Category: Saturday Miscellany Page 24 of 25

I knew this week was a busy one and that I hadn’t had a lot of downtime for goofing around/finding stuff for this post (yeah, the two go hand in hand). But I was pretty surprised when I pulled up the list of things I saved to My Pocket this morning. This is going to be a tiny post. Also, today ended up mirroring the week in the way I couldn’t actually do anything beyond look at that list until now. I now realize that this is on the verge of becoming one of those rambling intros a food blogger puts before they cough up the recipe.

So, without further ado (and I had a bit in mind), here are the odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Haggard Hawks tweetedthis awesome Old English word for library. I’m on the verge of renaming the blog…
• Books and the Brain: The Social and Emotional Benefits of Reading—from BookRiot
• How to Read an Entire Book in a Single Day—for those who might need this (I think a lot of the tips would trip me up)
• Book clinic: I’m tired of gloomy books – are there any happy literary novels?—I enjoyed this list from JoJo Moyes.
• Who’s Afraid of Nero Wolfe?: PW Talks with Josh Pachter—Was already eager to read this anthology, but this was a fun reminder of the good times to come.
• 21 Novels with the Best First Lines: These books had us at hello.—I’m a sucker for one of these lists.
• Extreme Book Nerd Challenge 2020—my local library kicked off a reading challenge this month, I honestly don’t think I can finish. But I’m participating anyway, just because I’m glad they’re doing something for adults.
• Wyrd and Wonder: adventurers wanted—this looks like a fun blogging event—anyone out there doing this?
• Buy Dave from TheWriteReads Some Books—this is a great idea for one of the most supportive guys on the Internet. Warning: the way it showed up on my bank statement (“Buy Dave”) made my wife as a few questions…

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Top Shelf at the Merrick Library Episode 34: Interview with Matthew Norman, author of Last Couple Standing.—can’t wait for this book!

I didn’t see any New Releases this week that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon—w00t! A chance to make progress on the old lists!

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to a whole mess of people (largely from BookLikes—so glad to see you! Sorry it took so long for a follow-back) for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?
• Familiar Diversions
• Sorry kids, no feet.
• WhiskeyintheJar Romance
• 99 problems, and a book ain’t one
• Just Olga and her books
• Burfobookalicious
• Linda Hilton
• Darth Pedant
• brokeassmother
• Angels With Attitude Book Reviews
• Elentarri’s Book Blog
• Lora’s Rants and Reviews
• Mike Finn
• Written Among The Stars
• surjit2009
• Rachel Bridgeman
• One Book More

Little preamble today, it’s just been a week, let’s say. I’ve really needed a book to fall into most of the week — sadly, haven’t had the mental energy to do that. Have read some pretty cool things, thankfully. Just not as much as I could’ve used, I’m sure you can all relate.

However, I’ve somehow managed to find a good batch of odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• 3 Reasons Turning Off Your Devices and Opening a Book Will Improve Your Productivity — despite the annoying headline, there’s some good stuff in here
• How Books Make Us Feel Less Alone
• Most Stolen Books 2018–2019 School Year — not sure why this brought a grin to my face, but it did.
• Audiobooks: The Past, Present, and Future of Another Way to Read — a longer than usual read, but I thought this history of the media was fascinating — and different from the typical Audiobook story I’ve been seeing the last couple of years
• Book Culture Owner Says Stores Are In Danger Of Closing Despite Good Business, Asks City For Help — there are so many quips/observations/ to make about economics, politics, etc. to make because of this story. But I’m not going to — it’s a good read showing the weaknesses in indie book selling. No matter what you think of the store owners’ response.
• How Many Copies Did Famous Books Sell in the First Year? — hmm
• The Most Read Books of the 2019 Reading Challenge — Goodreads checks in on their 2019 challenge, some of the perennials on this list surprise me (not sure why)
• I’m with The Tattooed Book Geek here as he ponders why the validity of a review is questioned by a free ARC in this twitter thread
• Fantasy Tropes I Love — you can always count on The Orangutan Librarian for a fun list
• 60 Neglected Songs About Batman For Your Superhero Playlist, Part 1 — I love that this is a thing that exists — so glad I didn’t have to compile it. Still working my way through it, but had to share.

There weren’t any new releases this week that caught my eye — did I miss any?

I’m thinking of making some changes to the look/feel of this site — but my skills are rather…limited, shall we say? Anyone willing to help (for a modest fee), or have any tips, suggestions — leave a comment (below), hit me with a message, or use those social network buttons to your right.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Michelle Eddington, Queerying Literature, IM Fletcher, and Bestiality for following the blog this week (possibly the most eclectic batch for one week yet).

This has been one of those weeks…I seem to have a lot of them, lately. I’ve barely been online — as this short list will demonstrate. Still, some good stuff.

Also, I’ve been trying to adjust to Progressive lenses. Trying being the operative word. I’m spending a lot of time with my new lenses in my pocket, to be honest. Which is not what I spent the money for. My old glasses took up space in my pocket while I read for a lot less money. Any glasses that interfere with my reading are not going to spend a lot of time on my face. Anyone else out there dealt with Progressive lenses? Anyone have better success? Tips to share?

Still, I cobbled together a few odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Why Books Are Worth Your Money: By a broke twenty-something-year-old girl living in New York City. — Yup.
• How Kickstarter Is Reshaping The Publishing Industry — there are books sitting on my shelves (and my Kindle) because of Kickstarter. I’m not saying it’s the best/only way, but it works.
• Disability and writing — Friend of the blog, writer par excellence (and his book recommendations are almost as good!), Ian Patrick wrote a great piece on writing life when you have a disability (hopefully the first of many) that contains some smart advice for everyone.
• Why I Love Fantasy – A Rambling Essay of Sorts — a nice post from Way Too Fantasy
• Read ‘Em and Weep! 101 Tattoos Inspired by Famous Books

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe — I didn’t finish O’Keefe’s last SF series (which really bugs me), this one looks as good — maybe better. As Paul’s Picks said..

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Kyles for following the blog this week.

Odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Possible salvation for Barnes & Noble — The jury’s still out, obviously, on what this week’s big news is going to mean for B&N, but there’s reason for hope. And if B&N does better, books as a whole do better…
• Why We’ll Always Love Small-Town Libraries
• Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People? Not a lot new here, but it’s nice to have all the various studies collected into one piece
• Neil Gaiman Hilariously Sums Up How Books Mean Wildly Different Things To Kids And Adults — Hilariously may be overselling a tad, but it’s a good article anyway.
• 18 Books and Series Gen Z Grew Up With — I’ve bought copies of most of these for my kids (borrowed a few others from the library) — read more than my share, too. Not sure why 1977’s Bridge to Terabithia made the list — but it deserves it’s place on it, as I recall.
• Problematic issues re Amazon reviews
• 8 of the Best Private Detectives in Mystery Series — there’s a couple on this list I should read (yeah, because I need more crime fiction in my life).

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episodesyou might want to give a listen to:
• O&F Podcast, Ep. 196: Patricia BriggsStrout talks to Briggs about a whole host of stuff — I appreciated her talking about grief and what it did to her writing, and the pressures of hitting the NYT Best-Seller List. But just an enjoyable chat overall.

This Week’s New Release that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey — a PI is called in by her estranged twin to solve a murder at a Hogwarts-esque private school? Sign me up.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to weewritinglassie, crimebookjunkie and David for following the blog this week.

For a week that contained both a sober Monday holiday (I meant in tone, not in day off alcohol consumption for most) and the last week in the month I have a pretty long list today. Odd. I don’t know if anyone’s picked up on this — over the past 313 weeks I’ve developed general outline that I like to follow with this post, and I try to get a flow going from one idea to another. It’s hard to describe — but for those who fixated on making the perfect mixtapes back in the 90’s, you know the idea. This week defied almost all of my attempts for any of that. It’s not important, and I’m 99.6% certain that I’m the only one who will notice. But I spent too much time last night working on it — oh the silly things we find to obsess over. It’s actually probably almost as much time to write and revise this paragraph than I spent on the effort, in point of fact — but it distracted me for longer than that last night.

Also, it’s just been a strange week around my house — not good or bad, just strange. All said, I’m in a generally amused frame of mind (which led to me counting how many of these I’ve done). Hopefully that comes through…

I think I’ve babbled on long enough — not quite Harry Knowles length yet, but getting there. On with the odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Try Reading a Children’s Book to Understand Complicated or Uninteresting Topics — on the face of it, there’s some uncommon common sense behind this. If you look at James Holzhauer…well, you know it has certain applications.
• How to Trick Your Kid Into Becoming a Book Lover — cute trick
• How to Make Time to Read: 7 Strategies — blah
• Readers Still Prefer Physical Books — and the number of people reading this post that are shocked by this is…?
• However, this Announement from Fahrenheit Press about paperback/digital bundling is a great idea, long overdue. Hope more publishers follow suit. (also, the book in this image is a must-read)
• JK Rowling Is Releasing 4 New Harry Potter Books — because there’s still something to be milked from this stone?
• Watched plots … Hilary Mantel and the writers under pressure from fans — I get this.
• Living with a writer: what’s it really like? — I quite enjoyed this
• Crime Fiction as Self-Care/a> — yeahhhhh, that’s why I read so much of it
• Fairy Tales Are Really Just Hard-Boiled Crime Stories: Exploring the Dark, Twisted World of Classic Fairy Tales
• My many years of reading dangerously – whether Twitter likes it or not
• Opening Lines – What hooks a reader? — these are good lines, I can see the pull

This Week’s New Release I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Dead Inside by Noelle Holton — First off, if you’ve ever read crimebookjunkie.co.uk or heard her on Two Crime Writers and a Microphone, you know that Holten knows Crime Fiction. And has a great deal of enthusiasm for it. She brings both to bear in this new book. I read the prologue/first chapter, whatever it’s called yesterday. It was dark. It was creepy. It left me with a deep sense of foreboding and dread. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do. There’s a rash of abusive husbands being killed, and a probation officer (Holten’s actual profession, by the way) is a very likely suspect. A killer you’re going to sympathize with (at least a bit), an interesting suspect and a smart DC on the case? I can’t wait to get further in.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Sesame Limited, devouringbooks2017, theguywiththebook and geekhutdrone for following the blog this week.

Phew, the week’s over. Work’s been really busy, and have had barely time to read — most of which has been all about deadlines — ARCs, Library Due Dates, etc. One week to go and life calms down a bit. In the meantime, here are some odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Unseen Harper Lee letters give intimate view of To Kill a Mockingbird author — aside from Lee’s (I’m guessing intentional) misunderstanding of Hebrews 13:8, these sound fascinating.
• When British Authors Write American Dialogue, or Try To — there’s some good stuff here.
• New York Observer columnist who offered ISIS money to kill him thinks we should close all public libraries, takes heat — the writing is a bit too much for me here, but I saw this play out some on Twitter this week and wanted to post about it, in case anyone missed it. Poor guy didn’t know what he was getting into (or, he absolutely knew and wanted the attention).
• Seanan McGuire: All Books Are Real Books — you don’t have to spend a lot of time/effort here to see I’m a McGuire fan. So it’s not surprising that I enjoyed this interview — but I expect that people who aren’t me will, too.
• The Secret Of NIMH Was Inspired By A Horrific Experiment — A little behind-the-scenes look at The Secret of NIMH/Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (I read the book a more times than I saw the movie growing up, but I spent too much time doing both).
• In Defense of Reading (and Writing) for Fun — Melissa Caruso speaks for many of us with this, saving the link to use for the next time I have to have that conversation with family/acquaintances.
• Why We Keep Telling the Same Stories: Neil Gaiman, Halldor Laxness and the art of revisiting myths
• PWs Best Books of 2017 — It’s October and we’re already doing this?
• 6 Famous Writers Injured While Writing

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• A Die Hard Christmas The Illustrated Holiday Classic by JJ Harrison, Doogie Horner — which I quite liked, as you can read here.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to Skulls and Coffee, BellaDonna, vickibrock44 and Rizky FAUZI (I’d never be brave enough to do what he’s doing with his blog — no matter how great the idea is) for following a version of the blog this week.

Odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• Book Publishers Go Back to Basics: As consumer e-book sales fall, publishers look to find new footing with old ground—and faster pipelines. UPDATE: Well, pfui, there wasn’t a paywall on the article when I read it. Basically, publishers are scaling back e-book efforts and putting out more paper editions– and embracing making them nicer/more attractive/etc. which seems to be helping sales. Thanks to Bookstooge, my unofficial (and very much needed) Saturday Miscellany editor, for catching this.
• Book Blogging: Back to Basics — Speaking of Back to Basics, this book blogger reminds us all of something many/most of us have felt. I like her approach to getting through it.
• The Best Baby Names from Sci-Fi and Fantasy Literature — I’m not sure this is a great idea. I was somewhere recently where I heard some parents refer to their 10-12 year old daughter by the name of a YA heroine, and couldn’t help wondering what the kid will be thinking in her 20s about that choice.
• …and that’s apparently all I saw this week.

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen:
• Mysterypod with Reed Farrel Coleman — Coleman talks to Stephen Usery about his latest Jesse Stone novel, and a little about Gus Murphy, his book with Michael Mann and more.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne — Hearne trades the Urban in for Epic in this fantasy novel. I started this 2 days ago and am making incredibly slow progress (my fault, not the book’s), but it’s just gorgeous. I am going to have many, many good things to say about this next week.
• Righteous by Joe Ide — Isaiah Quintabe is on the hunt for his brother’s killer and trying to keep a DJ safe from various criminals.
• How to Think by Alan Jacobs — building on recent works about the science of thinking, Jacobs focuses o the art of it. I had a little tosay about it.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and welcome to whatsnonfiction for following the blog this week.

Odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• A Day in the life of…An Independent Bookshop
• My Favorite Books to Sell Over 20 Years of Owning a Bookstore
• Space Bikers Return on the Cover of Blood Binds the Pack — cover reveal, blurb and an interview with Alex Wells about the sequel to Hunger Makes the Wolf. I assumed a sequel was coming, but now that I’ve seen this, I’m excited and not all that inclined to be patient.
• Commonplace Books Then and Now: From Marcus Aurelius to taggable book quotes: why we’re compelled to track our reads. — some of these make my little spreadsheet look pretty pathetic.
• How Mark Twain helped Nick Offerman become a weirdo: The comedian brings Twain’s ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ to life in a new audiobook from Audible — a nice piece from EW.com

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• A Long Day in Lychford by Paul Cornell — The Witches of Lychford are back — it wasn’t my favorite, but it’s still soemthing you should read (plus the first 2). Here’s my $.02 on the novella
• Drawing Dead by JJ DeCeglie — Fahrenheit Press’ latest offering features a drunk, gambling addicted PI in hock to the mob. Probably not the feel-good book of the year, but it has all the makings of a gripping read.