Saturday Miscellany — 1/20/18

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:

• Breaking My Library Habit and Reading My Own Books — I think I can safely admit to having travelled to this location, performed the same actions, and posses the same souvenir garment.
• Speaking of Libraries: Libraries and Authors: A Match Made in Heaven
• These authors risk the wrath of readers to keep book franchises alive — .tucked away in this nice piece about authors continuing series, is the news that Parker’s Sunny Randall series will get a new installment this year from Mike Lupica. Not the guy I’d have gone with, but the Estate seems to know what it’s doing. Honestly, I haven’t read the guy, I know one of my kids had a few of his books
• New York Times Bestselling Author Robert Crais Agrees To New Three-Book Deal With G.P. Putnam’s Sons — Headline tells you pretty much everything in the story (other than the fact that the next novel will be a Joe Pike book)
• Tom Straw, the Author Behind “Castle” — I saw someone called this the worst kept secret in mystery fiction, but the news hadn’t gotten out to my neck of the woods. I didn’t think the books were that great, but I know I’m in the minority. Glad to see him be able to write something with his name on it, though.
• Childhood Adventures in Late-Night Reading — Book Riot again writes the piece I should have. Twice this week.
• Don’t Freak Out, But You Should Probably Read These 729 Books — Whoa! Shades of the Royal Library of Alexandria! This is a huge recommendation list. Whoops! Those who clicked earlier got a quick trip to 404ville. But I fixed the link thanks to Murder by Death.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Darkside Earther by Bradley Horner — The blurb is too long to try to compress, here’s something the author said to sum it up: “It’s Space-Opera, a YA romance, full of virtual worlds and Space Battles.” Also, I can say that Horner knows his stuff –I read his reviews regularly and he knows his genre fiction — if that familiarity is reflected in this story, it’ll be good.
• Iron Gold by Pierce Brown — I thought the Red Rising trilogy ended well, I really didn’t need more in this world — and I”m a little afraid that this is trying to squeeze more out of this story than is good for it. Still, there’s no way that I”m not going to read something that Brown puts out at this point. This takes place a decade or so after Morning Star and has to do with how things turned out after that. I don’t want to know anything else until I read the book, so that’s all I can say 🙂

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to Amy Sparks and lynnm2018 for following the blog this week (neither of them had a URL to share, either…not often that happens), hope you like what you read.