Dewey Decimal Challenge

The Dewey Decimal Challenge is an unusual one for me: I don't read a ton of non-fiction so even the lowest level of participation is going to be rough for me.

Dilettante--Read 1-5 non-fiction books

Still, I read about a handful of non-fiction books last year, and this challenge allows poetry to be counted -- a helpful way for me to accomplish more than one reading goal this year!

Read


Joan Frank, Because You Have To
Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal
Janet Groth, The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker
Carolle Jean-Murat, Voodoo in My Blood: A Healer's Journey From Surgeon to Shaman
Stephanie LaCava, An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris
Sandra Newman, The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Mark Spivak, Iconic Spirits
Dubravka Ugrešić, Thank You for Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia
Vatsyayana, Kama Sutra
Saima Wahab, In My Father’s Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate
Marilyn Yalom, How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance 
Jean Zimmerman, Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance

Comments

  1. Welcome to the Challenge! I hope you enjoy the books you choose!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. thanks -- this is going to be good for me since I rarely read non-fic!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Winter 2017 Bloggiesta To Do Post

Image
I love Bloggiesta for reminding me to brush up and take of my blog, and doing it "in community", so to speak, makes this housework a little more fun.

Given my earlier whining about feeling out-of-it with my blog, I'm really excited there's a mini-event this coming weekend in which I can do some backend work here.

My to do list is pretty simple:
make a top 10 of 2016 post (even if it is just a list!)review the book I just finished!I'd like to start 2017 without a backlog of reviews, so it feels important I keep up. We'll see if I'll tackle my 2016 backlog. (Perhaps for another Bloggiesta!)
Read more

Weekend reads and my first vlog!

Image
It feels like summer is over in Boston -- it's brisk and beautiful and while I love it, I'm also mourning the end of summer because I don't feel like I did enough summer stuff!

So, after fumbling with many different apps, I've made my first vlog/booktube, below. Don't judge me too harshly; I decided to just do it and not agonize, and I'll figure it out along the way. (But helpful tips always welcome!)

My weekend reads are more of Middlemarch as well as The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper. What are you reading this weekend?


Read more

A novel about E.M. Forster not getting some is surprisingly moving

Image
I grabbed this book from the library in my usual, arbitrary way: I liked the spine and the binding, and the cover; then I saw it was a Europa Edition and decided to check it out. Then I never got around to reading it, and had forgotten about it until noticing it on my Overdrive wishlist.

Arctic Summer is biographical novel of English novelist E.M. Forster; it's mostly about Morgan's desperate search for love and companionship and sex, and how he basically didn't get those things. It's gorgeous and emotional and restrained, and I loved every word.

Overwhelmingly, this novel is just bittersweet. Morgan is so sweetly likeable (I know it's trendy these days to want unlikable characters, but there's something to be said for characters you also just want to squish) but his life so empty despite the people, jobs, and travel that fill it. He finds some intense emotional relationships, a few that translate into physical/sexual ones, but all seem lopsided and unequal -- s…
Read more

Monday....musings? August 28

Image
The things that feel summery-y for me are coming to an end: our summer hours at work, which end after this week; vacation for school kids; college kids moving into the dorms; a kind of shift in the weather from muggy heat to tolerable heat; the farm in full harvest mode.

We went camping this weekend, and it was really perfect; I finished Ship Fever which was unbelievable. I love historical short fiction in a way I don't always love short fiction generally -- and while a few of Barrett's stories were too neat, the titular story was un-believable. I'm currently in the throes of Damon Galgut's Arctic Summer, which was a free range reading find, and now confirms I'm just going to browse the library or catalog subject index until a title or book cover catches my attention. (I'm still struggling to finish Middlemarch for my 9/21 bookclub!)

Inspired by Andi of Estella's Revenge, I'm starting to think a little more -- creatively -- about what I want to do with …
Read more