We’re nearing the end of the year, which means a couple of things for these posts: almost no new releases on the horizon and lots of year-end Best-Of lists. Which I’ll now demonstrate:

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 ‘Interview with a Vampire’ Author Anne Rice Dies at Age 80—I’m not a Rice fan, but it’s more-than-easy to see the giant impact she had on fiction. I read Interview back in college and loved it. At the same time, I didn’t think I needed to read another work by her.
bullet Yanking Books From School Libraries: What the Supreme Court Has Said, and Why It’s Murky—I don’t see my shutting up about this any time soon…
bullet So my Saturday night was ruined last week when I saw Ace Atkins’ tweet about next month’s Spenser being his last. I’ll probably say something in a couple of days about this, but in the meantime:
bullet Publisher’s Weekly tweeted some details about the next Parker series novels.
bullet Blogger/Parker aficionado Gerald So posted a professional take on the news and a personal one.
bullet What’s So Great About Great-Books Courses?—Some thoughts about the state of humanities in universities. (I’ve always wanted to take one a Great Books course)
bullet I’ve put this off as long as I could, but it’s time to start looking at Best Of lists…
bullet I’m not sure that David Rosenfelt’s list was all that impartial. But it was probably the most enjoyable to read.
bullet Over at FanFiAddict, Lord TBR’s Top Reads of 2021 could easily occupy my first quarter of 2022
bullet Kevin Burton Smith‘s list is pretty impressive, too.
bullet The Best Crime Novels of 2021 from Crime Reads
bullet My Top 10 Reads of 2021!from Out of This World SFF
bullet It was the penultimate week for The #R3COMM3ND3D2021 series over at Damp Pebbles. The posts over the last week were:
bullet Book Blogger Catherine Friess
bullet BookBlogger Eva
bullet Book Blogger Ally
bullet Author Jon Ford
bullet BookBlogger Richard Fernandez
bullet Book Blogger Julie Morris
bullet How Many Books Make a Book Blogger?—I didn’t realize this was a thing, but now that I’ve read this, I can see it. Like so many “you have to do X to be Y” in fandoms, the notion that you have to have a number of physical books to qualify is pretty silly. And I say that as someone who’s waiting for his youngest to move out so I can have more room for my collection…

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