Saturday Miscellany – 12/22/18

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:

• Bookstore Sales Increased 7.2% in October — doesn’t sound like much, but up is up, right?
• Guess what’s anchoring many small downtowns?: Even in the age of online shopping, the answer is: bookstores
• The ‘Future Book’ Is Here, but It’s Not What We Expected — this Wired piece is worth the read
• How Indie Presses Are Elevating the Publishing World: Three independent publishers discuss their mission — 7.13 Books is featured in this nice offering from Electric Lit (nothing against the other groups featured, I just don’t know them)
• Some Thoughts on my Forthcoming Novel ‘Not Famous’ — I’m a little annoyed because I’m about half done with my post about this book and Hanover covers everything I talked about here. Now I’m going to sound like I’m taking talking points from him 🙂
• Thinking of Rex Stout & Nero Wolfe — you know me, I never pass up a chance to proselytize about Stout and Wolfe.
• Crime Fiction Superlatives: The Best and Most of 2018: Yearbook Superlatives For the Crime and Mystery World — I should’ve done something like this, but I’m not that clever.
• A few more Best Ofs:
  • Best Nonfiction of 2018 — according to Paul’s Picks
  • 19 authors pick the best crime novels of 2018 — from Dead Good
  • The Best Crime and Mystery Debuts of 2018: 15 New Voices To Watch — from Crime Reads, I’ve read one of these and wanted to get to a few others
  • Crime Reads also named The Best Noir Fiction of 2018: Celebrating the Year in PIs, Procedurals, Noir and Hard-Boiled
  • The Fantasy Inn’s Best of 2018 — I agree with a lot of these, and added a couple of other things to my TBR
• Because we can’t just look back:
  • 2019 Preview: 25 Thrillers to Watch for Next Year — I’m carving out time on my calendar already for some of these
  • Most Anticipated 2019 books! — from Grimdark Dad. Some great looking things here.
• Tom Gauld on the author’s ultimate goal is the cartoon we wrap things up with.

Book-ish Related Podcast Episodes you might want to give a listen to, both from Hank Garner’s Author Stories:
• Episode 527 | Craig Johnson Returns To Talk Depth Of Winter And Writing A Long Running SeriesI meant to post this last week, but, better late than never. Good chat in general — but the bits we got about the 2019 novel absolutely make it worth it.
• Episode 531 with Luke Daniels, Rhett Bruno, and Jaime Castle
  I like Bruno, Castle seems like someone I can appreciate — but Luke bleepin’ Daniels? Loved listening to him.

This Week’s only had One New Release that Caught my eye:
• The Disasters by M. K. England — “The Breakfast Club meets Guardians of the Galaxy” ’nuff said.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Russell Deasley for following the blog this week.