Saturday Miscellany—7/5/25

Despite my furry companions’ certain conclusions, we survived the night/morning (who needs to set off celebratory explosions at 1:30 am??). Hope my fellow USA-ers did, too. And I envy the rest of you your sleep.

I hesitate to do this…it seems like a lousy time to bring this up. But we’ve launched a GoFundMe to raise money for travel expenses for my son’s impending kidney transplant (impending=hopefully anytime in the next 3 years).

Now, on with the miscellany.

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:
The Top 10 Bestselling Books of 2025 (So Far)—from Publishers Weekly
The Emoji Tongue: If 😂 was a word, would that make emoji a language?
Sprayed Edges Are Everywhere and I Hate Them—Not sure I can co-sign this (he says looking at the edge of his copy of Five Broken Blades), but I get it
12 Must-Read WebToon Series
Urban Fantasy Starter Pack: 24 Must-Read Books That Bite Back—Because I need more UF to read? (actually, yeah, I do). Beth Tabler’s list combines stuff well-loved (or at least liked) here, and bunch of things I’d never heard of.
Yes that was six months of your reading year! Holiday Temptations Time!—Runalong the Shelves provides great TBR fodder for those looking to fill theirs out
Celebrating National Crime Reading Month – 30 days of crime recommendations!—a couple of weeks back, I’d pointed to Raven’s twitter thread listing their Crime Fiction Month reading recs. Well, here it is, nicely collected into one easy-to-reference list!
But Is It Marketable? Why I Gave Up on Traditional Publishing—one writer’s story
How do You Read so Many Books?—handier tips than mine. “Start with the first word, move on to the second, then the third, and so on.”

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
Splintered by Jamie Schultz
Lois Lane: Fallout by Gwenda Bond
Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich
And I mentioned the release of three books that I didn’t read, much less remember, but they looked pretty cool: The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms, Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole, and Linesman by S. K. Dunstall

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Dogged Pursuit by David Rosenfelt—this prequel looks at Andy’s first big case as a defense lawyer is just great. I should be expanding on that soon.
The Grimdwarf, Vol. 1: Cursed by J.C.M. Berne—A “classic fantasy with a wisecracking cursed dwarf, a water witch, and a very good dog.” The short stories collected into one volume. And free for a week or two. Worth it at thrice the price!!!
Infinite Archive by Mur Lafferty—The physical embodiment of the Internet arrives on Station Eternity, bringing chaos and murder. I can’t wait to catch up with Mallory and the rest.
Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji by Keith Houston—there’s an excerpt above. This book “follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji’s ever-expanding lexicon.” I enjoyed Huston’s book on punctuation marks, this promises to be interesting, too,.