Last Friday the Indie Lit Award winners for 2010 were announced. I was lucky enough to be the judge for the Non-Fiction panel, so I’m excited about the awards.
Of the five books on the nonfiction shortlist, The Warmth of Other Suns and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks were both well-liked by everyone on our panel. I was most interested in the similarities between the two books. Both are histories, written by authors who spent a considerable amount of time researching their subjects and trying to get the complete story. And each addressed the ways in which the United States and out citizens mistreated African Americans in the past.
News and Notes
What happens to a small press when they need to start producing ebooks?
That’s always been one of my questions as I read stories about the impact of ebooks on booksellers and consumers, and I finally got a chance to get a perspective on that issue when I interviewed Krista Coulson, the electronic publishing manager for the University of Wisconsin Press, for the books column I write for a local newspaper.
Florinda of The 3R’s Blog is on a semi-hiatus because of shoulder surgery, so recruited a top-notch line of guest bloggers to fill in for her. I got to guest post last summer for her and there was a great discussion on the idea of fact in fiction, and proposing the idea of “nonfictional fiction.”
I’m over there today with a special Narrative Nonfiction 5 list on books about medicine. I hope you’ll take a minute to head over and check it out (and apologies for the double post today)!
I love doing book stats posts. Nerdy, I know, but it’s just so oddly satisfying. There’s something fun about quantifying books and writing that I can’t quite explain.
Anyway, this year I did stats posts at 20 books, six months, and again at nine months. Since it’s finally the end of 2010, here’s a year in review of book stats.
While I’m not always sure how interesting year in review posts are, I think it’s a good thing to go back over and year and see where you’ve been. It helps give a direction for where you decide you’re going. So here’s a look back at 2010 at Sophisticated Dorkiness, including my favorite books of the year each month.
This is a story that I wrote for the magazine I work for in my real life, a trade magazine for design engineers. Since the story is full of great books — many that I’ve recommended to people who are not engineers — I decided to post it here too. You can read the article in its original form here (and as a bonus, see my silly editorial headshot).
Engineers ‘Just Think Differently’
It’s hard to find presents for engineers. If you need help, here’s PD&D’s holiday guide to great books for even the pickiest design engineer.
I mentioned last month that I was working on the Independent Literary Awards, which is a series of new book awards given out by literary bloggers. We’ve been soliciting nominations from book bloggers for the last couple of months of some of your favorite reads from 2010.
Guess what? Today is the very last day to nominate titles, and we could really use your help, book bloggers! I’d especially love more non-fiction nominations, since that’s the panel I’m the judge for.
I’m finally back to blogging, woo! But instead of posting here, I’m over with a guest post for Sheila at Book Journey while she’s having fun in Honduras.
If you head on over to Book Journey to read my post, you’ll learn which of these stylish young ladies, circa the mid-1990s, is me and what we’re doing. Plus, there’s a recipe for my favorite cookie in the entire world.
So, I’m helping out with this little project called the Independent Literary Awards, which is process of awards given out by literary bloggers (fancier sounding that book bloggers, yes?). I just joined the awards group last week, and I’ll be serving as a judge for the Non-Fiction Panel. That basically just means I’m an organizer, and get to work closely with the rest of the Non-Fiction Panelists.
Last weekend I went to the Twin Cities Book Festival with a few Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and South Dakota bloggers. We were a pretty wide-ranging group, and it was a lot of fun.
The day started out bright an early at 8:00 a.m. with a meeting for coffee close to the book festival. When I got there, I met Reagan from Miss Remmer’s Reviews and Sheila from Book Journey. After a little bit, we were joined by Ash from English Major’s Junk Food and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. We chatted books for a bit, then headed out to the Book Festival.
