Saturday Miscellany—2/15/20

Not much to say, I’m 604 miles away from home this weekend and haven’t been able to write more than three sentences so far, which is about two posts under my goal (have read more than a few, however). Thankfully, this post doesn’t require a lot of writing. It’s probably the elevation, because that’s a thing, right? (or maybe it’s just spending time with my wife and daughter…)

Anyway…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:

• The way we read now: The thrill is gone for lovers of fiction. Joseph Bottum on the strange death of the novel—Thought-provoking read.
• Did Amazon Throttle My Sales After I Criticized Them in the New York Times?: Danny Caine on the Transparency and Responsibility of the World’s Largest Bookstore—Things That Make You Go Hmmm…
• He Courted Me Through My Favorite Novel
• Toward a Philosophy on Book Collecting—A philosophy that’s more complicated than “As Many My Wife Will Let Into the House?” huh.
• Sleuthing With Spenser for Hire—some nice memories about Robert B. Parker
• Read like a champion: ‘Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time’ winner Ken Jennings shares his literary picks—think I’m going to pass on his recommendations, but it’s an interesting list
• Don Winslow Discusses His Latest Book, The Border
• Nick Hornby: Why a ‘High Fidelity’ Reboot Made Perfect Sense—Haven’t had a chance to watch any of this yet, but this makes me more inclined
• ‘Bosch’ Renewed for Seventh and Final Season by Amazon Studios—all good things… (Rats!)
• Speaking of which: The Difficult Art of Ending a Crime Fiction Series: Two authors—working from opposite ends of Florida—bring epic noir series to a close, and live to tell the tale.—Not authors I’ve read (yet), still interesting to see them talk about this.
• Things I Love: Book Recaps!—if only more authors gave them
• How Reading Has Improved My Mental Health—I’ve been there or can see the appeal
• Along those lines, Witty & Sarcastic Book Club has been posting about Mental Health in Literature this week, starting with: Mental Health in Literature: a Conversation
• Recommending Books I Didn’t Like
• Here be Dragons!—Spells and Spaceships has a great post about Dragons with a TBR-filling post of Dragon Recommendations!

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• The Once & Future Podcast, Ep. 204: Jeanine Cummins—Anton Strout talks to his old friend about American Dirt in an interview recorded before the controversy about the book (and promotion of it) got as big as it has. I had a suspicion that many of her critics didn’t know that much about Cummins/her work before I listened to this. Now I’m convinced.

I’m sure I missed some, but there weren’t any New Releases that caught my eye this week.