Saturday Miscellany—2/18/23

Heavy on the book blogger posts this week—some great stuff, IMHO. The one news story is likely going to my favorite (or in the top 3) of the year.

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:
Calvin & Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Is Back With “A Fable For Grown Ups” Called The Mysteries—For me, all I needed to read/link to this week is this post. And yes, I’ve placed my order.
Although, I thought LitHub’s version of the announcement was more amusing.
What “The Last Unicorn” Means to Us Today: A metaphor for our search for belonging.—eh, sure, this is about the movie, not the novel. Close enough, I guess. (I do like the idea of Geek Therapy, and will have to look at more of this author’s work)
Adult Consolations: Tolkien on Fantasy—loved this
A draft examination of the direct influences of fantasy authors pre-2000 part one: Preliminaries and Overview—The title says it all—a great post from Peat Long (who should probably share the byline on my Miscellanies lately), the work on this one post has to roughly equal the work I’ve done on this whole blog over the years.
Celebrating Love Stories #RespectRomFic—In honor of that holiday earlier in the week
In the same vein: You can read it in the time it takes to have a one night stand’: authors on their favourite romcom books—this is an interesting list from The Guardian. Worth checking out if only for Mike Gayle’s entry, he suggests the last author I’d have imagined on a list like this.
Negative Book Reviews Are Necessary—yup
Songs that fit book characters—this is a fun idea
The Audience for Book Reviews

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
Roughneck Dispatch: Jo Perry—Matt Phillips has started a new podcast about storytelling, this episode features a conversation with the great Jo Perry. I’m only halfway through the episode, but it’s so good that I didn’t want to risk forgetting to post the link.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel—A story of some twins struggling to make it in a small Ohio city (which is a lousy description, but you try to sum up this book in a pithy sentence). It’s from McDaniel, it’s beautiful, it’s tragic. Here’s my inadequate take on it from a couple of weeks ago.
Black Wolf by Kathleen Kent—An undercover CIA agent in Belarus during the crumbling of the USSR trying to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands, maybe discovers a serial killer (or something worse)