Saturday Miscellany—7/30/22

I’m going to start this week with a shout-out to Bookstooge for a comment he made to last week’s post (unpublished, because it doesn’t need to be broadcast)–it led to me to me making a tweak to this template that I’ve been meaning to get to for years, and typically did on a weekly basis. I hear ya, man–I appreciate the constructive criticism, and am working on it. Readers, if you haven’t checked out Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road, you should.

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:
Book Bans? My School Doesn’t Even Have a Library: How underfunding is its own form of censorship—I do wonder about some of the points here, but the overall argument is something we all need to wrestle with as we talk about what books belong in schools.
Where do library books go to die?
How Do Algorithms Help (and Hinder) Book Sales?—Yeah, this is more for the writer/seller than the reader—but I’m always interested in how the sausage is made.
Speaking of that, this week the Libro.fm blog posted Have you ever wondered how audiobooks get made?
Shop Talk: Dwyer Murphy on Writing Routines, Superstitions, and Reading Elmore Leonard Like a Bible
Why none of my books are available on Audible
The Kickstarter for Anatomy of Dinosaurs launched this week. It promises to be absolutely worth it (as are the two previous books in the Anatomy of series). If nothing else, it’s got the best Kickstarter video I’ve seen.
Molly Templeton tries to answer Why Do We Read What We Read?—”I don’t have anything resembling a scientific answer for this, and if there is one, quite honestly I don’t want to know.”
If you’ve looked at this blog at since Monday, you’ve noticed that it’s Self-published Authors Appreciation Week—Be sure to look at the SPAAW ’22 Hub for oodles of great stuff. I’d especially point you to the Before We Go Blog “…To Add to your TBR” posts (not all are currently on the Hub, but will be added soon)
Reading Science-Fiction: An Experiment and Reading Project (Part 1)
On Comfort Reading
The Books That Made Us: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Spider-Man’s Social Dilemma by Preeti Chhibber—looks to be a fun, MG, Spider-Man novel. And no, this didn’t get added to my list because of the cover. Well, not just because of the cover.
An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy—”An unwitting private eye gets caught up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive literary superstar and her bookseller husband, paying homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents it.”

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Sonam Tsering and Susan Grossey who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.