Saturday Miscellany – 8/12/17

Such a good week of books — reading, listening, and picking up from the library — just wish I had a few more hours to write things up. It’s a week to make me remember why I maintain this blog (not that I’d forgotten, but it’s easier some weeks). Also, I just bought my daughter her first Toby Daye novels (having learned from what she’s done to my Anton Strout books, she doesn’t get to borrow mine). It’s nice to see her developing tastes and moving beyond things written for younger readers (nothing against YA, etc.), even when her tastes go in different directions than mine.

First, this week I made some snarky comment about the LA County Coroner having a gift shop in my post about Jo Perry’s Dead is Good. Shortly after my post went up, Perry tweeted me the URL for the Gift shop, “Skeletons in the Closet.” Yes, it exists, yes, it’s online — the LA Coroner has knick-knacks and Tshirts! Which I find disturbing, yet oddly compelling. I filled up a shopping cart with over $50 worth of merchandise before forcing myself to close the window and walk away. Something tells me a few of my readers would find the place equally disturbing and shoppable.

Anyway, 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:

• Ray Bradbury Reveals the True Meaning of Fahrenheit 451: It’s Not About Censorship, But People “Being Turned Into Morons by TV” — I don’t want to be That Guy, but…wasn’t that obvious to everyone? I’ve known that since I was 15. Actually, that’s one of the few books that I loved that I can’t imagine re-reading. Probably my first dystopian novel (they were harder to find when I was a kid!!), and it shook me too much to ever want to read again.
• ‘Welcome to the Last Bookstore’: The story behind the iconic bookshop in DTLA — Jo Perry also thought I’d appreciate this nugget about the iconic LA bookstore. I did, thought I’d pass it along. No, I’m not currently planning a trip to LA just to see the things Perry’s tweeted me. But man, that’d be fun.
• Philippa Gregory: By the Book — Gregory, who I’ve always thought of as a genre writer, sounds off against genre titles.
• Speaking of genre fiction, The 2017 Hugo Winners were just announced.
• Shocking figures: US academics find ‘dramatic’ growth of swearing in books — this took research?
• Why I Love J.K. Rowling (and Wish She’d Stop Writing Sequels) — I’d be on board with this.
• Hear Felicia Day, Patrick Rothfuss in Rob Reid’s After On Audiobook — hmmmm
• DEADPOOL Director Tim Miller Will Bring NEUROMANCER to the Big Screen — I just don’t know if this movie can be made. I’m willing to give it a shot, but . . .
• Fantasy writer Alex Bledsoe blogged this week about the editing process: one time where things didn’t go so well and one time when it did.
• Introducing Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame — A Contemporary Tale of Truly Epic Proportions — we have to wait how long for this?
• How I Transitioned from Writing Screenplays to Writing Fiction — I’m about 1 hour away from finishing the audiobook of Hart Hanson’s debut novel, The Driver — lovin’ it. A nice piece about how writing a novel compares to writing TV (like that show Bones you may have heard of)
• I bet Gregory really hates tie-in writers…Jason Heller’s Writing in Someone Else’s World is a great piece about them (and how they aren’t hacks!)
• World’s Highest-Paid Authors 2017 — no one will be surprised by any of these names, just some of the placements on the list (well, okay, I didn’t realize Danielle Steel was still such a draw, my bad). But the numbers are astounding. Especially the divide between #3 and #2.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Fox Hunter by Zoë Sharp — Charlie Fox, the toughest personal security agent you know, is on a manhunt in the Middle East and Europe in a book I can’t sum up in a sentence, read original post on it here.
• American Ghost by Paul Guernsey — the ghost of a would-be writer and pot-grower dictates the story of his murder and his attempt to solve it via an Ouija Board. Or something like that. I’m going to have to read it, I think.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to Priya’s Blog, Books-and-all and Holly B / Dressedtoread for following the blog this week.