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 The End of Books: What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university’s library
bullet Authors Guild Looks at Why Author Incomes Are in Decline
bullet AI Has Come for Serif Fonts: AI companies are using serifs to project humanity. Critics are calling it “tasteslop.”—huh.
bullet “The Myth of Neutral Books”
bullet Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity: How Bill Watterson Stuck to His Guns — and Vanished—much of this is a re-hash of well-established facts, with a little commentary thrown in. I’m not sure how much I agree with the commentary, but I liked reading it anyway. Also, I’m a sucker for anything about Watterson, so bring on the rehashes (as long as there’s something new to it, too, like this one)
bullet Speculating, Ambiguously—I’m not going to comment on this, go read the first paragraph, and you’ll know if you want to read more (hint: you do). Hat Tip: Runalong the Shelves
bullet Reviewers on Reviewing: Positivity, Negativity or the Secret Third Thing (Criticism)
bullet Was There a Recent Past Where “Everyone” Read and Loved the Classics?—Of course there was…like a generation before me. Or a generation before you–whoever you happen to be. Briana sheds some common sense on this notion.

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
“It wasn’t so much of a surprise that Pepper McKay was dead as much as it was an amazement to everyone in the county that it had taken so long for him to die, or for somebody to kill him.”—The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
bullet Guilty Minds by Joseph Finder
bullet The Ghost Rebellion by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris
bullet The Highwayman by Craig Johnson
bullet Cheap Shot (Audiobook) by Ace Atkins, Joe Mantegna
bullet And I mentioned the releases of: Infomocracy by Malka Older and The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar

Last Week’s New Release that I Can’t Believe I Forgot About (and nothing grabbed my attention this week, tell me where I went wrong):
bullet Asteroid Savage by Thomas Trang—I’ve been eager to get my hands on this for months, so of course I forgot to mention this last week. Trang’s LA-noir last year blew me away–and now he takes that sensibility to an (police/police-ish) investigator on Mars dealing with a corrupt system while she tracks down terrorists responsible for a bomb attack.

A Tweet from Maliha @CaffeinatedLiha reading: My TBR pile is less ‘to be read’ and more ‘to be inherited by my grandchildren.’

Saturday Miscellany—6/13/26

Image Source: Tweet from @CaffeinatedLiha