Saturday Miscellany – 4/1/17

The last week of the month is so difficult now to find stuff worth posting, I’m not sure why that is. Still, here are the 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 World’s Highest Paid Authors — Most of these seem like no brain-ers, but there are a couple of names that surprised me. I knew Riordan was a big deal, but Martin/Dan Brown numbers? Nice. The real eyebrow-raiser is the gap between Patterson and the rest.
• Dames, detectives and dope: why we still love hardboiled crime — one writer’s take on why the current cultural climate is seeing a resurgence of hardboiled fiction
• 15 of Your Favorite First Lines from Books Published in the Last Five Years — assembled by Goodreads (odd to see …and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone listed as a classic)
• I Will Never Hire Children Living in a Boxcar to Solve a Mystery Again — McSweeny’s brings us this by Kathleen Toohill — funniest thing I read all week, easy. (HT:Fahrenheit Press
• The Write Stuff — The semi-biographical semi-true story of a fantasy writer’s journey into madness. A Webcomic by blog favorite, Anton Strout.

There was only one New Releases that caught my eye this week:
• The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History by Jon Morris — 100 of the strangest/silliest Supervillains in the history of comics.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to Adam Harkus (a blog my two young guitarists will love), Christy Luis (nice blog to browse, btw), and kirilson for following the blog this week.