Saturday Miscellany—9/18/20

Yesterday, I did something I almost never do–I looked at one of my posts on my phone. I didn’t really see paragraph breaks—for those who read this on their mobile devices, is that common now? Do I need to tweak things a bit to restore paragraphs?

Anyway, this is a short list this week—as I mentioned last week here, my ISP went down when I was supposed to be posting the Saturday post. It didn’t come up until mid-day on Wednesday. And then I spent the rest of the week trying to catch up on things. So, I really didn’t do a lot of surfing, bloghopping, Social Media, yada yada yada. But I did stumble on a couple of good things to read.

that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
Words we think we know, but can’t pronounce: the curse of the avid reader—We’ve all been there, or at least we’ve all seen that “Oh really?” look a Jeopardy! contestant gives when Trebek gently corrects them.
The Dispatcher (Theme Song for “Murder By Other Means” by John Scalzi)—I think I both forgot to mention last week that the Audible Original sequel novella to Scalzi’s odd and dark Urban Fantasy, The Dispatcher, came out. Turns out there’s a theme song for it. We need more books with theme songs..
Nick Hornby: ‘I can quote more Molesworth than I can Shakespeare’—a fun interview with Hornby on the verge of his new book’s release at the end of the month. Surprising amount of McMurty love here.
Lee Child on Why He Edited a Book Dedicated to Nicotine: A Faulty Delivery System—I remember quirking an eyebrow at the title when I saw it a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t follow up on it. Glad I read this post–I bet his penultimate sentence is on the money.
Why this author is taking a stand against Amazon’s audiobook dominance—This is a good piece about Cory Doctorow’s audiobook strategy–would be cool if more people did things like this. Here’s a Twitter thread where he covers it in a bit more depth.
How On Trend Am I? Looking at Whether My Taste Follows the Crowd When it Comes to YA—An interesting bit of data-driven self-reflection by The Orangutan Librarian.

That I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith—the latest, and fairly controversial, Cormoran Strike novel. This thing is a beast, 900+ pages for a mystery novel? Everyone worried about their house being swept up by a Tornado should keep a copy of the hardcover in their house.
The Nicotine Chronicles edited by Lee Child—16 essays about various aspects of America’s second-favorite stimulant.

I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to crimsoncodexebooks, who followed the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger!