You might remember me writing about Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee before on the blog. I previewed this book back in August and promised a review in the future as part of a TLC Book Tour, but my tour date is here and I’m just not quite comfortable writing a review yet.
See, the book got to me from the publisher a little later than expected, and then just a couple of days later I managed to sprain my ankle playing soccer. Yesterday was the first night I got home and was able to stand long enough to actually cook something (and it was from the slow cooker, which is kind of like cheating).
Musings
This year I’ve done a dorky book stats review at 20 books and at six months. Since I just hit both 80 books and nine months, it seemed like a good time for another one. Yay number crunching!
September was a pretty good reading month for me – I read eight books for 2,224 pages. That’s much less than June, July, and especially August, but I started out the month on a little bit of a slump and needed to recover. I think this is a manageable number of books to read and still try to review most of them.
I got one of my first e-mails from a new reader yesterday, asking about literary journalism. I ended up writing a rather involved response, which I thought other people might find interesting. Here’s the question:
Hi! I just found your blog, it has been very helpful. I am trying to get into literary journalism, I have read a lot of Mark Bowden’s work. Can you suggest a few of the more well-known books in this genre to get started with!
And here’s a slightly edited and improved version of what I had to say (links go to my reviews, if applicable).
Friday night, my roommate Amanda and I went to see a local theater production of 84 Charing Cross Road, an adaptation of a 1970 book by author Helene Hanff that chronicles the relationship through letters that Hanff built with staff at a British bookstore while looking for obscure book titles.
The play was lovely – quiet and thoughtful, but also brash and funny. Amanda commented afterwards that she felt herself smiling through the entire play. I did too. My good friend Lindsay, theater critic at the local newspaper, wrote a <a href="http://host.madison.com/entertainment/arts_and_theatre/reviews/article_055fd9c3-6996-5b66-
The whole blogging and publishing space is new for everyone, so it’s inevitable that there will be missteps and mistakes. But getting a bad pitch often reminds me of just how many publishers and publicists are doing a great job of working and interacting with bloggers.
To get back some karma after pointing out a negative, here’s a not-at-all-comprehensive list of a few people and organizations that I’ve seen doing good things to connect online.
This is just a quick post to let you know that I’ll be unplugged for the next week or so. I’m moving this weekend, as I mentioned in my Sunday Salon post, and getting ready has been more work than I anticipated. I’ll also be without internet at home from Saturday until the middle of next week.
My reading has slowed pretty dramatically the last three weeks because, like always, I’ve gotten addicted to a new tv show. I love tv on DVD or from Netflix, but try not to start new shows because I have this personality where if I start one I cannot stop watching it even when I have more important things to do.
The last show this happened with was Damages. I basically stopped doing anything for three days and watched an entire season. It’s that good.
The current show is Avatar: The Last Airbender, an Americanized anime series that originally played on Nickelodeon and was just recently made into a (controversial) feature film.
I didn’t like Bill Bryson’s travelogue The Lost Continent because I thought his sense of humor was too dark, mean, and inconsistent for my tastes.
I decided to give Bryson’s travel writing a second try by listening to an audio book of In a Sunburned Country, a travelogue about Australia. While I liked In a Sunburned Country better than The Lost Continent, I’m not sure that I’ll ever love Bryson as a travel writer because he travels a lot like me, and I travel pretty boring.
This is a guest post from Amanda Ochsner, a good English nerd friend from college, future roommate, and avid gamer and journalist. This fall, Amanda will be starting a graduate program here in Madison where she’ll be studying video games and learning. In this post, Amanda is talking about a recent conundrum she came across related to her book future. Enjoy!
Today is my 24th birthday! And what do I want? Books!
Now, I’m not much of a new book buyer. It’s probably blasphemous to say that, but it’s true. I’m much happier perusing used book stores or seeing what kinds of cheap reads I can snag online rather than getting them new. If I do buy new, I almost always wait for the paperback and then try to use as many coupons and deals as I can. After spending 19 years as a student, I’m still cheap.
