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Book Talk

Happy New Year!

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The global party that is New Year’s is my favorite holiday each year. It’s the one time that everyone around the globe has to bow to the flipping over of the calendar and begin counting days again.

It’s a good time to look ahead and think about 2025 (so much work to do, folks) and post the obligatory glance back on our reading and books of 2024.

Looking ahead into 2025, I am halfway through Nicholas Carr’s Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart coming out in January. While reinforcing a lot of what folks in Gen X can probably sense, Superbloom is doing a good job of mapping out the ‘why/how’ all the silos on all the social media platforms occur. It’s not by accident. I’m curious to see how Carr wraps this one up. A very worthwhile read so far. I’ll also finish up the Booker-wining Orbital today or tomorrow. The writing is very good, but I am reminded how much I enjoy having quote marks in novels as this one does not use them.

Looking back on 2024, one of my favorite reads was Warren Tryon’s 1963 book about the birth of American publishing in Boston titled Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields. Ticknor & Fields was a publisher I was familiar with, but all of the backstory and European crossover were fascinating. 

The original building of Ticknor’s Old Bookstore on the Corner is still standing, but as I discovered… it’s a Chipotle now. 

Out of the 31 books I read last year, the other highlights were:

Autocracy, Inc., The Literary Decade, Lost in Thought, The Upstairs Delicatessen, This Is What It Sounds Like, and Jason Guriel’s On Browsing.

LibraryThing tells me that I read more than 8,000 pages in 2024, that my books had more covers with predominantly black-and-white elements, and that more of them had a BISAC listing in the Biography & Memoir bucket, with History close behind. LibraryThing has also been measuring my books in badgers, giraffes, and units of Tim Spalding for years. It’s fun.

Cover Colors from 2024
Chart of 2024 BISAC Categories

So, Happy New Year to you! I hope you have had some worthwhile reads over the past year and are already planning which spines to crack starting tomorrow. I have a feeling we’re all going to need our books to make it through what lies ahead. Maybe we can all get together and get more folks reading in 2025.

Cheers!

Book Talk

NonFiction November 2024 Week 5

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We made it! It’s been a full month of book and Nonfiction November blog reading, and it’s been a blast. I’ve enjoyed the conversations and am looking forward to checking out some of the new books that were mentioned.

The prompt for this final week is posted on ReaderBuzz and says:

Week 5 (11/25-11/29) New To My TBR:  It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book!

I have a pretty good track record of actually reading the books I find interesting every Nonfiction November. So I am hoping to start chipping away at these new-to-me titles next year. Here is what has been added to my TBR list:

Germinal cover

I found this one over on Readerbuzz and while it sounds like kind of a depressing slow-burn of a story – I am intrigued by the setting and time period. I think it will fit nicely in my TBR pile this winter season.

The Rights of Nature cover

I love the idea of this book… what if nature had the same rights, within the legal system, as people and corporations do? The impact of this is fun to think about and worth exploring. I nature has rights then it deserves protections just as people, pets and places of business do. I was glad I read about this one over on Unsolicited Feedback.

Hitler's first 100 Days cover

It feels like there are lessons to be learned here. It’s important to understand how a whole country can fall under the spell of someone like Hitler. It’s frightening to think that the Nazi’s didn’t take power – they were voted in and given it. Then things got really bad as they fought to preserve and expand it. Again, not a cheerful read, but one I’m thankful was mentioned on Maphead’s Book Blog.

What Do I Know? cover

I saw this over on Literary Potpourri and knew it had to go on my Michel De Montaigne shelf. I have no idea why I am so intrigued by Montaigne and the centuries-long interest in his writings, but it’s all equal parts comforting and thought provoking for me. I’m looking forward to this one.

One of the sneakiest (and fun) parts of every Nonfiction November is the week focused on Book Pairings. This is where folks are encouraged to share nonfiction and fiction books that are linked in some way. So it’s great to walk away from every annual event with a few more fiction reads as well. Here are a couple of fiction reads that I found interesting:

The Reader's Room cover

I am a sucker for ‘books about books’. Words and Peace mentioned this one. Here’s a snippet from the book’s main description: “When the manuscript of a debut crime novel arrives at a Parisian publishing house, everyone in the readers’ room is convinced it’s something special. But when the shortlist is announced, there’s a problem for editor Violaine Lepage: she has no idea of the author’s identity. As the police begin to investigate a series of murders strangely reminiscent of those recounted in the book…” Fun!

Only the Astronauts cover

I found Dovey’s Blood Kin to be worthwhile and well written. So I’m looking forward to this collection of short stories that was shared over on the This Reading Life blog. I don’t know much about collection, but the fact that Dovey wrote it and that cover are enough to get me to pick it up. Fingers crossed!

The final week of Nonfiction November is always a fun one to click through all of the shared posts to see what other folks found interesting. I always seem to stumble upon one or two titles I missed earlier in the month.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and thank you for stopping by this little corner of the internet. See y’all next November!

Book Talk

Nonfiction November 2024 Week 3

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It’s week three of Nonfiction November 2024! This week is hosted by Liz, who blogs at Adventures in reading, running and working from home. She’s a fun blogger I started keeping up with after a #NonficNov a few years ago. 

This week’s prompt is:

Week 3 (11/11-11/15) Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title.

This year, I’m picking a couple of news-related reads. How people consume and where they get their facts is super important in this social media-soaked era. It’s not very fun, I have to admit. So, I am pairing a relaxed read on how best to think about the news with a fun, classic newspaper book.

First up is my nonfiction pick , News: A User’s Manual, by Alain de Botton. I am a big fan of Alain de Botton and the way he tries to make intentional and philosphical thinking an everyday thing for normal folks like myself.

In News , he does this by breaking down the major types of news that distract or stress us all out. Whether it’s politics, Economics, or celebrity sleaze, his framework offers a clear way of surfing through each day’s headlines while showing impact it has on all of us as a whole.

And for the fiction side of this week’s bookish coin, I am offering up an oldie that was first published in 1938 in England. Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop has a list of quirky characters, an easy plot and is dripping in dry humor and satiric wit that you’d expect from Evelyn Waugh.

The story follows William Boot as a “sort of” reporter for the Daily Beast, which is a fictional daily newspaper where Boot is mistakenly identified for another well known writer with the same last name. Boot, with zero skill and full of dread, falls into a real “scoop” when he lands the story of a lifetime. I have to admit that the story didn’t end the way I thought it would, but it was good fun.

Here are my posts from Week Two and Week One of Nonfiction November 2024, if you’re interested. Be sure to click through to Adventures in reading, running and working from home if you’d like to see all of the other pairings.

Book Talk, On the Web

Nonfiction November 2024 Week 2

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It’s Week Two of Nonfiction November #nonficnov, which is hosted on Volatile Rune. The prompt for this week is:

Choosing Nonfiction: What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title or cover which you find striking.

I love these questions. It’s so easy to be fooled by a book’s packaging these days. Cookbooks and business books are the worst. Some of the coolest-looking books turn out to be lame. So I’m always looking for quality writing in the jacket copy and blurbs. Yeah yeah… I know… isn’t that all marketing speak and just authors blurbing for each other? Sometimes, yes. But if you find a book on a slice of a slice in a topic you like and the praise quotes are a mixed bag of learned folks, book folks, practitioners, etc., then there is a higher-than-average chance you are holding a good book.

As far as topics go, I love books about books and books where cultural ideas/trends, social science/history, and philosophy intersect. So I’m all over the map there! Oh, and books on maps are fun, too.

Covers absolutely influence me. I pulled a few favorite reads to see if I could figure out the ‘what’ and ‘why’ this is. These 15 books are grouped well into three categories.

I love fonts! Creative lettering goes a long way with me in creating a great nonfiction cover.

If you haven’t read Ken Ilgunas’ “This Land is Our Land” I highly recommend it. Lots of ideas to chew on and talk about there.

Also, I like nonfiction covers that work hard to have an iconic look. Not only are these next five books good reads, but the covers are unique and wouldn’t work well for any other book. The tilt-shift effect used on all of Sarah Vowell’s books is a fun, unique series look.

If you haven’t read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” then I think you need to. Written pre-internet boom, it’s just as timely and accurate today. Again, so many conversations will be sparked by this book.

Lastly, I appreciate nonfiction books where it’s clear that the publisher took the time to create something that resonates with the reader or community around a topic. I absolutely think these next five are great examples. Whether it’s a book related to newspapers or the classic Gilded Age of book collecting, these all fit their readers well.

The classic read here is Nicholas Basbanes “A Gentle Madness”. It’s not a small book, but very well done and is one of the best deep dives out there into bibliomania and books about books.

If you’d like to join the fun then head over to Volatile Rune to get the graphic, directions and link up. And if you’d like to see what I shared during Week One of Nonfiction November, you can click through and check it out.