I only seem to be making it to the Sunday Salon every few weeks lately! But I know that some folks really only read the Salon posts, so I like to drop a little recap/preview-type thing in here every now and then. I missed Bloggiesta last weekend, and I’ll probably–at least officially–miss the 24-Hour Readathon this coming weekend. I had a good excuse for not doing Bloggiesta, but since it involved my being away from […]
This year’s edition of Book Blogger Appreciation Week–without awards, and focused on the community spirit of book blogging–seemed to be a big success! I didn’t follow the daily topics all that closely, but two of them provided me with ways into tying up a couple of posts I’ve been working on for a little while: responses to recent discussions of authenticity and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.3rsblog.com/2012/09/on-book-blogging-really-positively-enthusiastic.html”>positivity in book reviewing. But for me, the biggest and best […]
It’s September. Summer is winding down–if you live your life by the academic calendar, you may consider it over already. (And if you live your life in the Southern Hemisphere, you’re looking ahead to spring instead of autumn! But anyway…) In any case, the calendar is filling up with fun events for book bloggers! It feels like it’s snuck up on us this year, but the original book-blog community-fest–Book Blogger Appreciation Week–is back, and it […]
Last week, I completed my duties as a first-round nonfiction judge for the Shirley You Jest! Humor Book Awards and forwarded one contender on to the final round. The winners and runners-up (one of each, for fiction and nonfiction) will be announced on November 1, National Authors’ Day. After mulling it over with some degree of anxiety, I have decided that I won’t be posting reviews of any of the titles I considered. I know […]
Thanks to everyone who joined in the “bibliotherapy” conversation in last week’s Sunday Salon, and I’m very sorry for not participating more with replies to your comments, but it really was that kind of a week, I’m afraid. (No) thanks to an unanticipated explosion of the work-related kind–not a literal one, fortunately, but the kind that required long days at the office and taking work home–I’ve been a very scarce presence in the blogging world […]
I suspect that the idea that books can help us through challenging times in our lives is not exactly a revelation to most avid readers. We’re conditioned to turn to books in times of crisis–for the solace of familiar “comfort reads,” for information, for ideas that may shift (or strengthen) our perspectives. We’ve probably been practicing self-administered “bibliotherapy” for much of our lives, and we know it works: “As generations of book lovers will tell […]
It’s a mostly lazy Sunday around here, and that includes staying out of the kitchen! We went out for breakfast and will be going out again for dinner–my stepkids are about to start two weeks’ vacation with their mom, so we asked them to pick a special place to eat tonight. Right now, they’re playing on the Wii with their dad and I’m in my reading chair in the corner, although I haven’t done much […]
This past week was on the slow side blog-wise, as I talked about highbrow fan-fic and posted a pub-day Book Talk. The coming week will probably be on the light side as well, with a busy period ahead at work and required reading in the off-hours taking big chunks out of blogging time…so if it doesn’t get prepared today, it most likely won’t be posted before next Saturday! Speaking of “required reading,” let me ask […]
I’ve been mostly hanging out at home for the last several days. Tall Paul and I had submitted vacation requests for this time months ago, in anticipation of attending San Diego Comic-Con this weekend. So much for that–we couldn’t get tickets. But we weren’t about to give back the time off, either, and so we’ve been “staycationing.” (And although we aren’t taking pictures in San Diego, I’ve been playing with pictures this week–I’ll be sharing […]
There’s a rather surprising number of book bloggers in Southern California for a region that’s only occasionally known for being particularly bookish, but (no) thanks to the traffic and sprawl, we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like. But an out-of-town visitor is always a great excuse to get together. Thanks to the fact that Rhapsody Jill was visiting for the weekend, I got to meet up with her, Amy, Softdrink […]
Happy Father’s Day to all of you dads–and your dads, and your kids’ dads too (if you’re a mom)! I’ve always appreciated the fact that I had two parents who read. My mother and father had different reading tastes, but they both spent much of their free time with books–and at the age of 83, my dad still does. There’s always a stack of books on his kitchen table, and he volunteers two mornings a […]
A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that my experience at Book Expo America 2012 might not be all about books. And I guess that technically it wasn’t, since I cataloged slightly fewer books in a “Books from BEA” collection on LibraryThing this year than I did in 2011, but I brought back more than I’d expected to. And unlike last year, I actually did bring the books back home with me; they made my […]
