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 Daunting Art of Selling Fewer Books: How CEO James Daunt Is Turning Barnes & Noble into a Serendipity Engine
bullet The Financial Recklessness of Books—a handy graphic from East Village Bookshop, next time you feel the need to defend your hobby
bullet Apateon Press Launches Republishing Program—we need more of this, just wish it was tied to a different distributor (or several)
bullet The Limits of Rationality: On Gulliver’s Travels at 300—at LitHub, “Ed Simon Considers What Jonathan Swift’s Novel Can Reveal About Our World Today”
bullet An Arthurian conversation—Speculative Insight picks the brains of Lev Grossman, Lavie Tidhar, Nicola Griffith, and Alix E Harrow. I need to chew on this.
bullet “I Play the Field; I Read Around.”: The Great Circle Author on Her Omnivorous Habits, E-Reader Renaissance, and Unending Search for “The One.”
bullet Do You Distinguish Between “Best” and “Favorite” Books? …Or are the two lists indistinguishable in your mind?—James Davis Nicoll offers different examples than I would, but other than that…yes, this.
bullet Thirteen for Halloween: Mr Hyde, the Monster Repression Made—multiple sources have pointed me to this one this week. Well worth it.
bullet On why we write stories, and while we should reject gen-AI while we still can…
bullet Read Once & Done vs. Re-reading Favourites
bullet 10 Greatest Hard Sci-Fi Novels Of The Last 10 Years, Ranked—your results may vary, but there’s some good TBR fodder here
bullet Murder, Magic & Mayhem: 6 Books You NEED on Your TBR!—from the Crime Book Junkie.
bullet The spirits, entities, and supernatural folk of The Fontayne Company—A.J. Calvin gives a little preview of her next duology. Color me intrigued.
bullet I don’t usually post review posts here (maybe I should), but this one just sounds so good, I had to share: The spirits, entities, and supernatural folk of The Fontayne Company
bullet Monthly Manga Mania Featuring Firsty Duelist: COSMOS by Ryuhei Tamura—Firsty’s one-sentence summary sells me.
bullet 5 More Bookish Pet Peeves—a follow-up to the video I shared last week

My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week:
“I had nothing left but promises of “I’ll do better down the road”. Which, of course I wouldn’t, but at least I had the foresight to lie to myself. “—Whispers of the Storm by Z.B. Steele

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
bullet Time Siege by Wesley Chu
bullet Blackbeard’s Daughter by Diana Strenka
bullet Beyond the Gray Leaf by Dustin Renwick
bullet Calvin by Martine Leavitt
bullet Curse on the Land by Faith Hunter
bullet Good Behavior by Blake Crouch
bullet Scattered Screams by C. A. Huggins
bullet The Farthest City by Daniel P. Swenson
bullet And I mentioned the release of The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Hollow by Michael Connelly—Bosch looks into a case from his own past. This looks great!
bullet Boundless: 17 Stories Starring Disabled Kids edited by Marieke Nijkamp—”A middle-grade short story anthology featuring disabled kids, written by disabled writers”
bullet This Is a Door by Daniel Nayeri—”A young boy, a mouse, and a dog set out to find their purpose in this fairy tale adventure told in an innovative visual format that offers a one-of-a-kind reading experience.”
bullet We Thought They’d Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family by Tony Shalhoub with Josie Adams

an image of someone in a sheet with two eyeholes cut out for a ghost costume holding a bag paper bag asking 'Books Please'
(I don’t know the source of it, just got it in a text yesterday from my last supervisor asking, “this you?”)