Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

Reading Deeply Review: How to Read a Book

December 10, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 9

Title: How to Read a Book
Author: Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren
Source: Library
Links: Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating:

Summary: This did make me think more about how I want to read, but contained little advice I found useful.

While I sometimes struggle to stick with specific reading challenges, I’m happy that I have stayed focused on trying to read more thoughtfully. I had high hopes for this book helping my to do that. Unfortunately, I found that most of the advice either felt obvious to me or suggested strategies I vehemently disagreed with! Read more »

Review: The Library Book – In Which I am Surprised

December 4, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 28

Title: The Library Book
Author: Susan Orlean
Source: Library
Links: Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating:

Summary: A delightful mix of topics, all fascinating, held together by the author’s love of books and libraries.

I have to admit that right off the bat that I was wrong about this book. I was intrigued by the topic – a mix of the LA library fire and library history in general. I only gave the author’s previous book, The Orchid Thief, three stars though and so I decided not to go out of my way to pick this up. Then I saw that Rennie at What’s Nonfiction had only good things to say about it and Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness mentioned how good it was at least once in her Nonfiction November posts, so I bumped it to the top of my to-read list after all. That was the right choice! Read more »

Nonfiction Friday

November 30, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 4

Nonfiction Friday is a link-up where you can find all of the awesome nonfiction happenings of the week. As a reminder, if you’re participating in the Nonfiction Reading Challenge, you’ll get a giveaway entry for each nonfiction review you link-up below!
Read more »

#NBAwards Shortlist Review: The Indian World of George Washington

November 29, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 6

Title: The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
Author: Colin G. Calloway
Links: Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating: three-stars

Summary: Fascinating material, dry writing without enough information about the people involved.

This is the last of the National Book Awards shortlist books I was able to read before the awards, but I’m a little slow getting to a review! I found it a bit of a slow read as well. While the information it contained was fascinating, the writing didn’t do the material justice. It did make me realize that there was an amazing amount of diversity and inter-tribal politicking among Native Americans during Washington’s times. In retrospect, this perhaps have been obvious, but it gets completely glossed over in the history I’ve been taught. There were an incredible number of people involved in the relationships between the early U.S. and Native Americans and the author. At times it felt like the author was trying to cover them all by giving us long lists of names. There wasn’t enough background given about any one person for me to feel really invested in their story. Read more »

#TLCBookTours Review: All Over the Map

November 26, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 4

Title: All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey
Author: Betty Mason, Greg Miller
Links: Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating:

Summary: Fascinating and beautiful, this is an excellent example of a coffee table book worth closer scrutiny.

This was a fantastic collection of maps, each with a story to tell. Many of the maps reminded me of my favorite parts of The Visual Atlas. They displayed data in a way that made me understand the world differently. They examined everything from poverty and disease to flow of trade goods to endangered animal habitats. Many were also works of art. It was really interesting to learn how, in some cases, artistic techniques to help people form an accurate mental picture were prioritized over accuracy in terms of scale, distance, or angles between objects. Read more »

#NonficNov: New to my TBR

November 26, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 32

I enjoy all of our Nonfiction November prompts, but I’m a little sad for this one, since it will wrap up the event. It’s been so wonderful discovering new blogs and new books this month. Thank you to all my co-hosts and to all the participants for making this event such a delightful success! I’m hosting the prompt this week, so after my answer below, you’ll find a link-up where you can share your response to the prompt as well. This week’s prompt is the following:

It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book! Read more »

Nonfiction Friday

November 23, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 2

#NonficNov: Reads Like Fiction

November 22, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 14

I didn’t expect to have such a hard time getting to this week’s Nonfiction November prompt, but we’ve managed to keep ourselves busy this Thanksgiving break! I also have to admit that I’ve been putting off writing this post a little because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. This week’s prompt is hosted by Rennie at What’s Nonfiction, so be sure to visit her post for the link-up of everyone’s responses to this week’s prompt, which is…

Nonfiction books often get praised for how they stack up to fiction. Does it matter to you whether nonfiction reads like a novel? If it does, what gives it that fiction-like feeling? Does it depend on the topic, the writing, the use of certain literary elements and techniques? What are your favorite nonfiction recommendations that read like fiction? And if your nonfiction picks could never be mistaken for novels, what do you love about the differences? Read more »

#TLCBookTours Review: When Women Ruled the World

November 19, 2018 DoingDewey Uncategorized 10

Title: When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt
Author: Kara Cooney
Source: from publisher for review
Links: Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating:

Summary: It’s hard to summarize how bad this was, full of sexism; poorly supported conclusions; and weird references to modern times.

This is a history of six women who ruled ancient Egypt. I expected to really enjoy this, having given the author’s first book (The Woman Who Would Be King) five stars. I also hate to say bad things about a book that a tour company was kind enough to send me. Unfortunately, the honest truth is that this was really bad. It’s almost impressive how the author managed to both beat the reader over the head with a feminist message and be incredibly sexist at the same time. Read more »