Saturday Miscellany — 6/1/19

For a week that contained both a sober Monday holiday (I meant in tone, not in day off alcohol consumption for most) and the last week in the month I have a pretty long list today. Odd. I don’t know if anyone’s picked up on this — over the past 313 weeks I’ve developed general outline that I like to follow with this post, and I try to get a flow going from one idea to another. It’s hard to describe — but for those who fixated on making the perfect mixtapes back in the 90’s, you know the idea. This week defied almost all of my attempts for any of that. It’s not important, and I’m 99.6% certain that I’m the only one who will notice. But I spent too much time last night working on it — oh the silly things we find to obsess over. It’s actually probably almost as much time to write and revise this paragraph than I spent on the effort, in point of fact — but it distracted me for longer than that last night.

Also, it’s just been a strange week around my house — not good or bad, just strange. All said, I’m in a generally amused frame of mind (which led to me counting how many of these I’ve done). Hopefully that comes through…

I think I’ve babbled on long enough — not quite Harry Knowles length yet, but getting there. On with 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:

• Try Reading a Children’s Book to Understand Complicated or Uninteresting Topics — on the face of it, there’s some uncommon common sense behind this. If you look at James Holzhauer…well, you know it has certain applications.
• How to Trick Your Kid Into Becoming a Book Lover — cute trick
• How to Make Time to Read: 7 Strategies — blah
• Readers Still Prefer Physical Books — and the number of people reading this post that are shocked by this is…?
• However, this Announement from Fahrenheit Press about paperback/digital bundling is a great idea, long overdue. Hope more publishers follow suit. (also, the book in this image is a must-read)
• JK Rowling Is Releasing 4 New Harry Potter Books — because there’s still something to be milked from this stone?
• Watched plots … Hilary Mantel and the writers under pressure from fans — I get this.
• Living with a writer: what’s it really like? — I quite enjoyed this
• Crime Fiction as Self-Care/a> — yeahhhhh, that’s why I read so much of it
• Fairy Tales Are Really Just Hard-Boiled Crime Stories: Exploring the Dark, Twisted World of Classic Fairy Tales
• My many years of reading dangerously – whether Twitter likes it or not
• Opening Lines – What hooks a reader? — these are good lines, I can see the pull

This Week’s New Release I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Dead Inside by Noelle Holton — First off, if you’ve ever read crimebookjunkie.co.uk or heard her on Two Crime Writers and a Microphone, you know that Holten knows Crime Fiction. And has a great deal of enthusiasm for it. She brings both to bear in this new book. I read the prologue/first chapter, whatever it’s called yesterday. It was dark. It was creepy. It left me with a deep sense of foreboding and dread. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do. There’s a rash of abusive husbands being killed, and a probation officer (Holten’s actual profession, by the way) is a very likely suspect. A killer you’re going to sympathize with (at least a bit), an interesting suspect and a smart DC on the case? I can’t wait to get further in.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Sesame Limited, devouringbooks2017, theguywiththebook and geekhutdrone for following the blog this week.