Bluestalking

Book Links from 2011: A brief retrospective

I don't keep very good track of all the book and literary-related articles I read through the year, nor the videos I watch, either. Maybe that would be a good 2012 resolution, since by the end of the year I've ingested so much great stuff I wish I could share the best of the best of it with you all. It's a busy, hectic, over-informed world out there; we're all bound to have missed some outrageously good stuff when we're off doing other things.

What I've collected here is no reflection on my 2011 book-related reading. I'm at a loss as to how to go about finding it all again. I suppose I can't, though, without trolling through my "history" on all the computers I've used.

Quick answer: That isn't going to happen.

So, alas and alack, a mere shadow of highlights from the literary world in 2011 is the best I can do.  Hope you enjoy these bits.

 

One of my fave YouTube videos of 2011, from World Book Day:

 

 

Edinburgh International Book Festival, "The Book I Bought Today:"

 

 

Favorite laugh-out-loud book trailers of 2011:

 

 

 

 

Sebastian Barry, on On Canaan's Side and his nomination for the Booker:

 

 

Julian Barnes on winning the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of An Ending:

 

 

Téa Obreht on winning the Orange Prize for The Tiger's Wife:

 

 

Edna O'Brien, "I'm sorry books don't have the same cachet as a pair of jeans:"

 

 

From Mashable: 50 + Sites for Book Lovers.

Articles from The Atlantic:     A Tumultuous Year in Books

                                                            The Phenomenal New York Review of Books

 

The incredible, amazing 2011 upstart the Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Huffington Post: Stereotyping You By Your Favorite Book of 2011

If you care about serious writing and don't know The Millions, you should.

2012: Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

 

Dickens' 200th Birthday... Well... Discussed by Sock Puppets (I am so sorry)

 

 

 

The "new" Charlotte Bronte manuscript.

 

In Memoriam: Writers Lost in 2011

(By no means a comprehensive list)

Vanity Fair: Slideshow - In Memoriam of Christopher Hitchens.

 

Vaclav Havel

Russell Hoban

Diana Wynne-Jones

Brian Jacques

Anne McCaffrey

Reynolds Price

Josephine Hart

Christa Wolf

 

So much richness, so little time. What have I missed? Anything you would add?

 

NaNo.... NoNo

I fell behind. The wagon hit a bump in the road and I fell off. I was trampled by the horses, scraped off the street and tossed onto the sidewalk.

Yesterday was November 30, 2011. In order for me to have finished NaNoWriMo I would have had to write something along the lines of 30,000 words by the end of the day. That didn't happen.

What bothers me most isn't that I didn't cram 50,000 words into 30 days. I'm concerned by how embarrassed I've been to come online and admit defeat. If anyone else said to me, "Hey, I tried, but you know how much else I have going on. I just couldn't get there." I'd say, "No worries. You gave it a shot." I need to extend to myself that same empathy. Chin up, woman! There's nothing saying I can't take what I started, finish it and rework it into something, now is there. Besides, I changed my mind about the entire direction of the piece and wasn't sure how to go on, leaving the first 50ish pages hanging while twisting the plot, mid-novel, into something totally different. I just wasn't feeling it this year, I guess. Or I was, but knowing I didn't have time to go back and revise made me reluctant to go on.

I'm raising the white flag of surrender. NaNoWriMo, you have officially kicked my lily-white, Irish/Dutch/English posterior.

I haven't been idle, though. I published an interview with Michael Cunningham in the Illinois Library Association Reporter. I also submitted a couple book reviews: one on Caitlin Flanagan's Girl Land for Booklist and the other Alix and Nicky: The Passion of the Last Tsar and Tsarina for Library Journal. Don't think either of those have been published yet, or at least I haven't had time to check.

Also, there are the blog posts in our local online newspapers (Patch.com and TribLocal), book reviews and an interview on behalf of the library:  an interview with Michael Popek, author of Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller's Collection of Odd Things Found Between the Pages; my thoughts on Hillary Jordan's latest When She Woke; and also Peter Ackroyd's latest London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets.

 

What am I reading now, you ask? I'll tell you!:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

Plus my latest review book for BookBrowse.com, one I can't reveal just yet, mostly because it makes it sound mysterious and exotic. All I'm saying is: grim, short stories, southern. That narrows it down.

 

Soon to start:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

2012 being the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, I plan to read several other books by and about my favorite Victorian. One is Claire Tomalin's latest biography: Charles Dickens: A Life and the other possibly Michael Slater's Charles Dickens, about which I've heard only great things. I've missed Victorian literature. 2012 is my year to revisit a few old favorites and also give some new ones a try.

 

Also, I've been tremendously blessed by several publishers who answered my clarion call, sending me review books I requested, plus those who continue to send titles they'd like me to cover. Here are a few of those, received over the past week:

 

 

Special thanks to Coffee House Press and Yale University Press. Wow!

Loads of things bookish happening here, plus the inevitable pull into the holiday season. It's going to be a busy month.