Even years-long streaks can be broken. Time to start a new one 🙂

Odds ‘n ends about books and reading that caught my eye the last couple of weeks. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
bullet ‘Radical Street Librarian’ Quits Her Job, Then Transforms a Trolley into Mobile Library to Provide Free Books for Hundreds of Kids—I want to be her when I grow up
bullet The Death of the Bookshop wasn’t Caused by Amazon Alone
bullet The Wild Robot Author Peter Brown on What Makes a Great Read-Aloud Book—I haven’t read Brown (yet), but I want to now
bullet Do You Need to Be Surprised?—As is so often the case, Templeton says what I wish I could’ve found the words for
bullet Instant Gratification and Great Literature Do Not Mix- Ways in Which Modern Writing Styles Ruin the Art of Storytelling—The Orangutan Librarian opines
bullet Will Depicting Life’s Struggles Too Realistically in YA Demoralize Teen Readers?—Most of the YA that I read doesn’t qualify for this, but I have read enough for Krysta’s thoughts to really resonate
bullet Do Authors Deserve a Second Chance?—I was enjoying this video by Niko’sBookReviews, and made mental notes about mentioning my Pratchett experience when linked to it here–and then he talked about his almost identical experience. Which sort of felt like plagiarism (if you toss out logic). Anyway…good stuff.
bullet The Indie Author Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror New Release List: October 2026—A.J. Calvin’s monthly shopping list for the indie fan
bullet My Favorite Dragonlance Quotes—Witty & Sarcastic Book Club provides another nudge to get me to dive back into this world
bullet Things Readers Will Never Understand About Being an 80s/90s Bookworm—yup

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
bullet The Anks Kumar Podcast #01 – Vernon Smith—a great convo with Smith about Waiting for LeCler and so much more.
bullet Rule Breakers of Fantasy Fiction with DB Rook—Phil Parker chats with Rook—who is always worth a listen

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
They had reason to be in a good mood: the van had been found… A dog walker stumbled across it. (Praise and hallelujah to the weather-hardened dog walkers of the world! Sniffer-outers of dead bodies and dumped evidence. They’d put more criminals behind bars than Taggart and Rebus combined.) —Paperboy by Callum McSorley

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
bullet NYPD Red 2 (Audiobook) by James Patterson, Marshall Karp, Edoardo Ballerini, Jay Snyder
bullet The Dispatcher (Audiobook) by John Scalzi, Zachary Quinto
bullet The House of Secrets (Audiobook) by Brad Meltzer, Tod Goldberg, Scott Brick, January LaVoy
bullet I Was a Bitch by Emily Ruben
bullet Venators: Through the Arch by Devri Walls
bullet Genrenauts: The Complete Season One Collection by Michael R. Underwood—incidentally, it was the only new release I mentioned that week. The fact that there’s no Season Two still eats at me (that’s not on Underwood, but the lack of audience). But Season One is good enough to relish and read now.
bullet Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The Last 3 Weeks’ New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Confederacy Myth: How an Insurrection of Slaveholders Tried to Destroy the United States by Connor Williams—A (brief) history that I’m recommeding like crazy. As you can see here
bullet Bark Humbug by David Rosenfelt—a little bit of the holidays, a lot of a twisted criminal case. It’s not often that a 34th book in a series will make a reader sit up and say, “what?” I talked about it here earlier.
bullet The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman—”Professional thief and inveterate trickster Kinch Na Shannack has always enjoyed a good book. But now his life, and the future of all of Manreach, depends on deciphering a very bad book indeed; a stolen, sentient tome that tries to kill him every time he opens it—and often when it’s closed.” Okay, all I needed was “Kinch Na Shannack” to want to read this. But a sentient, murderous book?? Please, please, take my money.
bullet Truth to Power by S.A. Cosby—Cosby writing Luke Cage? This Marvel Crime series keeps getting better.
bullet Dome by D.L. Orton—This will likely only make sense to people who’ve read the first two, so consider this an advertisement. “Parallel lives. Worlds apart. One time loop tearing itself apart. Every rescue rewrites the future, and every life saved leaves someone else to pay the price.”
bullet And Then There is the Bard by D W Walters—
“A party of heroes,
who are far from zeroes.
Quests to slay a dragon,
so join the bandwagon.
But with such high stakes,
do they have what it takes?”
bullet The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson—”A sweeping, magical ode to community and the stories we leave behind, The Memory of Borrowed Books follows one librarian who discovers a hidden room of unfinished memories–and must find the one that can save her beloved library from closing forever.”

on a goldenrod background, the text 'PSA: Reading is not a competitive sport, and your reading journey won't look like everyone else's'
source: @bibliolifestyle on Instagram
After talking about my reading progress for the year here and on Social Media for the last week or so, this seemed like a good reminder.