Saturday Miscellany — 12/20/14

Hey, remember when I reviewed things here? Posted fairly frequently, too. Honestly can’t tell you why this month or so has been so dry. I promise, I’m trying. Spent a part of each of the last few weeks thinking I was going to get ahead of the game, and each one has found me further behind.

Anyway, I did get a really big list of odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• The Most-Recommended Novel Of All Time Is… — After reading the HuffPo thing, go play with the interactive graphic. Really interesting.
• The Gorgeous, 75-Year Evolution of ‘The Hobbit’ Covers/ — some of these are really cool
• What Lee Child Has Learned from Writing the Jack Reacher Books –a conversation with Esquire mag. I think I agree with his pick for the one he’d submit to a prize committee.
• Neal Stephenson signs on as tech company’s ‘chief futurist’ — Sure. Why not? I’d feel better about this if I hadn’t read some of his visions of the future. Naturally, I don’t think he wants to create The Diamond Age, but, you can never tell….
• 25 Genre Novels That Should be Classics
• Will Warren Hammond and Carrie Vaughn Go Where No Local Sci Fi Writers Have Gone Before? — a nice look at a couple of Colorado SF writers.
• Novelists Adam Sternbergh and Lev Grossman on Genre Fiction and Theories of Nerd-dom — Loved books by both of them this year, very interesting stuff here.
• Why I’m Not Participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge in 2015 — I totally get everything Pryde says here — and agree with most of it. I’m 20+ behind at the moment (hoping to get up to 18 behind by the end of the year), and it’s driving me crazy. Which is stupid. But I’ll probably do it again next year. Maybe.
• 2014 in Review — a nice recap/glance forward, etc. from Bookworm Blues. I want to be a blogger like her someday.
• What Amazon’s Bestsellers Say About American Culture in 2014 — huh. Maybe.
• And still more best of 2014 lists. Which again, are great fodder for TBR Lists:
  • David L. Ulin’s best books of 2014 — The LA TimeS Book Critic gives us a list of books I’ve never heard of.
  • Here’s the Ultimate List — BookBub aggregates 23 different lists. Wow, so helpful.
  • 11 Books Strand’s Booksellers Loved Most In 2014
  • Books That Deserved the Hype
  • The Year In Great Sentences — not just good books (etc.) but great on the micro level.
  • Our favourite books of 2014 — Edmonton Journal writers share their choices for best reading. I’ve said almost the exact same thing more than once about Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe (rest of the list is alright, too, but not as right)
  • Our Favorite Book Covers of 2014 — nothing against other lists, but I think I agree with BookRiot’s more
  • Some of the Best Lit Tweets of Some of the Year — Possibly the most entertaining of these lists I’ve linked to this month
  • title — blah
  • My best reads o’ the year — Kevin Hearne (on his nice looking new site) gives us his favorite 3.
  • Top 5 Urban Fantasy Novels I Read in 2014 — from Bibliotropic
  • Best Military Fiction of 2014 — from The Book Plank. I totally agree with his take on Cole’s Control Point
  • MIND MELD: Best Books of 2014 — Speaking of Myke Cole, he and other writers combined for this list for SF Signal.
• Embiggening English: The Simpsons and changing language

A big, fat goose egg with New Releases this week — there’s at least one next week to close out the year.