Saturday Miscellany—5/2/20

Hey, it’s Saturday. Which looks a lot like every other day lately, but I’m sitting at a different computer than I was yesterday at this time. And I’m not typing nearly as quickly. How’re you all doing?

Odds n ends about books and reading that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
          bullet Independent Bookstores Get Creative to Survive the Long Lockdown: A business that relied on walk-ins and impulse buys has to find new ways to connect with customers.
          bullet Coronavirus: Library books rearranged in size order by cleaner—The strangest COVID-19 symptom yet. (Hat Tip: Mike Finn)
          bullet Fiction, fact and crows: How I wrote a zombie pandemic heist novel—Russell Day talks about the writing of his new novel, King of the Crows, and its strange publication context.
          bullet One Man Audiobook Drops in a Few Weeks—Harry Connolly comes to audio! One Man soon, and the Twenty Palaces novels soon after. Hopefully this helps a lot more people discover the work (and helps me decide how to use Libro.fm credits for the next few months)
          bullet SFF World Tour—Spells and Spaceships launched a series this week promoting “Science Fiction and Fantasy inspired by, set in and written by authors from every continent.” Cool series.
          bullet Welcome to Wyrd and Wonder—a month-long celebration of Fantasy fiction kicked off yesterday. I’d hoped to come up with a few things to contribute, but…Reality has set in and that’s just not going to happen. Check out this great-looking set of posts instead.
          bullet Why Read Fiction? 4 Common Reasons (and a New Rating System)—Blacksail Books wades into the choppy waters around rating/evaluating books with an interesting angle.
          bullet Does My Mood Affect My Ratings?—Obviously, the answer is a yes—but how many of us take the time to reflect on it?
          bullet How to Listen to Audiobooks!—a handy guide to diving into the medium (something I could’ve used a few years ago, turns out that I stumbled my way into a lot of these ideas on my own, would’ve been nice to avoid the stumbling though.)
          bullet Pacing: What’s Good, Bad, and in Between—I didn’t mean to grab 2 Blacksail posts in one list, but I had to share this one, too. Good thoughts on pacing—and citing Sepinwall on Breaking Bad‘s “Fly” is a nice bit of icing on the cake.

This Week's New Releases That I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
          bullet King Of The Crows by Russell Day—I’m only 1/4 through with this, but I’m already stressing about how I’m going to possibly talk about it (thankfully, I’m not alone). But the essence will be: BUY THIS NOW. Don’t care how long your TBR is, make it your next read…click the link there, read the Day piece above. I’m really excited about this thing, and will probably talk about it a lot this year.
          bullet Critical Point by S. L. Huang—Cas Russell deals with the fallout from Null Set‘s revelations and tries to save a friend. This should be a blast.
          bullet Of Honey and Wildfires by Sarah Chorn—a fantasy set in a Wild West-esque world, about family, love, loss and a magic that’s mined. I talked about it a bit earlier this week.
          bullet Firefly – The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove—hard to believe, but a run for Badger goes very, very wrong. River plays a significant role in this one, so it has to be good.

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

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6 Comments

  1. Thanks for the mention – we like to make Wyrd and Wonder as accessible as possible, so if you do end up posting something fantasy-related this month be sure to tag us and we’ll happily share it with the party!

  2. What is that last picture about?

    • Harry Potter reference–seemed like it had to be used today, y’know?

      • Gotcha. Was the date the last book was published or something?

        • 2007 was the pub date. Not precisely sure how the year was set, Rowling probably said it somewhere. But the series takes place in the 90’s.

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