Saturday Miscellany—1/17/26

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:
Best Sci-Fi First Contact Adventures—a nice little stack of goodies. I can speak for 2.4 of the 7, and agree with Peloquin’s choices–and the rest look just as good.
Willow Wraith Press is starting to host a promising series of articles about Self-Publishing, they kick it off (aptly) with What is Self Publishing?
Beauty With Teeth: What I Want From Fae Fantasy—this is a lot of what I wanted to say Monday, and didn’t quite manage to.

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week :
“I’m not saying pain is what defines us as human beings. But it is, in many ways, what unites us.”―Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
Sex & Violence in the Bible by Joseph W. Smith III
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams—to be fair, when am I NOT talking about this?
In Defense of the Moth or A Meaningless Dance in Blinding Heat and Light by Johnny Newport
Indexing: Reflections Episode Twelve: Never After by Seanan McGuire
Hidden by Karen E. Olson
The Odd Fellows Society by C. G. Barrett
I mentioned the releases of: Once a Crooked Man by David McCallum; Reflections by Seanan McGuire; and Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
First Do No Harm by S. J. Rozan—Somehow this slipped by me last week. “Lydia Chin and Bill Smith face a dangerous task: they must unlock a hospital’s many secrets in order to save an innocent man.” That sentence only needs the first five words to get me interested, but the rest works, too.
Forbidden Waters by Rob Parker—Cam Killick is back and this time he “has found is a murder weapon from a very recent crime – but how do you solve a murder without a body?”
Godfall by Van Jensen—”In this riveting small town thriller, Sheriff David Blunt is faced with a string of murders following the arrival of an alien life form”
The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Takehiko Fukunaga, Yoshie Hotta and Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Translated by Jeffrey Angles—following up on his translation of the Godzilla novellas, Angles brings us the original Mothra story.