Saturday Miscellany – 5/16/15

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:

• Indie Bookstores Are Finally Not Dying — The Daily Beast has a bit of rare good news for Indie bookstores.
• In a Mother’s Library, Bound in Spirit and in Print — here’s something that e-books can’t do.
• A favorite around here, Ace Atkins was on Authors on the Air with Pam Stack talking about his upcoming Spenser novel. Haven’t had a chance to listen to this yet, but I’m chomping at the bit to.
• Speaking of Atkins, Mystery Scene posted a little piece by him about Elmore Leonard, Let Your Characters Do the Talking.
• Fantasy must shake off the tyranny of the mega-novel — Damien Walter makes a good case against the monster-sized approach to fantasy stories. While I like a good, weighty tome, some of my favorites are the smaller works.
• Trailer For “The Magicians” — Syfy’s put out a trailer for the upcoming adaptation. I’m cautiously optimistic.
• 20 Reasons Book Nerds Lead a Better Life — Ginni Chen has an entertaining post up on the B&N blog.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz — doesn’t look like your typical Lisa Lutz novel, but at this point, I don’t care. I’m in.
• Dry Bones by Craig Johnson — a new Walt Longmire. At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably get to it in November.
• Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll — I’ve heard nothing but great things about this one, looks great.
• Goddess of Buttercups & Daisies by Martin Millar — one of the odder looking books I’ve seen lately. Should work on tracking it down rightaway.
• Rumrunners by Eric Beetner — this looks like it could be a fun read.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to facetioussoup for following the blog this week (possibly the greatest moniker I’ve come across online), and to Nothing better than a good book… for following the BookLikes clone (which I really wish I could make look nicer…). Thanks to Injoy’s Blogs + Book Reviews for the signal boost to a post at said clone. Lastly, big thanks to Joseph Finder for bothering to read my post about his book and for responding on Twitter — don’t think I’ll ever get used to someone doing that.