Links I Loved This Week – 11/19/17

Thanksgiving week is finally here! Raise your hand if, like me, you can’t wait to have 4 full days of vacation in which to rest, relax and the third and most important R – READ.

Unlike many of you who have family in the United States to catch up with during Thanksgiving, I typically tag on to a friend’s Thanksgiving meal on the day of, but the rest of the weekend is blissfully free. It’s my chance to reset before the start of the holidays, get a start on any big projects I’ve been putting off at home (filing), and this year also hopefully get ahead on my blog posts.

And of course it’s also the week of the #ThanksgivingReadathon I’m hosting with my blogging friend Jackie at Death By Tsundoku. You’ll see our kick-off posts for the readathon up tomorrow (including the link to enter our amazing Winter Reading Giveaway) and we’re hoping to see many of you create your own Sign-Up posts for the readathon between this Monday and Wednesday. You’re free to also just participate on social media. The key here is to only do what you can handle while having an amazing holiday week!

And now without further ado, onwards to this week’s links!

• It was the third week of Nonfiction November and Sophisticated Dorkiness was the  hosting blog. In this wrap-up post you’ll find links to each blog who participated. The topic was Be The Expert/Become The Expert/Ask The Expert (here is a link to my post), and there were a ton of great contributions and some of my favorites were on Julz Reads (climbing mountains), Wild Places (survival at sea), The Paperback Princess (Hollywood stars), Novel Visits (women of WWII), Other Women’s Stories (the Kennedys).

• Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke And Bookish, and this week’s topic was Top Ten Books I Want My Future Children To Read (full list of links here). People took different perspectives, whether recommending kids books for their children, or favorite reads they’d want them to pick up when they were older. Here were some of my favorite posts: Birdie Bookworm, Flavia The Bibliophile, Dwell In Possibility, Going Through Books, Shaz Reads, The Bookish Libra, Awkwordly Emma, Boundless Bookaholic and A Librarian’s Library.

• Of course the other big news this week was the announcement of the winner of the 2017 National Book Award for fiction – Sing, Unburied, Sing. I’m planning on reading it during the Thanksgiving Readathon this week, since it was one of my October 2017 Book Of The Month picks, so it’s perfect timing. The nonfiction pick – The Future Is History by Masha Gessen – was on my TBR list for books on Russia, so I should be tackling it sometime next year.

• On the topic of National Book Aware Winners, Off The Shelf had a great book list this week of 11 National Book Award Winning Novels To Read Before You Die. They actually didn’t include many titles I had heard of before, surprisingly, but I was more than intrigued by a few of the plot teasers, including for The Shipping News by Annie Proulx and Three Junes by Julia Glass.

• Parchment Girl did some of the leg work for us in identifying 48 interesting new book releases being launched in Winter 2018 in this list. Several of the nonfiction titles sounded absolutely fascinating, including Tears Of Salt by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta on the refugee crisis in Southern Italy and Children Of Nazis by Tania Crasnianski.

• I loved this whimsical post on Book Riot with ideas for Bookish Christmas trees, which are exactly what they sound like – Christmas trees made out of books! I like the round versions better than the stacked ones, and wish I had the space in my apartment to make one of my own!

• I still struggle with DNFing books when I’m really not into them, especially if they’re supposed to be part of a blog series (like the few Book Of The Month books I’ve really hated). The Bandar Blog shared an interesting infographic on the types of books readers tend to DNF and the reasons and ways in which we DNF from Goodreads.

• And as last week, if you’re looking for even more bookish links, The Secret Library Blog has her post up today as well!

• Here are the individual book reviews I read this week that inspired me to consider reading the books they covered:
  • The Anatomy Of Evil by Michael H. Stone on Jessicamap Reviews (true crime)
  • Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land on Novel Meals (psychological thriller)
  • The Absolutist by John Boyne on Pace, Amore, Libri (historical fiction)
  • The Night Child by Anna Quinn on Dee’s Rad Reads And Reviews (contemporary fiction)
  • Lots Of Candles, Plenty Of Cake by Anna Quindlen on The Gilmore Guide To Books (memoir)
  • A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova on What Is Nonfiction? (memoir)
  • October: The Story Of The Russian Revolution by China Mieville on Maphead’s Book Blog (historical nonfiction)

• On Tuesday I published the official announcement for the Thanksgiving Readathon I’m hosting this week with Jackie at Death By Tsundoku. If you’re looking to participate, you can find all the details on how to join in this post, as well as some info on our Winter Reading Giveaway, which launches tomorrow.

• On Thursday I published my third Nonfiction November post – a book list on World War II Nonfiction for this week’s Be The Expert topic. It was a long post including 10 titles which took quite a while to craft, but since so many nonfiction books I love are on the list, it felt really worthwhile to share all my reviews of them with you.

• For this coming week, I’m planning on posting my Sign-Up post for the Thanksgiving Readathon (with my TBR list) on Monday, and after that my Week 4 Nonfiction November post (with my Top Ten Favorite Nonfiction Books Of All Time), as well as potentially reviews of recent reads Artemis by Andy Weir and Evicted by Matthew Desmond.

• I’m hoping that this exhibit of Downton Abbey sets and costumes makes it way to Los Angeles sooner rather than later, because I am SO there for it. Right now, it’s setting up shop in New York City and I’m very jealous of those who will be able to attend it ahead of me.

• I like Cupcakes And Cashmere’s idea of experimenting with different morning routines everyday for a week to figure out what makes you feel the most energized and relaxed. I’ve seriously fallen off the wagon with my morning routine (partly thanks to blogging) and am planning on reconnecting with it over Thanksgiving. Maybe I’ll try something like this.

• If only I had the space to have one of these cozy meditation nooks in my apartment, maybe I’d actually meditate daily like I’m supposed to (thanks anxiety!). I definitely want to spend a bit of time on Thanksgiving decluttering my bedroom to make it feel a bit more zen, since that’s where I always end up meditating.

---

Any articles or blog posts from the book world that you really enjoyed this week? Share them in the comments!

Also let me know if you plan to participate in the Thanksgiving Readathon!

If you’d like to keep up to date with posts on Novels And Nonfiction, make sure to follow me on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.

Please note this post contains affiliate links for Book Depository.