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. Introverted JenJanuary 29, 2012 at 4:45 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AudraJanuary 30, 2012 at 10:50 AM

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

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kris Waldherr's The Lost History of Dreams

Image
...he had the sense of viewing a man's life reduced to words. Black ink on white paper. Sentence after sentence. The grey minutia of daily routine flashed with occasional color...

This Gothic historical novel was a nearly perfect read: it held a snaky plot and thorny characters nestled in compelling narrative and deeply resonant themes. All love stories are ghost stories, we'll read more than once in this book, but this novel is more than a love story, more than a ghost story.

The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr
Touchstone, 2019
Review copy provided by publisher
Historical Fiction challenge

At the center of the novel is an imagining of the life of a Byron-like literary genius (and in those parts, I was reminded of Possession) touched with the unabashed, insistent naming of the woman behind such a figure. But surrounding that outward story is tortured emotions stretched taut to the point of madness (I was reminded of Sarah Waters and the way she writes about grief, ghosts…
Read more

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

Image
Title:The Orchardist
Author: Amanda Coplin

Genre: Fiction (Historical / early 20th Century / Pacific Northwest / Oregon / Horticulture / Teenage Pregnancy)
Publisher/Publication Date: Harper Perennial (3/5/2013)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Liked, possibly loved. This one will grow on me, I suspect, as time goes on.
Did I finish?: Oh yes.
One-sentence summary: Set in early 20th century Oregon, a orchardist helps two pregnant girls on the run and the experience has explosive results for all.
Reading Challenges:Historical Fiction

Do I like the cover?: I'm of two minds: a little bit I like it for the colors, and the bucolic setting; but up close, the image is sort of rendered like one those paint programs that makes photos look like canvases. It's odd.

I'm reminded of...: Alice Hoffman, Doris Lessing

First line: His face was as pitted as the moon.

Buy, Borrow, or Avoid?: Ohemgee, borrow or buy, especially if you like narratives set in the American West.

Why did I get this book?: I re…
Read more

Alyssa Cole's A Prince on Paper

Image
Love was for brave fools and Johan was entirely too clever and too cowardly to succumb to it.

Take one international playboy and one wallflower determined to change the story people tell of her and you get this wickedly charming romance.

A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole
Avon, 2019
Digital ARC provided by publisher

This was my second Cole book, but the first contemporary romance of hers I've read. As with the first book of hers I read, An Extraordinary Union, I was immediately smitten.

This is technically the third book in her Reluctant Royals series so I was a tiiiiiiny bit lost at the start when the characters from the earlier books were crowding for reader reunion time. But enough backstory is provided that I wasn't lost when it came to Nya and Johan, and their super cute, super sexy romance won me over immediately.

I loved this modern take on the romancing royalty trope -- I haven't read any modern royal romances, actually so I didn't know what to expect -- and now C…
Read more

Caitlin Starling's The Luminous Dead

Image
Words flashed up on her cracked screen.

DON'T SPEAK

Gyre choked down the faint, nascent sound that threatened to leak from her throat.

The words on her screen disappeared, and were replaced with:

IT HEARD THE SINGING. IT DOESN'T LIKE HUMAN VOICES

I won this book via GoodReads' First Reads and I really had no idea what it was about; but I loved the title and the cover so dove right in. What I landed in was a creepy, claustrophobic thriller pitting/partnering two damaged people in a place determined to kill them.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Harper Voyager, 2019
Review copy from publisher

Starling doesn't waste time plunging us (literally) into her world, an alien place where mining dominates but some kind of alien known as Tunnelers make it dangerous. Cavers identify lodes -- if they survive the Tunnelers -- and a good caver can make lucrative money surviving one or two expeditions. Surviving being the operative word.

Gyre is desperate to leave her home planet…
Read more