Busy week on the homefront, my third child moved away for college yesterday, and a lot of this week was devoted to last-minute things to prepare for that (followed by a road trip to help deliver her to said college yesterday that took about 150% of the estimated time. Traffic was not my friend. Although that gave us enough audiobook time for my wife get one book closer to catching up on Mercy Thompson).
Anyway, I still found some time to do some recreational stuff and found a few things I wanted to share.
that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
Can You Tell an Author’s Identity By Looking at Punctuation Alone? A Study Just Found Out.—I think Nero Wolfe did this in Murder by the Book by Rex Stout (okay, he used vocabulary and style more, but I think punctuation played a part). If not, he probably could have. I’m pretty sure that my em dashes would lead someone to my doorstep.
Expand Your Vocabulary With This Site of Untranslatable Words—Word Nerds can have a great time with this site.
Self-Published Fantasy Month—kicked off this week, “a month-long celebration highlighting the best of what the self-published fantasy community has to offer.”
Why We Read Scary Stories During Covid: And why young people need books to get them through the pandemic, too.
10 Things You Might Not Know About NetGalley
Things That Make Bookworms Mad—one of Bookstr’s latest listicles
The Block Editor ….. Beaten into Submission?—Like so many others, Bookstooge has had…issues, shall we say, with WordPress’s Block Editor. I’m so glad for the Classic Editor Plug-In. My Tech Guy has been trying to talk me into switching over (and honestly, what he’s shown me I could do is very tempting…), but people like the ‘stooge make me reticent.
Songs I Wish Were Books—what a creative idea
Self-Published Fantasy Month: Some Book Suggestions—Witty & Sarcastic Book Club has some recommendations to help you kick off your own SPFM reading.
How I Came To Love Audiobooks By Speeding Them The Hell Up—entertaining and good tips
Unlimited Audiobooks: Find the Best Subscription for You!
What Do Ratings Really Mean—The Bookwyrm’s Den sounds off on 3 Star Ratings.
Which reminds me, have I mentioned that I recently tweaked my own “About My Ratings”? Didn’t make any changes to to how I rate, just hopefully made the page a bit more interesting.
Episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
Under a Pile of Books Episode 81 – SPFM Special – Hostcast—a chat with the hosts of the Self-Published Fantasy Month
That I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire—Toby sets out to invite Simon Torquill to her wedding? Yeah, there’s nothing “fraught with peril” about that at all. This is literally three feet away, calling my name…
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes—” Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why – or even who Tobias Hawthorne is.” I’m part of a Book Tour for this one here in a week or two, really looking forward to it.
Teen Titans: Beast Boy by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo—they’re back with a follow-up to their revisioning of Raven’s story with Garfield Logan, who taught me most of what I know about bad jokes back in the 80’s. I’ve been waiting for this one for about a year.
Crackle and Fire by Russ Colchamiro—This SF PI novel is another I’ve been waiting for…I’m never gonna survive September at this rate.
The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie—that’s just a great title, isn’t it? Book two in the follow-up to The First Law
The Silver Law by Lev Grossman—a Lewis/Dahl-esque MG novel from Grossman? Sounds good to me…
I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome toT.Tazaki, samfsm, and S.D. McKinley who followed the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?
Bookstooge
Yep, I’d say you got the timing down here. Whatever it was, it appears to be fixed! Thank goodness, because I was figuring I was going to have to abandon following you since I couldn’t get your posts in my feed.
Thanks for the shoutout too. I’m fully into using the block editor, but that is because at some point the very ability to use any sort of “classic” is going to go away. I don’t have to like it though, even though I feel like I’m getting a handle on it. It is NOT for blogger who just want to write. If you like to tweak with every little word, then it definitely IS for you. And if you have someone showing you the ropes, take advantage of it.
Anyhoo, glad that most of the birthing pains from switching hosts seems to be ironed out. Between the comment issues and then the schedule/feed issue, I was worried.
HCNewton
You recently wondered about pros and cons about self-hosting? Well, you’ve seen a lot of the cons in real time with me 🙂
But…let me tell you about a little plug-in called “Classic Editor”…https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/
Bookstooge
And everything you’ve gone through is why I will NEVER go self-hosted. I don’t have the oomph to deal with these issues. and since I’m reconciling myself to the block editor AND found a solution for storage I think I’ll just sit here at wordpress and complain, very loudly, from the sidelines 😀
HCNewton
I absolutely get that…and I assure you, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last couple of months regretting the move. Without you pointing out problems and Micah doing most of the fixing, I would’ve been toast. On the plus side, for your readers, you complaining loudly is typically entertaining…
Did I mention that I switched hosts for my personal stuff/email/other projects at the same time? Threw in an extra level of frustration.
But, I think it will be worth it. And not just because my new host is cheaper by the month (but that helps).
Bookstooge
Yeah, I seem to have kind of built a grumpy, grumbly kind of online persona. Now I’m stuck :-/ and my naturally optimistic, cheerful and rainbow unicorn side just can’t make it out onto the blog.
So you were making some major online changes then. See, I use dsl through our phone company and google for email, so I don’t have much to change.
The reason I was so worried is that I HAVE stopped following people who went selfhosted and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get these very issues taken care of. Since I know you from the booklikes days I was extremely loathe to have to cut the cord.
And if it’s now cheaper for you, and working then “All’s Well that End’s Well” as some yokel hack once wrote 😉
wittysarcasticbookclub
Thanks for including my post!
As for the new wordpress…I an struggling with it, but I struggled with the original version, so I’m not a good judge. 🤣🤣
HCNewton
Just traded in a new set of problems/issues? At least you got a little variety.
wittysarcasticbookclub
Yup! Variety is the spice of life and such whatnot. 🤣🤣
Lashaan Balasingam @ Bookidote
I’m curious about how that Beast Boy book turns out. I hope it meets your expectations! 🙂
HCNewton
I’m going in with moderate expectations, i.e., I don’t expect it to blow me away. The Raven was an interesting take on her backstory (which has probably changed at least three times since Tales of the New Teen Titans #2–https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_the_New_Teen_Titans_Vol_1_2 — even before that take), and I know Beast Boy’s will not be anything I recognize.
Knowing that going in helps, you know?
waytoofantasy
Wow, you managed to accomplish so much while being so busy, I’m impressed!