Saturday Miscellany—11/18/23

3 weeks in a row posting in the afternoon? I’m not crazy about this trend… Don’t really have anything to say, just getting that off my chest. Hopefully, I get my act together.

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 Why We Need Public Libraries Now More than Ever: Who needs libraries, anyway? Turns out, we all do.
bullet The Low Down on the Greatest Dictionary Collection in the World
bullet What Does Being “well-read” Look Like to You? Dismantling Elitism in Reading Spaces—hard to argue against this (although I realize I just invited some to do so…)
bullet Inheritance of Magic – Series Health—Benedict Jacka talks about early sales/reviews of his new series and compares it to Alex Verus
bullet It’s that time of year:
bullet The CrimeReads 2023 Holiday Gift Guide: 30+ cozy, mystery-ish, book-adjacent gifts for your crime-obsessed loved ones!—some interesting ideas here. Incidentally, if any family members are reading this—I would wear both caps very frequently (particularly the one while flying).
bullet 33 Bookish Gifts for Every Reader on Your Holiday List—from NetGalley’s We are Bookish
bullet Pay It Forward: Fahrenheit Book Bank—Doing this is just one of the things that makes Fahrenheit one of my favorites
bullet This Week’s Punctuation Power Rankings
bullet The Books That Keep Us Company for Decades—Molly Templeton’s latest
bullet It’s time to check in on #R3COMM3ND3D2023 as it recaps favorites from 2023:
bullet …with Bookstagrammer Louise Geoghegan of LouiseReads_UK
bullet …with Kate of The Quick and the Read
bullet …with Bookstagrammer Lynda Checkley of @lyndas_bookreviews
bullet ..with HC, The Irresponsible Reader—who let him opine?
bullet …with Author Joy Kluver
bullet …with Hayley of The Lotus Readers
bullet …with Lynne of Fictionophile
bullet Are you making art or making a product?—a related question for us non-authors: are we reading art or a product?
bullet My Literary DNA—oh, this is good
bullet Short Books You Can Read In A Day
bullet 4 years of Spells & Spaceships: the journey so far and my 10 favourite books.—Only 4?
bullet I Am Pro Prologues!—hear, hear!
bullet Ten Books about Books—a nice little list to work through (I’ve read one from this list, so plenty for me to work on )
bullet M&M’s choose my tbr for December—I love this concept

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
bullet SFF Addicts Ep. 79: Jim Butcher talks The Olympian Affair, The Dresden Files, Mentors, Cats & More—am sure no one is surprised that I enjoyed the heck out of this
bullet An Interview With Patrick Rothfuss—not technically a podcast, but I’m putting this interview from Grimdark Magazine here anyway. Also, I haven’t watched yet–but how can it be anything but good?

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss—I cannot wait to dive into this novella about Bast (the character I’m least interested in from the series), because I will take any new Rothfuss I can get.
bullet The Great Gimmelmans by Lee Matthew Goldberg—”Middle child Aaron Gimmelman watches as his family goes from a mild-mannered reform Jewish clan to having over a million dollars of stolen money stuffed in their RV’s cabinets while being pursued by the FBI and loan sharks.”
bullet The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child—back to 1992 to see MP Reacher at work. I’m trying to get hyped about this, but the fact that I’m #80 or so on the Library’s wait list doesn’t bother me at all suggests I just can’t.
bullet The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow—Something tells me I’m going to have significant problems with some of this book, but the premise (that I won’t try to summarize here) intrigues me

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Amy Rice, who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.
Reading books would only be boring if you lack imagination.

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4 Comments

  1. I hadn’t thought of the question in that light. Are we reading art or a product? Perhaps this is something that needs further thought.

    • HCNewton

      There are some books that definitely give a “product” vibe (I’ll keep the lawyers at bay at not name names) as I read them, for sure. But, yeah…it’s a thing to think about.

  2. WS_BOOKCLUB

    I was a little bummed to find out the The Narrow Road Between Desires is just a slightly (in my opinion) revised short story that was previously published in a Rogues anthology. So, it wasn’t new to me. Not for nothing, but I was hoping for a new- new Rothfuss.

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