News and Notes

Today the National Book Awards got announced, and while most of the discussion is about the fiction list (and authors that got left off), I thought I’d pull the nonfiction list and share some impressions.

Starting yesterday, literary folks in Wisconsin have gathered for the Wisconsin Book Festival, an annual event that celebrates books and writing and all of those fun things! I missed the festival the first year I was in Madison, but managed to go last year and wrote up about a few events.

I’m actually traveling for work today and quite busy this weekend with a birthday party, but I’m hoping to get to at least a few events. If you’re a reader in the Madison area, these are some of my recommendations for things that should be interesting. The full schedule is also available online.

I finished The Hunger Games Trilogy yesterday, after what was a pretty crazy month of reading. I finished 14 books in August, which amounted to just over 4,500 pages. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reading month that productive.

But it was a little exhausting! So I’m on a little bit of a reading vacation, catching up on some DVDs of Sports Night and trying to read blogs. And while I’m taking a break, I want you to help me pick my next book.

I am not the world’s most impressive chef, but I’ve always wanted to be a good cook. I’ve debated signing up for cooking classes, but end up skipping it because of expenses or time.

As a cook I like to have recipes, but tend to not follow them exactly. It drives my boyfriend crazy when I don’t measure – too lazy to wash all the measuring utensils – or just guess on how long something should cook. This works out for me about half the time, and the other half I get something weird that doesn’t quite seem right.

A few months ago I read and reviewed Sheena Iyengar’s recent book The Art of Choosing. It’s a great book, but if you don’t have the time to read it, you should at least take time to watch this 25 minute TED Talk, where Iyengar covers many of the points in the book.

The talk focuses mostly on the assumptions that we all have about choices and how those assumptions impact what we think.

As part of the little reading project/discussion I’m hosting for Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I decided to post some discussion questions I found at Reading Group Guides.

You DO NOT have to answer these questions in your review or to participate – I’m just posting them for people who are interested. I’ll be basing my review around these questions because I think they’re good and I hope they’ll spark some thoughtful discussion.

Of all the books Tim O’Brien has written, I think The Things They Carried is the most well-known and well-read (but that’s just me). When I said I planned to read all of Tim O’Brien this summer, there was a lot of enthusiasm for this book in particular.

Because of that, I decided to encourage more people to join me in reading the book. My plan is to have it read by Monday, July 26 and put up a post that day. I’ll do a Mr. Linky so others can leave reviews or discussions, then I hope we’ll have a good chat in the comments.

I’m so excited to get to announce the that Andi (Estella’s Revenge) and I are starting an online book club about food, BookClubSandwich.

We’re going to read all sorts of things — memoirs about food, nonfiction on seasonal food and food politics, fiction with a strong food element. There are a ton of food books out there, so I have no doubt we’ll be able to pick some interesting ones.

Today I was lucky enough to guest post for Florinda over at the 3 R’s Blog.

My post is about something I’m calling “nonfictional fiction,” which includes books like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger.