Where did “Nannerbears” come from?
Nannerbears came from years of morphing a nickname from one thing to another. When I was little, my sister called me Nana, which eventually got shortened to Nan. It was common for friends and family to call me Nan through high school and college, and that got lengthened to Nanners, and then Nannerpants, and then Nannerpuss (based on the Denny’s nannerpuss ad). When thinking of a CBR persona, I thought something more serious was needed and bears are serious, so I made Nannerbears.
What’s the best book you’ve read due to a CBR review or recommendation?
Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui. I have the review ruminating, waiting to post. It was mentioned in a comment on another review and it piqued my curiosity. It’s a gorgeous book all about why we swim, and also a little bit of the how.
You’re a big nonfiction reader – what kinds of subjects do you like to learn more about?
I didn’t used to be. I used to exclusively read fiction, preferring to get lost in a made up world. And then somewhere along the line something shifted and I realized there was so much in our natural world to learn about and that the cliché ‘stranger than fiction’ holds true so often. I have a propensity towards science, especially space, but the right author can make me want to learn more about anything. I will read anything by Mary Roach and recommend her to everyone I talk to, even if they don’t ask about books! Her style is just what I’m looking for when learning about anything. I also started getting into history more by reading Sarah Vowell and then expanding from her delightful essays into hard-fact books like The People’s History of the United States. Connecting the facts through multiple authors and understanding what’s important to each of them and why that might be the case became as interesting as parsing out a world in a fiction series.
I also very specially want to learn more about park department law enforcement and am looking forward to reading Fuzz, and no, I don’t know Mary Roach and she hasn’t put me up to mentioning her twice within one answer.
What was it that first helped you fall in love with reading? Was it a particular book? A person? Something else?
Individual Pan Pizzas? We all remember Book It, right? It was the best, and I would do it again.
A less exciting answer is a bit of loneliness and boredom as a kid. My siblings were older and wouldn’t play games with me and we lived in the country without a lot of other kids around, but my mom would let me read any book, no matter what it was. Reading was an escape into an older world I was longing to get into. I was reading VC Andrews well before I should have, but as long as it was words in a book, my mom said it was ok. So it was this approved form of experiencing a world I wasn’t actually ready for yet.
Where’s the last place you ordered takeout from?
Michael & Pings! It’s a fantastic modern Chinese food restaurant in Brooklyn. Highly recommend!
