working the network

Posted on May 25, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Today’s theme post, as hosted by Armchair BEA, is my favorite book blogs and bloggers. This is kind of an easy one to write! You can see my blogroll over to the right –> and down a bit, but just above it you can see my *faves*! I’ll just give a quick description of each.

books i done read, by Raych, is mostly a book-review blog. I love Raych’s voice: she’s very funny and conversational and feels like someone I could hang out and laugh with. She reads a very diverse array of books: children’s or YA, classics, romance, fantasy-ish, nonfiction, all kinds of things. She exposes me to things I’d never have known about otherwise, and she makes me giggle.

Book Journey is hosted by Sheila, who is very prolific; I think she averages close to two posts a day! She reviews a great many books and a great many audiobooks, too, and she’s very down-to-earth. I like that she includes personal details, too; it makes her feel like a friend, rather than a headless book-review machine.

Stuck in a Book is a thoughtful British blog by Simon, who focuses more on quiet, British and/or women’s fiction and a bibliophile’s choice of nonfiction. He writes about the emotions a book evokes and quotes representative passages.

On a different note, TERRIBLEMINDS is another thing entirely. It’s not really a book blog at all. Chuck Wendig, freelance penmonkey, is a writer who apparently can’t get enough of writing, because he blogs daily, mostly about the hows and whys of writing for a living – something pretty foreign to me, but I find him very entertaining. Caution! This blog is R-rated for language and sexual content and all kinds of disturbing concepts, but he’s great fun if you’re up for it.

write meg! is another writerly blog, but she’s pretty heavy on the book reviews, too. Meg writes about her private life and travels and personal reflections some, which I appreciate (and I often find I can identify with her) as well as her reflective book reviews.

The Feminist Texican appeals to me for reasons that perhaps should be obvious: we have quite a few things in common. I like her feminist slant on the books she chooses to read as well as the lens through which she reviews them (although she’s not militant about it; it doesn’t take over) and I love Frida Kahlo, too. 🙂

cakes, tea and dreams by Katie is about books and also about Katie’s life in Boston as a displaced Texan. Perhaps that’s part of why I identify with her voice. I like her book reviews but I like the other stuff at least as well.

Well, there’s a short list for you of blogs I enjoy; some are more purely bookish than others but we’re all whole people, right? Not just bookies? (Is that blasphemy?) I tend to like at least a touch of the personal in the blogs I follow.

Thank you all for your lovely blogs. 🙂

Filed under: musings | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

best books of 2011 so far

Posted on May 24, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Today, the Armchair BEA theme is giveaways – a number of participants will be hosting book giveaways on their blogs, so you should check those out. For those of us not giving away (ahem, me), we are writing about our favorite books of 2011. Here are mine.

Dethroning the King, Julie Macintosh. Nonfiction. Macintosh covered the hostile takeover of Anheuser Busch for the Financial Times, and later wrote this book about it. I found the story fascinating, and appreciated Macintosh’s style: she presented what could have been tedious financial and legal details in very readable and interesting narrative style, including touching on her personal experiences in researching the story.

Fire Season, Philip Connors. Nonfiction. Connors has now spent nine seasons as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, watching for signs of smoke from his tiny tower room over 10,000 feet above sea level. This book is a contemplation of solitude, a tribute to the natural world, and an examination of many aspects of our world and our Forest Service policies; it is reflective and beautifully written and artistic, and never stilted.

Heroine’s Bookshelf, Erin Blakemore. Nonfiction. Blakemore praises 12 classic works by and about women, and discusses their impact on our lives as women today. A celebration of the literature of Austen, Alice Walker, Louisa May Alcott, and more.

Iphigenia in Forest Hills, Janet Malcolm. Nonfiction. A journalist’s account of a murder trial that took place in Queens, in a community of Bukharan Jews, with no final decision as to whodunit; an interesting study of murder and of culture. Malcolm is an amazing writer of nonfiction.

Paris Wife, Paula McLain. Fiction. McLain fictionalizes the life of Hadley Hemingway, first wife of Ernest, during and after their marriage, focusing on their years together in Paris. This is a fascinating study of Hadley in which Ernest takes a backseat; I loved it both as an amateur Hemingway scholar and as a fan of literary fiction.

I cheated; some of these are 2010 releases. I read them all in 2011, though, and I hope the community will be forgiving, because the fact is that we don’t always get to read books when they’re first released (mainly because we all have such daunting TBR lists!). If you find a title here that you finally pick up in 2012, you should still enjoy it. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by! What are your favorite books of 2011?

Edit: I think The Great Night (fiction by Chris Adrian) is making this list as well! Look for my review to be up next week.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

Who are you, and how do you Armchair?

Posted on May 23, 2011 by pagesofjulia

A lovely group of book blogger people has put together a consolation event for those of us unable to attend this year’s BEA (Book Expo America). It’s called Armchair BEA, and it allows for bloggers to network and “meet” each other and share a bookish social event, without traveling to NYC. I shall be playing along by visiting other blogs and following the theme posts every day.

Today we got our first question of the week. Asks Armchair BEA,

Who are you, and how do you Armchair? This is the time to introduce yourself and your blog. Share with us a random fact about yourself. Use the organizer interviews for inspiration. Be creative, share photos, let your personality shine through! A number of new visitors may be hitting your sites, so give us a snapshot of who you are. Simply, share how you are kicking it!

We all enjoy the chance to talk about ourselves, right? 🙂

I live in Houston, Texas, and I love my hometown. I have a wonderful husband and two wonderful little dogs, and Husband and I both love to ride bicycles a lot. I’m a bike racer, too, and although I’m a bit out of shape and struggling this spring, I intend to make a comeback. We spend a lot of weekends traveling to ride and race, and we’re great fans of craft beer, too. I work as a librarian, and aside from cycling, reading is obviously a great passion of mine. Little dogs, bicycles, books and beer, along with my family, make up my life.

To steal a few questions from the Meet the Armchair BEA Team post…

If you could put one book in the hands of everyone you come in contact with, what would it be and why?

There’s always one, but I think it always changes, too! I could name several: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe; The Hobbit by Tolkien; For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. But right now, at this moment, I am very excited about Fire Season by Philip Connors, and that’s the book I would be placing in people’s hands.

If you could have lunch with any author, living or not, who would it be and where/what would you eat?

The author that I have been most consistently fascinated by all my life is Ernest Hemingway. I am delirious with love for his work, and I like to read about him, too, because not only did he create beautiful art, but he’s an intriguing figure, too. Not entirely likeable, but definitely intriguing. I would most like to meet Ernest Hemingway, and find out if I would be drawn into his spell! He seems to have been a real jerk, eventually, to all of his four wives; but they all married him (three, after being a mistress while he was married to the wife before), and it seems clear that many other women, besides, were convinced that he was wonderful despite his bad behaviors.

We would eat at one of those sidewalk cafes he describes in Spain, in The Sun Also Rises, or a take-out picnic in a similar setting. I love his description of the cold white wine that Jake and Bill keep in the stream while they fish for trout. Something like that. In my opinion, nobody describes food and drink like Papa; I would share one of his many delectably described simple meals with him.

And finally, in the spirit of personal sharing… a few pictures for you.

I just got my first pair of glasses! Not only can I see better – I’m a real librarian now!

This picture is from last spring, but still representative: amid the bluebonnets (state flower of Texas, no it’s not the yellow rose) at Rocky Hill Ranch, where I raced yesterday.

And finally, here I am being a library-tourist at the public library in Den Haag (the Hague) in the Netherlands. (Also not a new picture; this was January 2010.)

If you’re just dying to know more about me, and see more pictures, check out my personal website.

And thanks for stopping by!

Edit: thanks Jenna for pointing this out: I need a pic of my little dogs here!

Hops (in front) and Ritchey (in back)

Hops, Ritchey, and my parents’ dog, Barley (perhaps a hint of Westie for you there?)

Filed under: musings | Tagged: , | 8 Comments »