Saturday Miscellany—7/11/26

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:
A Moment of Divine Inspiration Helped Melvil Dewey Bring Obsessive Order to the Infinitely Disorganized Stacks in the Library—huh. (probably better to say moment of boredom than divine inspiration, but….)
Rereading Mark Twain While Everything Else Burns
let’s do a ‘couch to 5k’ for reading—this is a pretty cool idea
‘Angel Down’ and Riffing on a Literary Trick—Nick Kolakowski muses on Kraus’s Angel Down.
The Stories We Don’t Tell—Reading about why and how Knighton walked away from what sounds like a promising novel (but yeah, I totally get why) and how it transformed into something else. Invoking The Faithful Executioner didn’t hurt my appreciation.
Summer’s One Must Read Book 2026—I don’t know how I forgot to post this last week. Over on Readling Ladies Book Club last week, a handful of bloggers shared one book a piece to help you come up with summer reading.
Announcement Repost: Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week 2026—Another thing I think I forgot to properly share (this time back in May), was the upcoming Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week. From what I’ve seen, this is going to be better than the (IMHO, great) ones in the past. There’s still time to get involved for readers/bloggers/writers.
Over on Instagram, @spooky_bookworm shared a (possibly controversial) list Books Written w/AI Worth Reading—I couldn’t agree with this list more.
Tom Gauld shares some Heatwave Reading Dangers

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
“Beer is to Bill as methadone is to a heroin addict. The alcohol level in the beer is so low he can’t drink enough to get sloshed, to saturate his fat-laden tissues. His gray matter. But he tries. He’s in pain and needs to blot out reality. Some way. Somehow.”
—from “Midight Confession” by Lawrence Kelter in True Romance: A Noir Anthology edited by Troy Lambert & Vincent Zandri

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
The Asset by Shane Kuhn (I miss this guy’s books)
Daughter of the Sun by Zoe Kalo
The Question of the Felonious Friend by E.J. Copperman/Jeff Cohen
And I talked about the releases of: Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz ; The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A. Lee Martinez; and Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Late Night Mars by Thomas Trang—”Book 2 of the Asteroid Savage Series, a gritty, high-stakes science fiction thriller perfect for fans of The Expanse and Altered Carbon, where the line between hero and criminal is as thin as the Martian atmosphere.”
Country People by Daniel Mason—”A year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown (aka Vermont), leaving all the comforts of home behind”
Some People by Parini Shroff—as well done as Shroff’s previous book was, I really hadn’t planned on another. But… “A man on the brink of divorce is forced to care for his injured future-ex-mother-in-law in this wise, witty, and heartfelt novel” sounds pretty good.

image course: Book of the Month on Facebook.