Book Review Blog Carnival and an Experiment

The 57th Book Review Blog Carnival has been published at Reading, Reading & Life.


Be sure to stop by and see what the book review blogging crowd has been reading lately.

I'm going to try a little experiment today and I hope you will join in. If you write book reviews on your own blog and didn't get a chance to participate in this week's carnival, or even if you did, take part in this Book Review Meme.

All you need to do is copy the code in the text box below, go to your own blog, choose edit posts and choose a book review - the latest one you wrote or one that you particularly like - and paste the code in at the bottom.

<a href="http://readingreadingandlife.blogspot.com/2010/11/its-carnival-day-book-review-blog.html"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3323/3646170725_f6fcd6d627_m.jpg" alt="Book Review Blog Carnival Meme"></a> Brought to you by <a href="http://residentreader.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-review-blog-carnival-and.html">I'll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book!</a>

Then come back here and fill out this Mister Linky form, putting the URL to your post in the appropriate field. This will give your review a link from here and will link back, both to this page and to today's carnival from your blog.

This post is closed for new entries.


1. Necromancy Never Pays
2. The Life O' Reilly
3. Everything I Never Wanted toBe
4. Man of la Book - Book Review: Deeper than the Dead by Tami Hoag
5. SenoraG -The Lancaster Rule

Memeing Like Crazy

The Blue Bookcase memes have brought me so many new readers I just can't resist trying this one from Crazy for Books, too.



I'm studying up on the Mister Linky code right now. There may be a similar meme on this blog soon, as well. Stay tuned.

Edited to add: Crazy for Books asks "What's Your Favorite Book Cover?" To which I answer, you can't judge a book by it's cover.

Is There Such A Thing As Literary Non Fiction?

A Literary Blog Hop post courtesy of The Blue Bookcase

The Blue Bookcase hosts a weekly "Literary Blog Hop," asking bloggers to answer a question of a literary nature on their literary blogs. Today's question is a no brainer: "Is there such a thing as literary non fiction.

Let's consider some examples. This week the first volume of the Autobiography of Mark Twain was published by the University of California. One might question how much of any autobiography is really non fiction but this is surely a work of literary value. My copy is on order. Look for a review on this blog soon.

I recently reviewed Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I wouldn't claim that my review is timeless prose, but I have high hopes for Theroux. He may make it as a writer some day. I'm not just saying this because his parents lived down the street from me when I was a lad.

Now let's take a look at John McPhee. After discovering The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed back in the dark ages of my youth, my next McPhee book was Oranges. Here is a man who captures the readers imagination, not just writing about a commercially failed amazing feat of engineering, but writing about agriculture, geology, long haul trucking and migratory fish. McPhee is a literary craftsman of the highest order.

What makes a book "literary" anyhow? I know it when I see it, yet can't define it. I don't think there is a genre that could not contain some work worthy of the name. Fantasy novels might not be considered literary, but what about The Lord of the Rings? Illustrated children's books? The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren or The Night Before Christmas. Graphic novels? Now there you've got me.

Perhaps you could suggest a graphic novel that you consider to be "literary." Leave a comment if you have a suggestion.

Curses, Memed Again!

Book Calendar has hit me with the dread Bookworm Awards meme. I have been asked to like him for it.

Here are the rules:

Open the book closest to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56.Write out the fifth sentence, as well as two to five sentences following there.

I happen to have a copy of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire on the shelf behind me. It's the 1990 trade paperback edition, of the book, originally published in 1968. The fifth sentence is:

In addition to this sort of practical guide service the ranger will also be a bit of a naturalist, able to edify the party in his charge with the natural and human history of the area, in detail and in broad outline.

Abbey goes on to say: Critics of my program will argue that it is too late for such a radical reformation of a people's approach to the out-of-doors, that the pattern is too deeply set, and that the majority of Americans would not be willing to emerge from the familiar luxury of their automobiles, even if briefly, to try the little-known and problematic advantages of the bicycle, the saddle horse, and the footpath. This might be so; but how can we be sure unless we dare the experiment? I, for one suspect that millions of our citizens, especially the young, are yearning for adventure, difficulty, challenge - they will respond with enthusiasm. What we must do, prodding the Park Service into the forefront of the demonstration, is provide these young people with the opportunity, the assistance, and the necessary encouragement.

Abbey is proposing, here, to close the national parks to vehicular traffic, in order to make room for the onslaught of tourists and to give those tourists a chance to get out and stub their toes on the natural world. Some parks, like Yosemite, have since closed some areas, except for the buses they run to keep people from having to walk. Later Abbey would propose other things, like blowing up the Glen Canyon dam. His novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, became a kind of manifesto for eco-terrorism, such as it is and inspired the formation of Earth First. It's a good thing he never met Barack Obama - at least as far as I know.

I'm supposed to pass on the meme infection to five other bloggers. I just happen to know several people who regularly read ACTUAL BOOKS and sometimes review them; contributors to the Book Review Blog Carnival. Here are my chosen victims:

A Progressive on the Prairie

Cromley's World

Linus's Blanket

Living the Scientific Life

SarahSpy

I hope that each of them will accept this meme with good humor, or at least without threatening bodily harm.

Six Word Memoir Meme

I was tagged by Book Calendar to write a six word memoir:

This is my memoir, posted in honor of Oprah and all her guest authors.

Don't believe a word I say.

This is an example of what Nancy Milford calls the false memoir and also of Epimenides paradox.

Here are the rules if I tagged you.

1. Write your own six word memoir.

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post.

4. Tag five more blogs with links.

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!"

I'm tagging:

Aunti Dar

Freida Bee

Mr. Grudge

Mystic Veg

The Galloping Beaver

I very politely request their participation.

mememememememememe

I have more than one blog, so when I was tagged over at
ROTUS with this literary meme, needing an excuse to post an between books post here, so I don't lose my readership, I tagged myself with it.

So here’s the rules of the Meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

It just happens, ahem, that I am sitting here with the book that I intend to review next, if I ever get some time to sit down and read, "My Colombian War" by Silvana Paternostro. Paternostro is a Colombian born American journalist who returned to Colombia to cover the war against the FARC.

On page 123 the fifth, sixth and seventh sentences span a change in paragraphs, so I will put that break in.

We formed a unit so tight that we came to be known a the English Girls, named for our love of the language.

When a boy liked you in Barranquilla, he would manifest it by driving in front of your house. It was called "the pass."

I am going to tag Book Calendar, Colorado Cowgirl in Upstate New York, Daddy Papersurfer, Discovering Dad and La Rochelle. I know that DP is off in Portugal, taking surfing lessons from Penfold, so he could be a while responding. Silvie will probably post something in French, which will add a bit of class around here. Cowgirl owes me for having memed me with that Big Bang thing and then deleting it from her own blog. BC can do this in his sleep but I hope he wil come up with an unusual book.