Saturday Miscellany—10/1/22

So, this is pretty late, but…at 11:45pm yesterday, my daughter called asking me to take her to the ER. So I put this aside. Almost 20 hours later, I got home—and she has one less inflamed appendix. But it’s still Saturday (for at least some of the world), so this counts.

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:
What Book Bans Take From Kids
Books won’t save you: You can’t use literature as a shortcut to self-improvement—hear, hear
Meet the Author: Neil Lancaster
Tom Hanks is publishing a novel, and it sounds exactly like a Tom Hanks movie.—huh.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Friendships with Entirely Fictional Characters—this post is more directed at TV, but it easily applies to novels
The Book Character Awards! (a bookalicious initiative)—this is a neat idea
My Experience with Not Using Goodreads for a Month
Hugboxing and Scabpicking—Peat Long gives a vocabulary lesson…
An Author’s Monster Manual—Witty and Sarcastic Book Club launched another series this week—I love the premise for this—what if the D&D Monster Manual was compiled from creatures in Fantasy novels?

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
Eating the Fantastic Episode 181 Chow down with Wesley Chu—this is the first I’ve heard of this podcast, but I’ll likely come back for more, if the interviews tend to be as good as this one with Chu was.
Blood Brothers Episode 105 with Anthony Horowitz—a fun chat with Horowitz that has convinced me to give the Hawthorne and Horowitz books a couple of more installments, at least.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
The Iron Gate by Harry Connolly—the new installment in The Twenty Palaces series. The best Urban Fantasy series you aren’t reading. Circumstances allowed me to read this today (two weeks or so ahead of schedule), and it was great. I’ll be posting about this as soon as I can.
The Last King of California by Jordan Harper—He made a new life for himself, but it didn’t work out, and now Luke has to return to the gang he escaped from. Sure, you have to import this from the UK to read it, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be worth it, since its from Harper.
Treasure State by C.J. Box—a new Cassie Dewell novel has the PI on the hunt for a con man.
The Big Bang Theory Book of Lists: The Official Guide to Characters, Quotes, Timelines, and Memorable Moments by Bryan Young—this looks like it could be a lot of fun