Issue of June 12, 2011

It seems that no matter what weird weather may be going on in your part of the country—triple-digit heat or cloudy skies and cool temperatures—that enjoying some good reading ought to be part of it. And BiblioBuffet definitely has some of that for you. Don’t mess Nicki Leone’s essay of two very different books and book formats, Lindsay Champion’s look back at what she’s learned from her reviewing, what connections guest Katherine Hauswirth found in her books and her real life, and what Lauren Roberts is up to in her own library. Oh, and all of these come with some great suggestions for your own reading.

It’s been two years for Lindsay Champion here at BiblioBuffet, and she takes the opportunity of her anniversary to review not a book but Ther experiences with the genre, the differences between truth and honesty, and the passion that fires up her soul (and her reviews) in Two Years of Memoirs.

As the technology for the publishing industry changes so does the format of the book. Nicki Leone recently had the opportunity to experience both ends of the new range—the e-reader and a specially handcrafted work of art—and realizes that what all the differences come down to are not “causes for lament or alarm” but instead story in Story Always Rises to the Top.

The weird weather blanketing the country included what for people in Massachusetts was a tornado which, for Katherine Hauswirth in Survival, Real and Unreal, who had just finished both a novel and nonfiction book with survival themes, brought home because, she says, “whether in fiction or nonfiction, it’s satisfying when the protagonist finds a way to overcome the odds . . . it can help you believe that you might fare as well.”

Mention the word “dentist” and you have a good chance of watching someone flinch. But the truth is that modern dentistry is a joy, especially compared to the practices hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Lauren Roberts turned her inquisitiveness about two 1940s dental bookmarks into a compelling reason to Open Wide.

Book packages in the mail are always a joy. What’s inside may or may not also be a joy, but when it is, then it is a damn good day. Lauren Roberts had one of those delightful surprises with an unexpected but ultimately charming book in Book Love. 

Issue of May 9, 2010

What’s up this week? A snark-on-snark when a writer takes on an editor; a journey into a surprising and little-known library and its owner; an unexpectedly complex memoir; a journey into the history of bookmarks, and more. We hope you enjoy it.

So many creative people prefer to define themselves not by their day jobs but by their art. Lindsay Champion found the memoir of one such artist, a punk rock drummer who works as a window washer, and learned how he used both his dreams and his work to bridge the gap between them and find a new life for himself in Head in the Clouds.

A king who was one of the most important military leaders in current day Hungary during the latter half of the fifteenth century also built one of the most important libraries which has mostly disappeared. The historical approach to this tantalizing and romantic story of the library is, Nicki Leone laments, a decent effort but she feels a better way to tell it would be as a novel, one where the quest for the missing library could be answered in Meeting the Raven King.

Honoring the memory of so many writers’ rejection letters, Lauren Baratz-Logsted decides to turn her snark toward an editor who likes to dish it out herself. The question is: can she take it as well as she gives it? Find out in The Disrespectful Interviewer: Dissing Lynn Price.

Bookmarks are meant to help save books from damage, but as occasional contributor Frank X. Roberts writes, not all bookmarks are good. History, from ancient to modern, is littered with examples of inappropriate items used to save places in Bookmarks and the Abuse of Books.

In this “merry, merry month of May” Lauren Roberts sets out to explore what she can find on her library shelves that shares if nothing else at least the twelfth letter of the alphabet in “M” is for . . .