What I’m reading

• in print / on screen

Well, I’m sorry to report that I followed up a good reading week with a week in which very little reading of any kind happened. I spent yesterday afternoon catching up with my feed reader, and ’m hoping to spend some time today reading Reunion by Hannah Pittard so I can get a mostly-timely review done for Shelf Awareness.

I’m in one of those stages where there are actually a lot of books I’d like to be reading, but time constraints make it hard to choose and settle into anything. I think those are the opposite conditions from what causes a reading slump, and I really don’t feel like I’m in one, but the appearance and effect do seem to resemble one.

• on audio

I’m half-done with The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein, which seemed like a timely choice for September. It’s an enlightening, if occasionally dry, look at two centuries of policies, politics, and personalities in American public education. Teaching is one of those jobs I have never wanted to do myself, but I appreciate those who do it, and I respect those who do it well.

What I’m watching


Ask me about TV next week—the fall season officially kicks off tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re current on Doctor Who and have three more episodes of Season One of Orange is the New Black to watch on Netflix. (They may end up languishing for a little while, depending on what transpires with the DVR.)

What I’m writing


I am officially up-to-date on book reviews at the moment, so there’s that. But there’s not much else writing anywhere except in my head right now, although I’m hoping it’ll start working its way out soon. I guess I’m “prewriting,” as my friend and writing coach Jane Gassner describes it in talking about writing as process:

”Prewriting is everything you do when you’re working out what you want to say. It’s research and staring out the window. It’s making notes and, if that is your bent, creating an outline. It’s scribbling ideas on bits of paper and, if that’s all that’s available, your hand. Prewriting takes place before you begin to write and while you’re writing, at that point where you need to think something through or you hit a road block.”

What caught my eye this week


It seems like so many bloggers I know are struggling in one way or another with lost focus, burnout, or plain old boredom lately, which makes me think that this weekend’s Bloggiesta could not be happening at a better time! Suey has been posting highlights from the daily Twitter chats. The topics of balancing blogging and life, finding solutions to blogging problems, and book-blogging “basics” are evergreen, but the fact that we still talk about them—and need to keep visiting them—makes me rather optimistic about staying the course, one way or another. After all, there’s no one right way to do this.

Some book bloggers are trying to figure out how to blog differently about books, or blog less about them. On the other hand, during the last year or two, I’ve been wanting to blog more about books. Blogging about them has changed how I read them, and I really connected with whatJulia says about “getting rich writing book reviews:”

”So I’ve always been a reader. And I had some fine English classes (and other social sciences) that trained me to take notes while reading, and to look for themes, leitmotif, stylistic quirks, and the like. But only since becoming a book blogger and paid book reviewer have I really begun to hone the skills of close reading…to record my personal reactions, or the qualities that a prospective reader would want to know about…

”Another result of reading for the sake of writing about what I’ve read, has been the growing diversity of the books I pick up. My reading volume has increased, is ever increasing, and I need the variety to keep from getting bored…But also, as my reading has expanded, so have my interests, which then expand my reading, and there we have the most delightful self-perpetuating cycle you could imagine.”

What Else is New?


The biggest reason I didn’t get much reading or writing done during the latter part of the week is that I installed iOS 8 on my iPhone 5 and iPad Mini on Wednesday night, and I was spending some time getting to know its new features and quirks. (We are eligible for phone upgrades in November, and if we do move up to the iPhone 6, I’ll have a little head start.)

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