Weekend Update

It’s been a sleepy reading week for me after my quick 24 hour digestion of Jar City. I’m about half of the way through Booker Prize-nominated Nora Webster. So far, so good – but it’s a slow one for me. Hopefully I’ll get a review up in a couple of days.

I did go on a road trip this weekend to my favorite reading place on earth -- Powell's Books in Portland, OR .

Little did I know how difficult it would be to navigate Portland this weekend – I found out later that it was the weekend of the World Beard and Mustache Championships. 

This event, it appears, was “just for men,” which is sexist but somehow reassuring.

While there, I decided that I was going to challenge myself to my own lazy version of  Nonfiction November.  Just so I don’t get too overwhelmed by ambition, my personal adaptation of this challenge will be easy. I plan to read two nonfiction titles in November to stretch myself beyond my usual fiction genres. I have already chosen the two books:

Radical Equations is from my TBR pile. I bought it on a Powell's road trip three years ago, and it has sat, lonely, on my shelf since that time.

I bought The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace today after reading about it on the Powell’s blog.

Look forward to some thoughts about urban studies and education and violence next month (and, I’m guessing that part of the conversation will be about authorship. Whose stories are being told? Who should be writing them?)

(The doughnuts in the picture above are already gone, by the way. New snacks are needed.)