Saturday Miscellany — 7/20/19

Here’s a facepalm moment, I thought I posted this before I closed my browser this afternoon. But…well, what are ya gonna do? Better later than never, eh?

Here are 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:

• A Literary Vandal Is Ripping Pages Out of Books and Putting Them Back on Shelves — This person is a monster and must be stopped! (cue dramatic music)
• What is a ‘good bookstore’?
• The Stillness of Reading a Humble Mass-Market Paperback — Jezebel’s not normally a website I’d use for, well, anything. But somehow I stumbled on to this nice piece.
• Mark Haddon on the magic of audiobooks: ‘I haven’t read a book properly until I’ve had it read to me’ — I liked this — and his point about not being able to speed up or slow down is great, I’ve noticed that myself, but couldn’t articulate it as well.
• The Evolution of Walt Longmire: Somewhere Between Laughter and Death: A Bookseller’s Guide to Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Series — only a month until the next installment, and this just gets me eager for it
• How Japanese RPGs Inspired A New Generation Of Fantasy Authors — I wonder if I can use this to get my computer-game fixated son to read some of these books
• 8 Really Strange Facts About Famous Authors
• 8 Book Bloggers Share Their Costs of Book Blogging – Part I — an interesting series from The Quiet Pond
• Do You DNF a Book? — a good post about the topic from Devouring Books
• Tom Gauld’s thriller concept generator — hard to go wrong with Guald

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Bark of Night by David Rosenfelt — one of the stronger non-Christmas-related installments in years. A fast, fun mystery. As I said using more words
• The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter — for reasons beyond my ken, I’ve become resistant to jumping into a new Epic Fantasy series, but this Game of Thrones meets Gladiator, drawing on African traditions adventure just might make me give it a go. Looks great, and my feeds have been glowing about it.

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