Saturday Miscellany—11/2/19

This week’s list seems a bit more miscellaneous than usual, but that’s cool. I honestly didn’t think I’d spent enough time online this week to cobble together a post. Thankfully, I was wrong.

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:

• 10 Famous Authors With Surprising Day Jobs: Or, 10 reasons to hang on to that office job
• Should We Pay to Enter Bookstores?—The cheapskate in me balks at this, but really, not a bad idea.
• The Most Popular Books In Libraries, July–September 2019—It’s sort of a pain to read, but if you skip around by headings, this is some pretty interesting stuff.
• 7 Crime Tropes We Really Could Do Without: It’s time for a genre full of cliches to clean up its act.—Yes. But, no. If the right author can make any of these tropes work really, really well. They are overdone, but if pulled off juuuuuust right, I love ’em.
• Atmospheric Pressure: The Big Sleep at Eighty: 80 years ago, Raymond Chandler reinvented crime fiction with a novel that valued atmosphere—and style—above all else.—Case in point.
• How Objective Are Your Reviews?—This is possibly the best post I read this week, we all like to think our evaluations are objective (we might not admit it, but we like to think it), but yeah…they’re not. Unless we’re talking about the end of Harris’ Hannibal, or Dan Brown — because, really, we have to have some standards.
• Dragons of Autumn Twilight Read-Along—I tried to shuffle my schedule so I could do this, but I just couldn’t manage it. But this novel was one of the Big Ones in my development as a reader, you should follow along with what’s produced this month.
• 3 Reasons to Quit the Book You’re Reading—She makes it sound so simple…
• Dear authors, I can dislike your book if I want to! – My Ity Opinion.—but if you don’t quit it, feel free to sound off

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Shattered Bonds by Faith Hunter—Jane Yellowrock is back in the aftermath of the devastating 12th novel to find that things can always get worse. I rambled on about it this week.
• Blue Moon by Lee Child—Jack Reacher. ‘Nuff said.
• Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson—I’m not even sure how to summarize this without reading it. Just click the link.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Lee, likeherdingcatsblog, caffeinefocus, intentforcontent, entertainingly nerdy, The Awesome Dad, and juniorgareth42 for following the blog this week (gotta catch my breath for a moment, that was a long list). Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?