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:
- First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran review – how good writing makes sense of the world — A good review of and some interesting things to think of.
- Dealing with Taboos: Is Anything “Off Limits” in Crime Writing? — PJ Parrish focuses on Crime Fiction in this post, but frankly, I think this applies to fiction in general.
- One person who embodied Parrish’s point was Elmore Leonard, the 93rd anniversary of his birth was this week. In honor of that, CrimeReads gave us Elmore Leonard’s Greatest Opening Lines, a ranking of his best 25 openers.
- Here’s the real value of book bloggers and online book tours — You probably saw the kerfuffle on FB and Twitter this week over someone talking about Book Blog Tours being a waste of time and money. I really enjoyed most of the responses to that thesis that I saw. Pamreader gives one of the best responses.
- This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
- Wrecked by Joe Ide — IQ is back for his third novel — and I can’t wait to see what Ide has in store for him.
- The Blue Kingfisher by Erica Wright — Kat Stone, undercover cop turned PI with identities to spare investigates an apparent suicide. Here’s what I had to say about it.
Bookstooge
While I do believe that book bloggers “have value”, I agree that book tours are a complete waste of time. From my end as a reader anyway. If I want a SQEEE tour, I can join Goodreads. There are a couple of people I follow who semi-regularly get on the tour train and I don’t bother even looking at those posts anymore. I don’t want “more info” about the author, or why they wrote the book, or any of that. I’m just not a “crowd” person and instinctively turn away from things that are aimed at crowds. For your sake I won’t even go into cynical reasons why I don’t like, participate in or encourage in any way, the tours 😀
My goodness, I HATE when one of your little one sentence links forces a paragraph out of me. I feel like a frothing, rabid raccoon! 🙂
HCNewton
I, however, LOVE when that happens…
HCNewton
https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/22871539/20180710/070153/styles/T800x600/public/processed_images/shutterstock_584724292-1531263377-2680.jpg?width=720
Bookstooge
Yeah, pretty much!
Sometimes I really wish I could fit in better with “groups”. Oh well. Thank goodness I don’t have to be part of a group to read books 😀
Bookstooge
And on a slightly different tack, what do you think about Tours? I know it is positive since you participate, but what do you do it for?
HCNewton
You know, I’ve honestly never thought about why. Mostly I look at it the same way I do any other time an author/publicist asks me to read a book, just with bonus content. I like seeing the concentrated push for a book — the more attention for a book like that, the better.
Usually, anyway.
pcochrun
You did it again! I love IQ!
I’m going to get Wrecked ASAP.
HCNewton
Picked it up today… Hopefully get to start it Thursday. Ugh, that’s too far out
pcochrun
Ha!