Saturday Miscellany—9/28/19

This has been a strange week, I kept running out of steam in the evenings and was honestly and pleasantly surprised to find that I’d played around on social media enough to actually have anything to post today. How I got anything written this week is beyond me. I did do more reading than I expected to—still, I have a need to be reading 5 books right now rather than writing anything (and I don’t mean reading a chapter or two and then switching, I literally mean reading 5 simultaneously). When I say that I overcommitted for Sept./Oct. I really mean it. (and that’s not counting the two books I pre-ordered months ago that arrived in the last 10 days and are sitting ignored on my shelf).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this list of odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye—I did:

• Study finds that learning to read enhances the brain in more ways than one: Reading sharpens parts of the brain without overriding the system.
• Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers: A lot rides on how parents present the activity to their kids.
• 50 books, 50 days and a car named Thunder: Columbus native takes cross-country trip to nation’s bookstores—I’m sure there’s a reason why this story is printed twice—once without paragraph breaks—on the page, but scroll down to help your eyes a lot.
• Celebrity Book Clubs Are Actually Selling Books—This is an interesting phenomeon, not one that has much of an influence on a reader like me, but it’s interesting to see. Also, I’m not a Sportsball guy at all, but I do know who Andrew Luck is. Glancing at his book club picks over the last few months, I think I might check back on it from time to time, I like his taste.
• Book clinic: can you recommend modern fiction to replace my love of classics?—I thought this was a rather odd question, but…interesting answer
• Expectation Vs Reality: My Self-Publishing Debut—a fascinating guest post from Off the TBR (love the blog name).
• Where have all the good men (and women) gone? Favourite heroic heroes!—another good list from The Orangutan Librarian
• Author-pay in Tacos per Copy—In response to a tweet about selling ARCs, Kevin Hearne breaks down how authors get paid by the taco (scroll down to see audiobooks and used books)

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Author Stories’ Episode 724 | Craig Johnson Returns With Land Of Wolves—Hank Garner’s fifth chat with Johnson. Pleasant chat about a great installment in the series (my post about the book will be up soon, I think)

Among an interesting looking crop the this week’s only New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon is:
• Fallen by Benedict Jacka—the tenth in the Alex Verus series is out now, and I’m hoping I can squeeze it in soon. Incidentally, I like the fact that the US covers are starting to be multi-colored. I can’t give an abbreviated single-sentence synopsis, because I like walking into these without any idea what’s going to happen. It’s enough that it’s a new Verus.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Aqsa haleem, OwlBeSatReading, and bryan_lunsford for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?