Saturday Miscellany—2/21/26

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:
Books and screens: Your inability to focus isn’t a failing. It’s a design problem, and the answer isn’t getting rid of our screen time—This’ll provoke some thinking (also, I want to be whereever that picture was taken)
“The guy you buy”: The Michael Clayton of it all.—a great piece on Corporate Thrillers
Read this: Generative AI is doing a number on the romance novel market—in case your blood pressure could use a boost (or your despair is running a little low)
From Atoms to AI: The Futile Search for a “Perfect” Language
Five Cosy Activities For Audiobook Listening—all of them sound better than my typical audiobook listening activities: driving, work, cleaning
“The Victim has to be a Believable Person”: An Interview with First Do No Harm’s S.J. Rozan
What Do You Want to Know About a Book Before You Read It?—a question I think about a lot

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
“Goblin tea resembles a nice cup of Earl Grey in much the same way that a catfish resembles the common tabby. They share a name, but one is a nice thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, and the other is found in the muck at the bottom of polluted rivers and has bits of debris sticking to it.”—Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe—Nunc hoc in marmore non est incisum
Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham—featuring a protagonist that belongs on one of my personal Mt. Rushmores
Some Assembly Required by Kevin Smith, Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley—yeah, I DNFed it, but I talked about it.
Lastly, I talked about the releases of Switcheroo by Aaron J. Elkins and Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett—”A woman who runs a cat rescue in 1920s Montréal turns to a grouchy but charming magician to help save her shelter.” (“turns to” and “grouchy” aren’t necessarily the words I’d use, but…whatever). I opined about it a couple of weeks ago. Lots of fun.
Time for a Change by Questlove, S. A. Cosby—I was a little worried that we weren’t going to get a sequel, but: “On the heels of their thrilling appearance in Rhythm of Time, best friends Rahim and Kasia are back traveling through time in Time for a Change. Last time around, they were on their own—now they are working with Aevum, a mysterious organization from the future that tasks them with averting disaster and safeguarding the flow of history.”
Worse than a Lie by soandso—”a lawyer drawn into a case that begins with a violent traffic stop and spirals into a fight over truth, power, and freedom inside the criminal legal system.” (for more, read the link there or this feature from the Westside Gazette, which is where I lifted that quotation from)