Saturday Miscellany—9/26/20

No introduction this morning, I’m watching a bookstore event with Luca Veste (from Bethany Beach Books) and am too distracted to say anything.

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 Johnstown-based literacy bank nourishing minds worldwide through magazines—adding a literature bank to a food bank? Brilliant idea.
bullet Would you find this bookstore beautiful or terrifying? Or both.—LitHub asks this provacative question about a new Chinese bookstore design (“bookstore” seems inadequate to describe this structure). Personally, I think both, but lean to the latter.
bullet A Brief History of the Juvenile Mysteries You Checked Out of the Library Eight at a Time: How young sleuths like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys became literary icons for generations.—Keith Roysdon takes readers on path down memory lane with the Hardys, Drew, and more.
bullet Why I’m addicted to self-help books—I don’t share this addiction, but I get it. And had fun reading this piece.
bullet Things I Learned About Blog Tours in 6 Months—a look back at 6 months of organizing blog tours. I’ve linked to things from the blogger’s POV recently, this look from the other side is interesting.
bullet Critical Art of Reviews—thoughts about over-used words and phrases when talking about books.
bullet Unlikeable Characters: Why is likability Even a Question?
bullet Let’s Talk About Spoilers—Wish I’d written about 90% of this first.
bullet Hiu, possibly sentient cabbage over at The Fantasy Inn, recently posted a thread about “the Feels behind book reviewing and blogging”, which is a good reminder that all of us go through the same thing (to varying degrees, anyway).

This Week's New Releases That I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet Next to Last Stand by Craig Johnson—I had a great time with the latest Walt Longmire book, I’ll probably be talking about it early next week. In the meantime, you should just go read it.
bullet Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots—Here’s what sold me: “Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy? As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine.”
bullet Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold—seemingly the whole blogiverse is buzzing about the sequel to The Last Smile in Sunder City (probably for a good reason)

Lastly I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Books Are 42 (possibly the greatest blog name ever) and The Godly Chic Diaries who followed the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

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2 Comments

  1. Thanks for the link to the piece about over-used words/phrases in reviews. I’ve not come across your blog until now but you have some interesting content so I shall be following you via my Feedly account.
    I just read the article you linked to about blog tours. I’d seen some comments floating around which were critical of bloggers but I thought that was just coming from authors who felt bloggers should write only positive comments. I never realised there was such a fuss about tours.

    • HCNewton

      Thanks for the follow! I really enjoyed that piece (and am resolutely not reading a lot of my old posts in light of it) 🙂

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