Category Archives: Book Talk

Authors, Book Column, Book Talk, Media, On the TV, On the Web

BookTV is Featuring Fiction

Leave a comment

BookTV has aired, on CSPAN2, every weekend since 1998 focusing on non-fiction books. That focus shifts a little in January 2018 when their 3-hour-long show In Depth will begin featuring fiction authors as well.

They are going to feature one fiction author, on the first Sunday of each month, all year long. These segments will be conducted as all In Depth shows are, allowing viewers to watch live and call or send in questions via social media.

They haven’t shared the whole line up for the year, but there are some big fiction authors slated to be on the show:

  • January 7th: David Ignatius
  • February 4th: Colson Whitehead
  • March 4th: Jeff Shaara
  • April 1st: Walter Mosley
  • May 6th: TBD
  • June 3rd: Gish Jen
  • July 1st: Brad Thor
  • August 5th: Cory Doctorow
  • September 2nd: TBD
  • October 7th: Geraldine Brooks
  • November 4th: TBD
  • December 2nd: Brad Meltzer

What a great lineup! Those are some smart folks who are writing about big and small topics all over the place. BookTV has chatted with fiction authors before during their coverage of literary festivals or industry events like Book Expo of America. In fact they’re airing a conversation with George Saunders about his book Lincoln in the Bardo, which is a segment I plan on watching.

If you don’t keep up with BookTV, it is well worth your while to check the lineup every weekend. They’ve had some great interviews over the years and they broadcast many author readings, book parties, and book festivals. It’s one of the coolest things our government has every spent taxpayer dollars on. The BookTV YouTube channel is worth a subscription too.

 

Book Column, Book Talk, Recommendations

Week 5: My Full NonFicNov Recap

3 Comments

This week officially wrap’s up Nonfiction November 2017. I had a lot of fun over the past few weeks. I’ve bumped into some very cool bookish folks, found some new blogs to follow and most importantly – found some interesting books to read. I mean Mount TBR is never big enough, you know?

These future reads are what make up the closing week’s writing prompt for #nonficnov, which is being hosted by Lory over at The Emerald City Book Review:

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!

Here are the books, with links to the blog posts mentioning them, that I ran into this month. The topics are all over the map and all had some very cool things said about them.

Thanks to LibraryThing, I have been tracking lots of data about the books on my shelves. Over the past few years I have been tracking not only where I buy a book from, but how I heard about the book. This piece of any reader’s journey fascinates me. How do we find the books we choose to read? A few years ago it was all Twitter for me. Looking at the numbers, I see that, for two years, podcasts were my #1 source for book recommendations.

But this year is shaping up to be mostly books recommended by bloggers I follow or books I stumbled upon while visiting the library. There’s still a month to go and it’s too close to call. But either way, I think I like the way this is trending for me.

I hope you found some interesting reads this past month. If you missed out on the all the fun, you can search for #nonficnov on all the platforms and I bet you’ll bump into someone there talking about good books.

Thanks again to all the organizers of this year’s Nonfiction November.

Book Column, Book Talk

Week 4: Nonfiction Favorites #nonficnov

2 Comments

This week’s portion of Nonfiction November is hosted by Katie over at Doing Dewey Decimal and the prompt is an interesting one:

Nonfiction Favorites: We’ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I’m excited to talk about what makes a book you’ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone? Let us know what qualities make you add a nonfiction book to your list of favorites.

It’s tempting to click through all the replies and tally everyone’s responses. It would be interesting to see how the majority of people answer this question of “what make one of your nonfiction reads a favorite?”

But before I get to clicking around, I’m better answer myself.

Subject matter is everything. I need a nonfiction book to tackle a subject head on. I want a deep dive. Lots of books spend too much time with clever chapter titles and the like, which can be fun to a degree. But I don’t want to flit about and float through a nonfiction read.

Now please don’t hear me say “text book” when you read the above few sentences. I’m not looking for dry. Another thing I am not looking for is chronological. I enjoy a good timeline in a book and I LOVE when there is a map printed just inside the front and back covers, but very rarely does a nonfiction read benefit from being told in historical sequence. That’s a great way to report the news to point to the truth, but not the best way to weave a story to highlight the truth and give context to the truth.

So if I can stumble upon a nonfiction book that is a topic of interest, isn’t told chronologically and is all about giving context, more than likely, I’m going to read that book. If the book also has some humor sprinkled throughout then it’s just about a certainty.

Having said all that. . . I find myself wondering what books have I read that fit that description? Well, here are three that pop into mind:

And I am looking forward to clicking around and reading everyone else’s responses. Nonfiction November is a good time.

I hope everyone in the States had a restful Thanksgiving holiday today and squirreled away some minutes with a good book. And to everyone else I hope you found some reading time too!