Saturday Miscellany – 3/21/15

A little note first: As far as possible, I find the original source of infographics, stories, memes, etc. that I post and/or link to. Occasionally, I miss. One such time was back in September with the handy infographic, How Long Will It Take to Read? I received an email from someone from the site I should’ve linked to the other day asking to fix that — which I gladly did, and figured they deserved another link or two in return. It’s a nice site, which deserves all the clicks and views I can send their way.

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:

• Spain finds Don Quixote writer Cervantes’ tomb in Madrid — For the life of me, can’t figure out why anyone cares about the location of his bones. But, man, the process is fascinating.
• And because I have to talk about Harper Lee every week (apparently), this New Yorker piece is one of the best articles I’ve read in awhile: Harper Lee’s Abandoned True-Crime Novel and then David L. Ulin’s response to this in the LA Times is a great chaser: Harper Lee: What’s wrong with a one-hit wonder?.
• Nowhere near as insightful, controversial, or antying. Just slavishly full fanboy/fangirl gushiness: 10 Famous Authors on To Kill Mockingbird — blah
• There’s No Such Thing as a Fake Reader
• Helpless in the Face of Your Enemy: Writers and Attack Novels — Harry Connolly talks about the novel he had to write. His talk about the big UF taboo is interesting/troubling. And I will get to my blog post on this one soon. Really.
• 10 of the Best Books about Literature — Good TBR List fodder
• Chuck Wendig is writing a Star Wars novel??? — I’m intrigued and scared. Mostly intrigued. As usual, his blog post announcing it is more enjoyable than many books.
• Lev Grossman, S.E. Hinton, and Other Authors on the Freedom of Writing Fanfiction — huh. Really?
• Here’s a Real Photo Of the Mars Location of Andy Weir’s The Martian — io9 gets the peanut butter of reality into the chocolate of Weir’s fiction
• 23 Struggles Only Book Nerds Will Understand — I’ve posted very similar lists before, but this is still fun.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• The Stolen Ones by Owen Laukkanen — this is sitting on my library’s reserve shelf for me, and I’m literally^* salivating.
• The Deception Artist by Fayette Fox — It was the cover that caught my eye and made me take a look at this — kudos to the designer — looks like an interesting read.
• The Last Days of Video: A Novel by Jeremy Hawkins — this looks like a lot of good, odd fun.
• Less Than Hero by S. G. Browne — this one looks appealing, too. Read a little — not enough — of Browne before. Need to read more.

^* And by literally, I mean figuratively.
Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to K. L. Register for following the blog this week. Big, big thanks to Jennifer Reed/bookjunkiez for the reblog/signal boost!

Image credit: Grammarly