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 EveryLibrary launched SaveIMLS.org—to take action and make your voice heard about the recent Executive Order targeting the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), amongst others.
bullet The Best Villains in Literature Bracket: And The Winner Is…—not really a surprise, but the worst of the worst (or the best of the worst?) has been named.
bullet The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem: Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.
bullet How an American Radical Reinvented Back-Yard Gardening: Ruth Stout didn’t plow, dig, water, or weed—and now her “no-work” method is everywhere. But behind her secret to the perfect garden lay other secrets.—this barely qualifies for this post, but they do talk about her books a bit–and there’s discussion of her more famous (at least then) brother, Rex Stout. And you all know I’ll reflexively put anything about Rex Stout here.
bullet Tell Me a Differently Shaped Story: SFF That Plays With Form: If not traditional narrative, why book shaped?—(I’m with Templeton re: House of Leaves)
bullet Tackling the TBR: Strategies for Managing Your “To Be Read” List—It was just a day or two ago that I learned that TBR’s can be managed and not just cowered under. The things Science can do these days…
bullet Why I Like The Term ‘Trad Fantasy’—a quick take from Peat Long
bullet I’m kinda done with being treated like an idiot by authors—I expect a lot of us will agree with the notion behind The Orangutan Librarian’s post. I just wonder how many of us all would agree about the authors who do it?

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
bullet The Witches of Echo Park by Amber Benson
bullet I mentioned the releases of: The Stolen Ones by Owen Laukkanen; The Deception Artist by Fayette Fox; The Last Days of Video: A Novel by Jeremy Hawkins; and Less Than Hero by S. G. Browne. I only read The Stolen Ones, which remains one of the more chilling books I’ve read in a decade or so.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Library by Gigi Pandian—Tempest Raj and her pals are back for another fun locked-room mystery. I talked about it (hopefully enthusiastically) a day or two ago.
bullet Friends Helping Friends by Patrick Hoffman— “A young man must infiltrate his own family’s white nationalist group, or go to prison himself… Part crime novel, part portrait of friendship, extremism, and inherited trauma, celebrated novelist Patrick Hoffman is at his brilliant best in these pages. Bunny never wanted any trouble. So how the hell did he end up at a white supremacist compound in rural Colorado?”
Welcome to the Lands of Luxury by Jon Tilton—escaping from their home on a (literal) trash pile is one thing, but adjusting to life in a super-affluent world brings a whole new set of challenges in this sequel.

Sometimes I think to myself, 'Drop the book and get stuff done!' Then I laugh and turn the page.
Image credit: Grammarly