News and Notes

I suppose my post title says just about everything I wanted to mention in this post, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for adding just a little bit more.

The Indie Lit Awards, which are in their second year, are awards given to books that have been recommended and voted on by independent literary bloggers. Nominations are open to all readers, and are then voted upon by a panel of bloggers who are familiar with the genre they represent.

Despite how much I’ve been writing here, I’ve actually been doing some posts in other places around the Interwebz, which I wanted to take a moment to share.

First up is a review of Jim Lehrer’s book about his time moderating presidential debates, Tension City. I thought this book was a delightfully nerdy and awesome look behind-the-scenes at an event so many people watch but few people understand.

Today I have a guest post over Jenn’s Bookshelves as part of her Murder, Monsters, & Mayhem celebration this October. For the post, I picked three different nonfiction books I think well-represent murder, monsters, and mayhem… depending on what you’re in the mood for reading.

Unrelated, I also had my first new post up on Book Riot last week in which I confess to my habit of turning classic literature into a daytime soap opera.

Hey all! Welcome to the first discussion topic hosted by BAND, the Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees. Each month a new blogger will host a discussion related to nonfiction, and all bloggers (regardless of how much or how little nonfiction you read) are welcome to participate.

Like fiction, nonfiction isn’t a monolithic term. Just like there are sub-genres or types of fiction (literary, women’s, mystery, thriller, horror, the list goes on), nonfiction has many varieties too. There’s creative nonfiction, essay, travelogue, self-help, biography, memoir, and more. With so many types of nonfiction (as well as topics covered), there are nonfiction options for everyone.

Awhile ago I made an allusion to a super awesome project I was working on with a few other bloggers after BEA, which I’m excited to finally talk about. A group of bloggers and I have decided to found BAND — the Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees — a group to celebrate the awesomeness of nonfiction.

The idea came up at BEA when a group of us were talking about how we wished there were more bloggers writing about nonfiction, since we all love it so much. Since I always need new projects to work on (sarcasm!), we decided to form a group that would be “advocates for nonfiction as a non-chore,” a slogan coined by Ash (English Major’s Junk Food). Ash also designed the logo, which is fantastic.

Today I have a guest post over at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog for Anastasia’s monthly “Classroom Takeover” feature. I wrote my post for a class called Journalists Who Say “I” — a class that would focus on discussing a particular kind of narrative nonfiction in an English department. My favorite part about writing the post — other than imagining what a spectacular teacher I’d be (ha!) — is that I got to form my class entirely around books I’ve already read and reviewed over on the blog, so long-time readers might be familiar with the titles.

Even though I always love being a book blogger, I feel like there are some especially exciting events and projects going on right now in this corner of the blogosphere, and I wanted to take just a minute to share three of them with you: the Indie Lit Awards, Dewey’s Read-a-Thon, BEA and BCC.

When Isabel Wilkerson, author of the Indie Lit Awards Non-Fiction winning book The Warmth of Other Suns (which is a great book!) agreed to answer some questions, I was thrilled. Isabel graciously sent some amazing answers to my questions from the airport in Celeveland where she was stranded because of a blizzard — we have those often in the Midwest — after being on the road for two weeks talking about the book. I’m really honored she’d take the time to do that, and excited to share her responses with you. Enjoy!

Yesterday a romance novel author who blogs at Authors Helping Authors wrote a post called “Authors beware of unprofessional reviewers” in which she called out two bloggers who reviewed her book in a way she deemed “unprofessional.”

I don’t normally like getting drawn into debates about authors versus bloggers versus whatever, and I don’t want to just pile on more kindling to fuel the fire, but the more I thought about the post last night the more frustrated I got about two things. First, I think the author’s characterization of bloggers is unfair and plays on stereotypes that are just not true. And second, I think most of the advice she is giving authors about how to work with bloggers is bad advice.