Saturday Miscellany – 8/11/18

Hey! I’m back — I think. We’ve moved into a different place for the remainder (probably) of our time away from home — a Ronald McDonald House. It is great — by the way, absolutely worth tossing your coins (or bills or checks) into the boxes while getting some fries and whatnot — anyhow, their WiFi seems pretty stable, and there are no immediate plans to update it (I think it was a bad job of installing new hardware that killed things at the last place — the poor hotel staff didn’t have a clue what to do with so many angry customers). I should be okay for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, I was still able to pull together a few 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:

• Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was posting about OceanofPDF and a diverse group of authors taking umbrage with their stealing? Well here’s an update: ‘Elitist’: angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website — authors being attacked for wanting to get paid for their work. World’s gone mad. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
• The Crack Squad of Librarians Who Track Down Half-Forgotten Books: Reuniting stumped readers with the books from the edges of their memories. — Awesome.
• It’s Never Too Late to Be a Reader Again
• An American Original: Rex Stout — this is just a great short piece about Rex Stout and his fiction. I love finding new things written about Stout and/or Nero Wolfe. Also, it has my favorite lines from P. G. Wodehouse.
• The Magic of Longmire Days: Thousands of Readers Make a Summer Pilgrimage to Wyoming. Why? — I have got to make my way there.
• Learn how Harry Bosch in print wound up in San Fernando — Michael Connelly was on Dateline NBC last night — I haven’t seen it yet, and the episode wasn’t online last I had the opportunity to check. But here’s a little taste in the form of some bonus material.
• Lee Child and Naked Blue at work — The video is described as “Lee Child introduces Jen and Scott Smith of Naked Blue as they finish their album: “Lee Child and Naked Blue” available November 2nd, 2018.” Yes, an entire album of songs set in the Reacher-verse. I am so there.
• If you love to read, you’ll get lost in these 11 charming books about books
• Book Bloggers & How To Approach Them — I’ve seen this bouncing around on Twitter a bit and after reading it you’ll see why.
• My Book Blogger Grumbles Vol 1 — there’s a touch of overlap here, but not much
• This homemade literary quote clock is the best way to recycle an old Kindle — I’ve got one that just might do the trick. This is pretty cool — I’ve messed around a little bit with one of the web-based versions inspired by this. Really great idea.
• Your Favourite Book Characters Drawn By People Who’ve Never Read the Book — ” We decided to conduct an experiment to see what people would draw having heard only a single description. We chose not to tell people they’d be drawing book characters – aside from asking them to draw the person based on the description they heard, we provided them with no context at all. The character description we chose are from famous novels and are of famous characters, not that the volunteering artists knew that. We thought it would be interesting to opt for books that had already been made into films, so we could highlight the differences between what people pieced together from the book vs what the films show us the actors should look like.” Some of these are freakin’ fantastic, I should add.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• In the Stacks: Author’s Enhanced Edition by Scott Lynch — a revised and expanded version of his short story.
• See You Soon, Afton by Brent Jones — the second of four novellas about Afton Morrison, everyone’s favorite librarian/would-be-murderer.
• In Truth and Claw by Ari Marmell — the fourth Mick Oberon novel, and the second reminder that I need to read the second Mick Oberon novel (also, #s 3 and 4) — bought it years ago, just need to, you know read it. A Fae living in 1930’s Chicago and working as a PI. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to read that?

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Leah’s Bookish Obsession and Johnny for following some form of the blog this week.