book they wanted to read because I’ve been so enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic is probably a nice way of putting it — it’s a narrative nonfiction book that I’m a little bit evangelical about.

See, nonfiction can be very topic focused, which means a particular book could be well-written and interesting and engaging, but not work for someone because the topic is so far off their radar. I’m a reader that loves learning about a huge variety of things, but not everyone is like that.

Back in 2009, a couple of book bloggers presented a sort-of challenge for bloggers to take time and unplug from the online world. Since then, I think the idea of being unplugged has caught on at all times of the year, as a way of giving yourself permission to step back for awhile.

I’ve been having a bad case of bloggers block lately, so between that, the holidays, and the fact that I’m going to be in Las Vegas covering a conference for work next week, now seems like a good time to unplug.

The summer I turned 19 years old, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince came out. The evening before the midnight release, I was back at home from my first year of college and stuck working at Target… again. I’d been working there part time since I was 16, and really, really didn’t want to be there again.

I spent most of my shift telling anyone who cared how excited I was for the sixth Harry Potter book to come out that night. After our evening “huddle,” my manager pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to see something cool. You always say “Yes,” to that, so I followed him to the electronics store room where he showed me the Holy Grail – the unopened box of Harry Potter books set to be put out on shelves after the store closed.

It’s mid-November, I’ve read 93 books, and I only have two remaining “official” review commitments (books I agreed to be part of a book tour for). I have a big reading commitment coming up in January that I am excited about, but that is going to dictate my reading for a little while in the new year.

With that in mind, I’ve decided that I’m going to spend the rest of 2010 reading whatever and however I want.

But since I’m an over-thinker and a perpetual organizer, I’ve been going over a few strategies about how I might do this, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts about. Also, I’ve been reading some studies about how having too many choices can make people unhappy, so I’m hoping to increase my happiness by scaling back my reading choices.

There’s a meme going around on Facebook that asks you to pick 15 novelists who’ve influenced you and will always stick with you. You’re supposed to take 15 minutes to compile the list, tag at least 15 friends, and then post your note.

I did that, but then found that I wanted to talk all about the authors I chose – not part of the meme! Luckily, I have a blog where I can blather on as much as I want and no Internet Meme Police are going to stop me.

I already cheated a bit on my list anyway – a lot of them are nonfiction writers. But, they write narrative nonfiction which is sometimes called the “nonfiction novel,” so it counts, right?

In my Monday Tally a few weeks ago I linked to a website called Five Books. The website is a collection of book lists by experts on particular topics and has the tagline is “The best five books on everything.”

One of the reasons I was intrigued by the site is the idea of reading books on a particular topic or theme in order to build an expertise in something. This is a theme that runs through my reading – when I find a topic I’m curious about, I end up reading a lot of books on that subject until I get burned out on it (example: “back to the farm” memoirs). This love of themes is part of why I love putting together Narrative Nonfiction 5 lists.

But could I really be an expert on anything?