Well hello, Blog (and blog friends and blog readers). It’s nice to see you again!

While I don’t want to make excuses for my unexplained two week hiatus or waste my first post apologizing for disappearing, I feel like I owe at least a small story to explain what happened.

I was talking to Lu (Regular Rumination) online about the need for a break, and explained it like this: I work for a newspaper, where there is always an upcoming deadline. You never get the feeling of finishing a big project, then having a couple weeks of down time before the next deadline comes. There isn’t really a slow time of year, since we have to put out a newspaper every week no matter how much or how little happens to be going on.

Having a blog is similar. Although there aren’t any formal deadlines, the blog sometimes feels like a beast that needs to be constantly fed. More books! More reviews! More posts! I love it, but I think I finally just reached a point where I didn’t quite have enough to feed everything… so the blog (and everything associated with blogging) took a break.

But now I’m back! Reenergized and with a stack of books to write reviews of and some more ideas for posts than I’ve had in a long time. The break was good for reinvigorating all of those things, if unexpected and unannounced.

So what have I been reading during this little haitus? Lots of good stuff, I’m excited to say. I finished two books from one of my favorite nonfiction publishers, PublicAffairs: The Ascent of the A-Word (about the rise of “assholism”) and The Good Girls Revolt (about a 1970 sex discrimination lawsuit at Newsweek). And I finally got to read the buzzy book of the summer, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which was almost as awesome as everyone says it is.

Right now, I’m on a political books kick. It started on Tuesday night, when I was covering the primary election results for our county. We didn’t have any exciting local races, but it was fun to watch the vote totals come in and start thinking forward to the general election in November. And then Rachel (A Home Between Pages) posted a fantastic pre-election reading guide over at Book Riot, which fueled my politic junkie fires even further. (Seriously, the list is awesome — I wish I’d written it myself).

In keeping with that kick, I started listening to the audio book of Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin which is this great combination of solid political analysis and soap opera antics that I can’t put down. I even spent time packing for my upcoming move yesterday just because I wanted an excuse to keep listening to the book. I also started reading The Gospel According to The Fix, a politics 101 type of book with some great insights into the current election and American politics in general. I’m only a short way into both, but I anticipate recommending them highly.

With that, I’m going to get back to my books. I have to do some work covering an event this afternoon, so I want to squeeze in as much reading time as I can before lunch. Happy Sunday!

If there is one book-related thing I love to do more than actually reading, it’s putting together themed reading lists. Although I haven’t been doing much of that lately here, I have been putting together some lists over at Book Riot, a bookish website I contribute to weekly.

As part of Book Riot’s inaugural Riot Read (group readalong), I put together two lists of nonfiction that could be read in conjunction with The Great Gatsby, one about the life and times of F. Scott Fitzgerald and one with more contemporary books about two of the major themes in The Great Gatsby.

Comments over at Book Riot have been pretty low, but I know many readers of this blog love a good nonfiction list. I’d love to hear what you think about some of my suggestions — everything from a book on flappers to the definitive sociological look at the world of con men.

I’ve only read a couple of books on each list, but now that The Great Gatsby movie has been delayed until Summer 2013, I should have time to get to a couple more. I’d love to hear which ones you’re curious about.

 I haven’t finished a single book this week because I’ve spent all of my free time watching the Olympics. I’ve started a few and read a few chapters here and there, but for the most part I haven’t spent any significant time with books. And really, I’m ok with. I think I needed the break.

Like most people online, I’ve been less than impressed with NBC’s Olympic coverage. I’m sick and tired of watching quarter- and semi-final heats for the same sports over and over again, but missing the finals or matches from less well-known sports during the prime time coverage. Even their coverage of the gymnastics finals was weird. I don’t think I ever saw male gymnasts competing on the still rings, during any day of coverage. But since NBC is the only station broadcasting, and I can’t watch online during the day because of work, that’s the best I can get. And even if I don’t want to watch early round matches, I still keep tuning in…

But, this is supposed to be about books. I’ve been dipping into a few reads this week, finishing a couple chapters at lunch or before I got to bed. Here’s what I’ve been slowly trying to finish:

Laura Lamott’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub — This one is about a small town Wisconsin girl who goes to Hollywood and tries to make it in the movies. I haven’t been blown away yet, but it’s been an engaging read so far and I’m looking forward to seeing where Straub takes the story.

Road to Valor by Aili and Andres McConnon — This one is about Italian cyclist champion Gino Bartali, who won two Tour de France races (one before World War II and one after). Between, he sheltered a Jewish family during the war. With all the Olympic coverage I’ve been watching, I had a craving for a book about sports and this one seems to be hitting the spot.

The Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Fifty Years by Geoffrey Nunberg — This one is exactly what it sounds like, a linguist look at the world “asshole” and it’s particular connotations today. I’m really loving this one, especially because it explains so well the general awfulness that people can display when interacting with others. I can’t wait to review this one.

I’ve also dipped in and out of a few other books an random in the last few weeks and made some progress in a great audio book — The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. This one is so good it’s been giving me weird dreams about the end of the world. I think I’ll probably finish it this afternoon on my drive home from the Twin Cities.

Due to the Olympics, I expect it will be a bit of a quiet week here on the blog. Have a wonderful rest of the week!

In an effort to maybe, perhaps, hopefully get caught up on all the books I haven’t reviewed, I’m planning to start doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments!

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life. In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying her and her husband Henry across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die. As the castaways battle the elements, and each other, Grace recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met, and the new life of privilege she thought she’d found. Will she pay any price to keep it? (Source)

Grace Winter is  fabulously unreliable and twisty narrator. While I don’t want to spoil anything about The Lifeboat, I think it’s safe to say that as the narrative progresses it becomes more and more clear that the story Grace is presents is skewed in some unexpected ways. Her space on the Emperess Alexandra and the lifeboat are not simply matters of chance. I would love to have read this book with a book club because there are just so many juicy things to discuss, both about the choices those in the lifeboat are forced to make and about Grace herself. I thought this one was really good.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill. (Source)

It might actually be a little unfair to call Richard Papen, the first person narrator of The Secret History, unreliable. More often, he is forced to play the straight man against the increasingly erratic behavior of his classmates. He leaves out perspective on events because they refuse to include him, leaving us as readers both insiders and outsiders to the events that lead up to a murder revealed in the prologue. In any case, The Secret History was a fantastically paced mystery and psychological exploration set in one of my favorite places, a secluded liberal arts college, that I deeply enjoyed.

Disclosure: The Lifeboat came from the library; I purchased The Secret History.

Photo Credit: albertogp123 via Flickr