Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats: Fiction and Imagination in the Real World

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

Gaiman's works of nonfiction prove just as powerful as his fiction in exploring the lasting place of fiction and imagination in the real world.

Neil Gaiman is most recognized for the power of his imagination, with novels like Coraline, comics like Sandman and television credits like Doctor Who underscoring his ability to dream up impossible worlds and turn them into a reality. His nonfiction is just as compelling (and, perhaps not surprisingly, just as imaginative), as collected in The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions.

Social Justice Book Club: The New Jim Crow Schedule & Plans

After hearing from several participants about ideas for fostering more discussion for the Social Justice Book Club group reads, I've decided to go ahead and make a few changes for the August club read. As always, think of these as optional upgrades; life happens, things come up, and I know strict readalong schedules and posting requirements can quickly become a burden. But, in hopes of finding more ways to connect with other readers in the club, here we go...

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The New Jim Crow Reading Schedule

August 1st: Start date 

(Optional intro post/check-in 8/1; I'll share discussion questions here a few days in advance)

August 1st-15th: Chapters 1-3

(Optional mid-way post/check-in 8/15; I'll share discussion questions here a few days in advance)

August 16th-31st: Chapters 4-6

August 31st: The End! Link up reviews, final thoughts, etc. etc. etc.

(Stay tuned, too, for a hoped-for Q&A post with author Michelle Alexander)

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The New Jim Crow Introductory Discussion Questions

At the start, middle and end of this month's reading, I'll post discussion prompts on this blog that participants can respond to in a blog post, tweets, on Instagram or Litsy photos, or any other number of platforms you can imagine that I haven't even thought of yet. For those who like to plan out blog posts and whatnot in advance, I'll post discussion questions a few days before the end of each section.

If you're not much for blog posts and social media sharing, commenting is great too--and Disqus, the platform I use for comments here, can and will notify you of follow-up comments, so it can be a great space for discussions.

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Social Justice Book Club Twitter Chat

There's been a lot of interest in a scheduled Twitter chat as an additional component of this shared reading event. If we were to host a Twitter chat, would any of the following times work for all?

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What do ya'll think? Will this work, logistically? I'm always open to ideas and suggestions, so feel free to chime in in the comments or shoot me an email at ofabookworm AT gmail DOT com if you've got ideas to make this all work better! 

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And it's not too late to sign up!

Week in Reading: July 18th

Another week warmer, another wedding attended (three down, three to go!). I'm gearing up for a relatively quiet week of traveling, unwinding, catching up on work, and reading (the 24in48 readathon is coming up! Aren't you joining us?).

With a strange lull in review deadlines (my next written piece is some how not due until August 20th...), I'm floundering a bit on what to read next. I'm devouring the last few available episodes of the Outlander tv series (finally) and am ramping back up on training for my fall races, so that's starting to eat into my reading time--though of course that doesn't mean I won't be reading.

Call and Response: When Women Were Birds, Navigating Life, and Finding a Voice

I've had When Women Were Birds on my shelf for at least three years, if not more. I tried to read it a year or two ago and found that I couldn't focus on it; it's a book that needs to be read on its own, perhaps, and best consumed away from the grind of daily life. And so I packed it up with me to go to Greece last month, and found myself immediately absorbed in Terry Tempest Williams' reflective, philosophical, moving words:

For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes.

When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets.

When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us. We've been raised to question what we know, to discount and discredit the authority of our gut.

Not long after finishing When Women Were Birds, I picked up Navigating Life by Margaux Bergen for a review deadline. The two books are inherently different: one is a daughter's attempts to understand her mother, the other a mother's attempts to provide life advice to her daughter. But they formed a kind of call and response in my mind, as I struggle to understand how I find--and use--my voice in this world.

Here Comes the Sun: Nicole Dennis-Benn's Stunning Debut

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

In her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn captures the lushness and devastation of Jamaica and its changing landscape. She brings both island and people to life with grace and beauty, complete with strong dichotomies: the verdant landscape and the rough edges of its poorest towns; its idyllic seas and dangerous tides; its thriving tourism and the ways that industry threatens the island way of life.

Week in Reading: July 11th

It's Monday, it's a new week, and I feel like my reading priorities have shifted approximately 10 times over the last week. I finished The Tenth of December, by George Saunders, for a book club buddy read over the weekend (adored it and all its strangeness--why did I let this wallow on my shelves for so long?), and read most of The Affair, by Colette Freedman for another book club that meets this week (let me spare you the pain: it's been a long while since I read anything so overwrought, overwritten, cliche, and generally awful without adding it immediately to the DNF pile, though I do think it will make for very interesting book club discussion). I also finished The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater, following an emergency sprint to the library to secure a physical copy when I realized my library hold on the digital copy had expired 12 hours earlier than I thought it would. While I was there, I went ahead and picked up the rest of the series, because hey, why not? So Blue Lily, Lily Blue will most definitely be on my stack this week.

Checking in on Challenges

We're halfway through the year already, which seems like as good a time as any to check in on the challenges I'm actively (or, um, not so actively, as the case may be) participating in this year.