It’s a tiny offering for you this week–which works out okay, because how many ‘Muricans are reading this today? (no offense to the handful of you who aren’t celebrating the Semiquincentennial).
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:
Readers’ Hit New Books of the Year (So Far)—from Goodreads, so take it with the amount of salt of your choice
The Joy of Novellas—from The British Fantasy Society
Lee Goldberg on His New Series Starter Whodunit, ‘Murder by Design’—a good profile of Goldberg. The first line describes him to a T (at least from what I know of him): “Lee Goldberg doesn’t want to change your life with his books, but he does want to entertain you.”
Book Blogging in 2026: Survey Results—Jo Lindsdell’s most recent results. I thought I submitted my answers. Apparently not. Whoops.
Let’s Not Turn Reading into a Sport—please let’s not do that. If it were a sport, I think by International Treaty or Natural Law I’d instantly be bad at it.
A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
Quick Book Reviews with Philippa Hall Ep. 471: M.W. Craven on The Killer’s Mark Plus the Kindle That Saved a Life in Barcelona—I learned a bit more about Craven’s new book than I wanted to know before starting it, but I’m not complaining.
SFF Addicts Ep. 209: Portal Fantasies with Seanan McGuire & Micaiah Johnson (Masterclass Panel)—I’m not quite finished with this episode yet, but it’s just fantastic. These two should be recurring guests.
My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
“‘The results almost never change.’
‘Almost. I hate when a sentence sounds so reassuring but then there’s that one word that just messes the whole thing up.””—Eyes of Empire by JCM Berne
To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
The Quest for Merlin: Magimakía by Rafael Lovato
Let There Be Linda by Rich Leder
Dorothy Must Die (Audiobook) by Danielle Paige, Devon Sorvarititle
And I mentioned the releases of: A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl, Granted, Let There Be Linda by Rich Leder, The Quest for Merlin: Magimakía by Rafael Lovato , and In Twenty Years by Allison Winn Scotch.
This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus—”the third book in [Broaddus’] Astra Black trilogy, which explores the struggles of an empire. Epic in scope and intimate in voice, it follows members of the Muungano Empire—a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretches from Earth to Titan and beyond—as it faces renewed threats to its progress.” What I’ve seen about this really serves as an advertisement for the first two books, but I’ll take it.
Slop by Jared Leys—Leys goes the extra mile to prove that humans are capable on their own to generate slop, no LLM needed, thank you very much.
image source: https://www.instagram.com/bookstrofficial
Gina
Oh, that closing cartoon is soooo me!