Category: Saturday Miscellany Page 1 of 22

Saturday Miscellany—3/16/24

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 Is It A Betrayal To Publish Dead Writers’ Books?: Inside the ethically thorny world of posthumous publishing.
bullet I didn’t get the credit for my bestselling book: the secret life of the celebrity ghost writer—Liam Pieper describes the reality that’s close to what I expected, but is nice to see confirmed.
bullet Not Just Covers, But Every Page: Why Writers Should Talk About Book Design Early On: Debbie Berne on the Intricacies of Literary Interior Design
bullet Why Are These 90s Young Adult Books So Irresistible?—For readers of a certain age, this is a fun collection of posts/articles from Pocket.
bullet Famous Works of Irish Literature as Limericks—what better way to note St. Patrick’s Day than with Amanda Lehr’s latest post to McSweeny’s?
bullet Bookish Death Cleaning: On What We Keep, and What It Means
bullet Page Turners vs. Screen Scribes: The Endless Debate of Physical Books vs. Ebooks—nothing revolutionary here, but that’s not neccesarily a bad thing.
bullet Breaking into the indie market with the Break-Ins! —Over at Before We Go Blog, The Fictional Escapist has a great interview about a great idea.
bullet Bookmark Chat: Guess Who’s Back…—The McBooknerd is back!
bullet A Voracious Reader was under the pressure of handling Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub’s Tough Questions this week (I really need to get on my answers)
bullet Thoughts From A Grumpy Year Of Reading—2024 isn’t treating our pal Peat too well…

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
bullet The Conversation with Nadine Matheson 2.58 S.A. Cosby: We Tell Lies To Tell The Truth

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
bullet Red Rising by Pierce Brown—the beginning of a beautiful book friendship for me…
bullet And on the other end of the tonal spectrum…Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Ballad of Sprikit The Bard (And Company) by Sean O’Boyle—I’ve seen this described as “A ‘Discworld’ meets ‘Lies of Locke Lamora’ Adventure.” Which is enough for me. Hearing a lot of good about it, too.
bullet Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet—a “darkly comic” book about a Pitbull imitator (the rapper, not a canine) teaming up with a magical orca to become a real-life Tony Montana with shades of Moby Dick. The novel sounds so strange that it just might work.
bullet Black Wolf by Juan Gómez-Jurado—This thriller looks so good that I’m getting the first in the series from the Library today. Click the link, I’m not going to try to summarize it.

Man Sitting at his desk, 1784, Jan Ekels with a speech bubble reading 'If you finish a task early at work, you should be allowed to have silent reading time like we used to do in school.'

Saturday Miscellany—3/9/24

The last few weeks have been heavy on non-reading/blogging tasks/events/changes. And (to me anyway), that’s been clearest when it comes to these posts. But yesterday was (theoretically) the last tweak, so I should be able to start adjusting to things soon and things will return to some form of normal in the next couple of weeks.

Huge thanks to Peat Long for the return of Friday Five, so I could add a couple of items to beef this list up.

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 Your new literary dream job: reader-in-residence.—I’ve spent the last couple of days fighting the urge to move to Fort Collins to chase my dream.
bullet Counterfeit Books Are a Growing Problem, but a Solution May Be Near—the biggest question here is how long it’ll take pirates to work around it.
bullet This Facebook post from the NYT about Worcester Public Library’s March Meowness will bring a smile to your face even without going beyond the paywall
bullet Wander into This Miraculous Miniature Library with Thousands of Books Made Entirely by Hand—oooooohhhhhhh (said best in Toy Story’s LGM voice)
bullet When Indie Publishing Meets Corporate Bookselling: Michele Herman on the Challenges of Getting—and Keeping—Her Book on the Shelves
bullet IBPA Publishing MAP (Models and Author Pathways)—this looks handy for the writers who are looking at this post
bullet Chinese Science Fiction Before The Three Body Problem
bullet “Longmire” series author Craig Johnson talks about its development and its future—I’m always down to read/listen to/about Johnson
bullet A Punk Noir Interview with M. W. Craven—there’s a lot to enjoy here, I loved the last answer from someone else I’m always down to read/listen to/about.
bullet AC/DC’s Back in Black Inspires New Book of Murder Mysteries, Including New Jack Reacher Story—sure, the wrong Child is writing the Reacher story, but some of the rest sound promising (Coleman and Eldridge in particular)
bullet Genres Are Historical and Cultural, Not Scientific: why rigid rules for genres never quite work—Lincoln Michel has many good things to chew on here (as per usual)
bullet We got two new entries in Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub’s Tough Questions series this week, you should see how JamReads and Featuring Fantasy Book Nerd handled the pressure.
bullet Weaving some Wyrd & Wonder—it’s almost time for the TBR expanding celebration of Fantasy. This year’s theme is really appealing.

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week? (clearly a slow week)
bullet Death Without Company by Craig Johnson—here’s where I decided to get serious about reading Walt Longmire books
bullet and I noted the releases of: The Player by Brad Parks (I know he’s doing well with his stand-alone thrillers, but I miss Carter Ross), Half-Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire (the third InCryptid novel and the first narrator switch), and Notes from the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone (something I never got around to reading, but still looks amusing)

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet Aftermarket Afterlife by Seanan McGuire—Aunt Mary, the baby-sitting ghost, takes center stage in this new InCryptids installment. I cannot wait to dive in (but must for a little bit)
bullet Rift in the Soul by Faith Hunter—Soulwood #6 brings readers action, love, family, answers, and more questions. I yammered on about it some yesterday (and really wanted to keep going on)
bullet Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice by Elle Cosimano—Finlay and Vero hit Atlantic City and (almost certainly) chaos ensues.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to AndOnSheReads, who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.
The text 'Today I will live in the moment unless it is unpleasant in which case I will read a book.' next to a sketch of a person holding a giant book

Saturday Miscellany—3/2/24

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 Book bans? Make that “intellectual freedom challenges”—the reframing of the challenges Public Libraries are facing (whatever you may think of those challenges)
bullet A Simple Way to Build Intimacy: Reading Aloud—It’s behind NYT’s paywall, but it looks good.
bullet Mark Twain’s Obsession with Joan of Arc—I really didn’t know he was “obsessed” with her, but I appreciated this look at Twain (it also jibes well with According to Mark, a book I haven’t mentioned for a week or two)
bullet Where the Red Fern Grows was trending on Twitter this week, and I was comforted by seeing so many others sharing the same (self-inflicted) trauma that I have. Also, I learned/was reminded of this statue in Idaho Falls (finally, a reason for me to visit the town).
bullet The Biggest Differences Between the ‘Longmire’ Books and TV Series—odd that this is something written in 2024, but still a fun look back at the show.
bullet Announced this week: Safe Enough by Lee Child—”20 thrilling standalone short stories,” out in August.
bullet Speaking of announcements, Mushroom Blues Soundtrack was announced a couple of days ago. Looks great.
bullet A Beginner’s Guide to Falling in Love with Audiobooks
bullet I Have Bad Taste- Books I Feel Bad for Enjoying—The Orangutan Librarian fesses up.
bullet On My Radar: February 2024—Celeste brings a great list of links from the past month.
bullet Ways A Book Ages—surprising no one at all, Peat Long dropped something worth reading.

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
(a very slow week, I should add)
bullet Chimera by Kelly Meding—(and a post I enjoyed reading for the first time in a decade or so)
bullet I mentioned the releases of Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi, The Chase by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, Honor’s Knight by Rachel Bach, and The Undead Pool by Kim Harrison.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet I Only Read Murder by Ian Ferguson & Will Ferguson—a whodunit featuring a former TV star, amateur theater, and a town full of (likely quirky) suspects. Looks like a fun time.
bullet Criminal Justice by Ian Robinson—an undercover cop dances along the edge of the law. I asked Robinson a few quick questions about it yesterday.
bullet Morte Point by Rob Parker—The second Ben Bracken novel is a great ride, and has been released in a new edition.

Tweet from @bookculture 'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a large to read pile must be in want of another book'

Saturday Miscellany—2/24/24

Let’s start with some good news—there’s a new independent bookstore opening soon in my area, and they must be getting serious about things because they’re hiring staff now. I’m enjoying watching them share some of their prep work, and we’re hoping to do something on this site together as they get closer to Opening Day.

I’ve got a super short list this week—I have not been doing a lot online, as you may have noticed. Remember a few years ago when I was talking about my son’s kidney transplant? Well, he’s about to start shopping for a new one—he’s currently at his second dialysis session, and there was a little bit of drama surrounding discovering it’s time for that (seriously, the effects of kidney failure on your body can be fairly astounding).

Also, this week we’re skipping the 10 years ago look back this week because I got off track and I’ve already taken care of this week. So…my flashbacks will pick up again next week (just out of curiosity, is anyone enjoying that bit in the first place?).

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 An anti-censorship resource, Book Résumés, just launched. Each “résumé summarizes the book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades, and more.”
bullet Bring Back the Big, Comfortable Bookstore Reading Chair —yeah, I can see Johnston’s point.
bullet Bear McCreary Unleashes “The Singularity” Album, Graphic Novel, Concert—color me intrigued
bullet Fungi in Fiction by Adrian M. Gibson—a guest post over at Before We Go Blog on a topic few, if any, have likely considered.
bullet Stop using “YA” as an insult—Kopratic sounds off at The Fantasy Inn
bullet A quick video post: 5 Books Better than Dealing with Real Life

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg—An “exploration of what makes conversations work—and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life.” Frankly, I don’t need to be a super-communicator, I’d be happy with better-than-I-currently-am. I’ve enjoyed Duhigg’s previous two books, and imagine this will be equally engaging, interesting, and perhaps helpful.
bullet Buffalo Fluffalo by Bess Kalb, Illustrated by Erin Kraan—No idea what this is about…fun title, great cover. Nuff ‘said.

Picture of a despondent woman with the text: No matter how often Jane re-read her favorite novel, the typographical error on page 102 still got to her.

Saturday Miscellany—2/17/24

Running late today…no interesting story behind it (which is good and bad), just a thing that happened. But I do have a few things to share for whenever you see this post.

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 Loss of Things I Took for Granted: Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively.—this is disturbing
bullet Can We Please Put an End to Overperformed Audiobooks?
bullet 20 Modern Whodunits to Read if You Love Golden Age Mysteries —this is a pretty good listicle from The Real Book Spy
bullet Coming to Terms With “Cozy” Fiction: Categories and genres are weird things. Sometimes they make perfect sense; sometimes they feel like mental sandpaper.
bullet Why is there an obsession with rehabilitating villains??—while I wouldn’t want to argue against rehabilitating anyone in real life, I think the Orangutaton Librarian hits on something here when it comes to fiction.
bullet The Various Things Ratings Can Mean—Peat Long drops some wisdom
bullet Books with Relationships for People who Don’t Love Love: 2024 Edition—the atypical Valentine’s Day list is back with some good recommendations.

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
bullet Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells
bullet Hide by Lisa Gardner
bullet And I mentioned the release of Grimm: The Chopping Block by John Passarella—the Grimm tie-in novel that I never got around to tracking down.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown—a strange world of magic, time travel, and books. I quite enjoyed it.
bullet The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond—magically-enhanced con artists? Count me in.
bullet Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar—this is one of those books that I’m not going to pretend to be able to describe in a sentence without reading, but it looks promising.

Keep Reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have. - Lloyd Alexander

Saturday Miscellany—2/10/24

I struggled to find time for pretty much everything this week that wasn’t work, so this list ended up on the shorter side, but I still think you’ll find something you like.

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 Children’s Publishers on the Role of BookTok
bullet The Case for Paper: Books vs. E-Readers Psychology Today weighs in on the side of paper.
bullet Fantasy reimagined: Arab and Asian authors are rising globally by embracing their cultures
bullet Literary Awards – What are they and why should you care? – Part 1—Rediscovered Books has started a series on their blog about those foil stickers on books.
bullet Why Are Books Featuring Old Protagonists Trendy Right Now?—Good question, and Corson offers some good answers.
bullet Nick Petrie on the Best Boundary Pushing Novels in Beloved Mystery Series—Petrie talks about some of the novels where authors broke/pushed the rules governing their series (and mentions a couple of unbreakable rules)
bullet The American Cancer Society is running a fundraiser this month, and I figured I’d jump in: I’m Reading Every Day for American Cancer Society – Please Donate!—(I sort of wish I did this under the blog name, instead of my personal profile, oh well)
bullet Shortly after starting that challenge, I saw that Hair Past a Freckle is doing something similar for Sarcoma UK, if you’re in the donating mood.

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
bullet SFF Addicts Ep. 90 Robert Jackson Bennett talks The Tainted Cup, Murder Mysteries & Moretitle—This is a great conversation. And although I wish he’d gotten Rex Stout’s name correct when talking about the inspiration for his detective characters, I love the image of Dr. Doolittle/Henry Higgins writing Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin.

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
bullet The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones – 1899-1981 by Iain H. Murray
bullet Hell Hole by Chris Grabenstein—the mid-point in a series I so wish was ongoing
bullet The Humans by Matt Haig
bullet Mandarin Plaid by S. J. Rozan—I can’t imagine I could write something so pithy today (especially about a Rozan book!)
bullet The Bat by Joe Nesbø
bullet I mentioned the release of The Martian by Andy Weir…I wonder what happened with that one…

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett—This murder mystery/fantasy hybrid my first 5-star read of the year as I described a couple of weeks ago. I can’t imagine I won’t be mentioning this a few more times this year, so I’ll just leave it there for now.
bullet Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed—”A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile, and Thurber Prize Semifinalist.” Looks fun…and what bibliophile doesn’t enjoy reading about others afflicted with the same addiction?
bullet Fourteen Days by many people—”Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice–from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.” I don’t know when/if I’ll get around to reading this, but I’m fascinated by the idea.
bullet I’ll Just Be Five More Minutes: And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain by Emily Farris—”A hilariously-honest, heartwarming essay collection about life, love, and discovering you have ADHD at age 35.”
bullet The Price You Pay by Nick Petrie—Peter Ash comes to Lewis’ aid in his latest adventure. This looks great. If only I didn’t have to three books to read to catch up on the series.

I got 99 problems and reading solves all of 'em
(you’re welcome for the earworm)

Saturday Miscellany—1/27/24

This week’s miscellany feels like it goes off in a billion directions, hopefully, there’s one or two you want to travel down.

(which isn’t bad for a week where I figured I had maybe 5 links to share)

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 Bookstores of the Treasure Valley—A nice little “ode to our local bookstores” (although I wish Kuna’s Book Habit had garnered a mention)
bullet Libro.fm vs. Audible—a quick slide presentation comparing the two (fair warning: it’s made by Libro.fm, so you know how the comparison goes. Says the guy who has given subscriptions to the former.). Something to consider, anyway.
bullet Life inside the Fiction Factory: Dan Sinykin on Conglomerate Publishing—a chat about how changes to the publishing industry have also driven changes to the fiction we read…and what they mean for conglomerate publishers and for nonprofit independent publishers that are inventing new ways to publish in the shadows of the giants.”
bullet Am I the (Literary) Assh*le—a fun little post from LitHub
bullet Caps for Sale—B. J. Novak (of all people) has some interesting and good things to say about Children’s books in the midst of a review of a classic and a contemporary sequel.
bullet Along those lines is: The toddler book tolerability index.—another fun LitHub post from this week
bullet A New Direction For Ol’ KRR—K.R.R. Lockhaven talks about his WIP, which has a tone we haven’t seen from him before (at least not much of). Color me intrigued…and a little impatient. 2025?!?
bullet By The Numbers: 1 Year In—James Lloyd Dulin looks at his first year as a self-published author. It’s an honest, frank, and grateful look.
bullet Crime Novelist Michael Connelly on the Role of Jazz in Creating “Bosch”—Jazz played a role? No way…
bullet Big news from little old us…—The latest newsletter from Fahrenheit Press features a series you should look into (and I should finish), some exciting news about that series, and a discussion of the book that they’re publishing next week that I cannot shut up about (ask my family). Read this and order the book now.
bullet Author Chat: Mike Chen (A Quantum Love Story)—I haven’t had the time to dive into this yet, but how could it be anything other than interesting?
bullet On Reviewing Books
bullet How To Ask For A Book Review—this is a handy collection of advice.
bullet My Favorite Fantasy Sequels—Cameron Scaggs has a nice list of temptations, including one book I’ve been meaning to read for ages and a few I should look into
bullet The Most Disturbing Books Ever Written—for people who want the opposite of cozy
bullet Why Do People Expect Libraries to Do It All?—good question
bullet On My Radar: January 2024—Celeste’s monthly post/reminder that I have less than a week to finish the books I wanted to in January (I can squeeze 1500 pages in, along with a full-time job, blogging, spending time with family/dogs—right?). Also, she provided a post I linked to above.
bullet Eco-Fantasy – Magic Can’t Solve Everything
bullet Why I Keep Reading Series I Went Sour On—Peat Long is (again) singing the song of my people

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
bullet Wonder by R. J. Palacio
bullet The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne
bullet Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
bullet Teens Don’t Read For Fun Anymore, New Data Says
bullet Four Reasons Why You Should Be Reading Young Adult Fiction
bullet 25 YA Novels Everyone — Even Adults — Should Read
bullet I talked about the releases of: Peacemaker by K. A. Stewart, Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells, and the paperback release of the first collection of Indexing by Seanan McGuire.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Esther, who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.
tweet from @toddedillard stating 'it's ceased to be a to-be-read pile of books and has become an art installation on the passage of time'

Saturday Miscellany—1/20/24

Short list this week, but plenty of good things to read.

I picked a bad week to start, but I’m trying something new for these posts today, too. We’ll see if it survives until March (and if it does, what it’ll look like)…

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 Why is March 2024 the Best Month in Years For Books?—a look into book promotion, publishing schedules, and “the existential pain of knowing that you will never get to read even a small percentage of” the books you want to read.
bullet Shelf-absorbed: eight ways to arrange your bookshelves – and what they say about you—fun, but not without it’s problems. (I am not a “try-hard.” Probably.)
bullet Small Press Economies: A Dialogue—If reading this doesn’t make you love those in Small Press/Indie Press Publishing all the more…
bullet MWA Announces 2024 Edgar Award Nominations—here’s a ready-made reading list full of sure-fire winners for you.
bullet YA Isn’t Just for Young Adults—from The Millions.
bullet Out With Book Clubs — In With Book Trades!—Cole Rush has a good alternative to buddy reads, book clubs, etc.
bullet Why Authors Need Cover Reveals—David W nails it. (they’re good for lazy book bloggers, too! Consider this an open invitation)
bullet Seven Science Fiction Novels to Expand (and Blow) Your Mind—a good dose of temptation from John Mauro over at Before We Go Blog.
bullet Books With the Best Beginnings!—A great collection of opening lines from the Organutan Librarian.
bullet Reviews: Subjective or Objective? Can we do both—one would think we could.
bullet Reading: To Track or Not to Track?

To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago Week?
Whoops, this was a bad week to start this feature…I only posted a Saturday Miscellany in the 3rd week in January, 2014. But I’m sticking with this plan so I don’t forget about it…
bullet 2014 The Edgar Awards nominees—what a coincidence!
bullet A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013—I’d look to see if the Pew Research Council has done another one like this, but I think the results would depress me too much
bullet The Top Ten Books People Lie About Reading
bullet I talked about the releases of: The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley (this is where I derailed on the series…I just never got around to reading it), He Drank and Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe (such a good one!!), Switchblade by Michael Connelly, and The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley
bullet …and that’s it. It was a short Miscellany to follow a quiet week on the blog.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet Dream Town by Lee Goldberg—Eve Ronin investigates the murder of a Reality TV star.
bullet Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett—Emily’s off to the Australian Alps (and to the fae lands beyond) in this great-looking follow-up. Go read what Witty & Sarcastic Book Club said.
bullet Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes by Moshe Kasher—”A ‘hilarious’ (Dax Shepard), ‘surprisingly emotional trip’ (The Chainsmokers) through deep American subcultures ranging from Burning Man to Alcoholics Anonymous, by the writer and comedian.” After Kasher in the Rye, I’m reading anything vaguely memoir-ish from Kasher.

From tadethompson dot bsky dot social Books as unregulated mind-altering substances. You can read them; you can listen to them; you can feel them in braille. They can take you high or low or all points in between. They can be safe and cosy, or they can get you arrested. Be dangerous: read more books. With intent to distribute.

Saturday Miscellany—1/13/24

A quick apology to those who get emailed my posts for littering your inbox with trash earlier today, but I wanted to grab this image.

This Miscellany marks 1,000 days of posting here at The Irresponsible Reader.
1000 day streak
Bob laid down the challenge, and I made it. Not always with quality or quantity. But I got it done. There’s part of me that wishes I had something more monumental to mark this occasion, but I think I prefer it being just my regular thing.

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 Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon
bullet 45 Years Ago, One Kids Book Series Taught A Generation How To Make Bad Decisions—a look at the beginnings, end, and rebeginnings of Choose Your Own Adventure books.
bullet 11 Books That Prove There’s Nothing Wrong with Self-Publishing —I’m not crazy about the headline, but this is a nice listicle about some of the self-pub success stories
bullet 7 great but notoriously hard-to-finish books—I have started 2 of these (multiple times)
bullet An Ode to Acknowledgements: Sarah Wheeler on the Joy of Learning About the Village Behind a Book
bullet Celeste posted her 2023 Book Blog In Review for A Literary Escape. Looks like a pretty good year.
bullet 2023 Peaties—other than its description as “fantasyland’s worst awards for characters,” this is a really good and insightful post that should feed your TBRs and make you grin while reading.
bullet Mark Each Year in Books: Thoughts on Reading Traditions
bullet FanFiAddict’s TBRCon2024 is a little more than a week away.
bullet Top 5 Bookish Resolutions for 2024—Books are 42’s resolutions may inspire some for you
bullet Reading Less in 2024—this is really healthy and wise. Good reminder/thoughts from Bec.
bullet Are Reading Goals Worth It?—Worlds Unlike Our Own has some along the same lines.
bullet The Joys of Backlist Books
bullet Cocktails to Pair With Your Favorite Fantasy and Horror Books—Beth Tabler has updated this list from a couple of years back. Some of these look great. (I am too lazy for these usually. My adult-beverage pairing is typically a neat whisky or bottle of beer)

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire—A mutli-world adventure that connects several students to the worlds on the other side of their Doors. This is one of the stronger entries in this series, as I talked about recently.
bullet California Bear by Duane Swierczynski—”follows four unlikely vigilantes who pit themselves against the villain behind California’s coldest case when they decide to take justice into their own hands.”
bullet Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life by Matt Hay—A “memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he’d fallen in love for the first time.”

An image of text that says 'Weatherman: "Make sure you have the essentials on hand for the two-day snow storm." Normal people: "Buys milk and bread" Bookworms: "Goes to the bookstore and comes out with fifteen new books"'

Saturday Miscellany—1/6/24

As great/enjoyable/fulfilling they all may be, after all the days off from work, visiting family/friends, and folderol of the last couple of weeks, I’m looking forward to getting back to routine. A routine that will provide me more opportunities to mess around online and find things for this post, too, he adds feeling this is a bit skimpy this week.

Skimpy it may be, but if you make it to the end of this without adding at least looking into one book for future reading, I’ll be surprised.

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 In Praise of Reading: How Literature Enables Us to Inhabit New Worlds —I don’t know if I buy this, but I enjoyed musing through the piece
bullet Five for Them, One for Me, with S.A. Cosby—a nice, quick, interview with Cosby
bullet Another week, another batch of Best of 2023 lists. I’m telling you, these are not helping me cut down on my TBR lists:
bullet On Before We Go Blog, we have Nathan’s Top 25 Reads of 2023
bullet Jo Linsdell’s Best Reads of 2023
bullet Top 10 Books I Read In 2023—Steven Writes is done with his categories and goes nice and straightforward here at the end.
bullet My 10 best books of 2023—from Spells and Spaceships
bullet Fan Fi Addict’s David S’ Top 5 Books I Read in 2023
bullet Raven’s Books Of The Year 2023
bullet Peat Long’s Top 10 Books Read in 2023
bullet The damppebbles Top Ten(ish!) of 2023
bullet Bookstr Predictions: Bookish Trends We Think We’ll See in 2024
bullet Trends I Think We’ll See in Book Blogging in 2024—Pages Unbound has another take
bullet Getting on top of my TBR pile: a modest proposal—Mike Finn sets out to exercise an amount of self-will that I’m incapable of. I wish him well.
bullet Top Book Bloggers to Follow in 2024—a good list
bullet Why I Don’t Keep Track of New Book Releases—makes sense to me

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Cadillac Job by Stacy Woodson—a car thief on a noble mission with deadly stakes

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Kal @ Reader Voracious, who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours. - The History Boys

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