Category: Books Page 45 of 159

In the back of my mind since the Mid-Year Freak Out tag back in July how strange it is that I hadn’t been moved to tears by a book in a while. Richard Osman’s new one took care of that for me yesterday*, so now I can focus on other things in the back of my mind. Like, what stupid jokes am I going to make in my Festivus post this year or something equally important.

* Big ol’ jerk creating characters that you can’t help but care about.

Thursday, I attended Rediscovered Bookshop‘s latest Grown-Up Book Fair at White Dog Brewery, and showed remarkable restraint (but still walked away with some gems)—today, I get to go to the Boise Library!’s Comic Arts Festival, which is always a good time. That’s a lot of people-ing in just a few days, but a lot of bookish (and other) goodness, too. If you’re one of the handful of readers I have in this area, you should definitely come by. If you’re not in the area, I hope you have some bookish goodness to get up to (even if it’s just sitting in a comfortable spot with a good read)

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:
Spenser at 50: The Evolution of Robert B. Parker’s Iconic Character—How did I not think to spend the year celebrating this anniversary?
From one legend of Mystery Fiction to a couple of others: Lee Goldberg in Conversation with Michael Connelly—a great video from a recent event in Agoura Hills
Five Enduring Reasons to Love the Mass Market Paperback—agreed. I’d love for a resurgence of this format (as would my overburdened shelves)
The Coolest Bookshelves from Our Contest: We’ve asked for the best shelfies, and you delivered—Electric Lit got some nifty submissions to a recent contest
Are the Dragons in Fourth Wing Better than in Game of Thrones?—These are the kind of vital debates that need to be had. (even though I’m pretty sure I hadn’t heard of Fourth Wing until The Orangutan Librarian talked about it)
What Do You Think About Books Marketed Solely on Vibes and Tropes?
Why I Love Middle-Grade Books
Three Middle Grade Fantasy Series You Should Read—Over at FanFiAddict, Matt Pittman picks three great series. I’d have picked two of these myself had I tackled the question—not sure I’d have gone with The Wingfeather Saga myself, but I can’t argue against it.
Interview with a Second Grader: Hidden Gems—an interview about books with Jodie’s 2nd Grader. The fact that this leads off with a dragon book says something about the household, I think (something good, I stress. Also, completely un-surprising.)
I linked to this earlier in the week, but I’m going to share it again. On My Radar: September 2023—Celeste’s month-end wrap-ups are a great way to catch up on things you should’ve read earlier.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
The Running Grave by “Robert Galbraith”—Robin goes undercover in a cult to help rescue their client’s son. I haven’t seen anyone up in arms about this release, which is a bit odd. Maybe since the target is a cult this time? I’m just excited that this is under 1K pages (not by much, but at the rate this series was going, I was expecting to injure my back)
The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan—Percy Jackson is gearing up to go to college—but he and his friends have to deal with new challenges from Mount Olympus first. I’d stepped away from Riordan recently, but new Percy adventures just might get me to reverse course.

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:
The Authors Guild, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 Other Authors File Class-Action Suit Against OpenAI
Who Needs Plot When You Have Vibes?—this approach to novel writing appeals to me, but almost every book described here would drive me nuts. Maybe I need to try one or three, though.
The Early Days of American English: How English words evolved on a foreign continent.
Anjili Babbar On The Rise of Irish Crime Fiction
An interesting rebuttal to the publisher’s statement on the reading order for The Chronic (what?) cles of Narnia
5 Reasons We Love to Read—my local bookstore compiled a list of why their staff loves to read
10 Reasons to Leave a Book Review—I’d quibble with some of these items—but on the whole, a helpful post. Particularly for non-book bloggers.
Authors and Reviews—may the tribe of Douglas Lumsden increase
Arthurian inspired fiction: Where to start reading—So much temptation in so few words. A good companion list to the one Celeste posted a few months back, between the two of these, your Arthur-itch is sure to be scratched.
The Wish Givers Cover Creation: The Process in Pictures—A deep dive into the process of making this cover
Ranking books based on their first lines.—by Geaux Read Books, “Nothing heavy, just a fun video ranking books based on the first line of that book”
Are You a Stubborn Reader? Know Your Reading Tastes

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Slipped up and mentioned this last week, but I’m still excited for: The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman—The Thursday Murder Club is back in action—who cares what it’s about?
The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu—the sequel to The Art of Prophecy is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and I honestly have no idea when I’ll be able to get to it. Possibly January (at least 2024 will get off to a strong start).
Starter Villain by John Scalzi—”Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.” Oh, that sounds fun. Particularly when you add in “unionized dolphins [and] hyper-intelligent talking spy cats.”

I’m putting the “misc” in “miscellany” today. I have a shorter (but will take you hours to get through if you play out every link) and pretty varied offering. I hope you find something to scratch an itch (or create one)

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:
“I Can Give It Away to Whoever I Want”: Fables Creator Declares Hit Comic Series Public Domain, But DC Disagrees—I’ve tried a few times over the years to dive deeply into Fables, but laziness (and trouble finding them when I want them) have kept me from it. But still, it’s hard to miss the drama around Willingham and DC. I wonder how this will play out.
The real spiritual journey behind Tod Goldberg’s fake-rabbi desert antihero—a good profile and I really appreciate the observations and ideas expressed about Crime Fiction (paragraph 4 is quite telling, isn’t it?)
Goldberg’s brother shared the video Craig Johnson in conversation with Lee Goldberg & cast members of Longmire at Live Talks Los Angeles this week. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s well worth your time.
The Dark Humor of Millennial Crime Capers: 30-somethings can laugh in the face of anything—including death.
Tufa Songs: Songs mentioned in and inspired by the Tufa novels.—Alec Bledsoe posted this playlist to Facebook this week to go with the first four Tufa novels being put on Kindle Unlimited—”a Tufa-themed Spotify playlist made up of songs mentioned in the books, songs that inspired the books, and songs that have the same vibe as the books.” Good reading music even if you (tragically) haven’t encountered the series yet.
dresden files.—Flipphony put this out last year, but I didn’t see it until this week–a nice little video introduction to the Dresden files (there’s also one on the First Law that I should check out)
BookForager started Counting Down to SciFiMonth 2023—and I can already tell my TBR Stack is gonna grow
The Ultimate List of 46 Fantasy Books for Beginners—Oh, wow. There’s so much to mine here.
The Creation of The Fantasy Explosion Flowchart—when is Peat Long going to put us all out of our misery and publish a giant book on Fantasy fiction so we all have a good, one-stop, reference?
The Road to 100K Via Burnout—a good piece on burnout (something I’ve flirted with more than I probably realize)
Is There a Market for “Quiet” Children’s Books?—That’s a good question (and a good answer is given). The term “Quiet Books” is new to me, but I like it.

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman—The Thursday Murder Club is back in action–who cares what it’s about?
The Ninja’s Oath by Tori Eldridge—Lily Wong heads to Japan to rescue a kidnapped girl and deals with all sorts of other issues as well.
Shadow of Hyperion by JCM Berne—Rohan gets a call to help from Earth.
Catch Her Death by Melinda Leigh—Bree Taggert’s family are in the crosshairs in this book, and Dana’s suspect #1 in a murder. Should be an eventful read.
Federation Cowboy by Joyce Reynolds-Ward—”Caroline Starshine didn’t expect to find a job when she met Jeff Tophand…Nor did she expect to find drug smugglers, a conspiracy intended to overthrow two Galactic powers and turn them into an Empire, unusual allies, a new family, and…love.”
How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto—this novel is “about a graduate student who follows her disgraced mentor to a university that gives safe harbor to scholars of ill repute, igniting a crisis of work and a test of her conscience (and marriage)”.

Three-day weekends can really mess with you, you know? Monday afternoon, I sketched out a plan for the week that saw me productive on the reading and blogging front. And then Tuesday came along and everything else in my life collectively chuckled and said, “no.”

Without my research collaborator, Peat Long, this would be a very short list. Be sure to check out his Friday Favorites for more goodness along these lines.

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 Plague on the Industry’: Book Publishing’s Broken Blurb System: Do authors actually like the books they endorse—or even read them? Writers, literary agents, and publishing workers take Esquire inside the story of a problematic “favor economy.”—Great piece from Esquire
Stephen King Once Played “Mambo No. 5” So Much His Wife Threatened Divorce—I’ve never clicked with King’s fiction (and stopped trying decades ago), but I always enjoy hearing about King the person and writer.
When Teens Play Detective: The Influence of Golden Age Detective Fiction on YA Mysteries
The 75 Essential Books For Gen Xers: These are the books that entertained us, taught us, shocked us and molded us into who we’ve become—not necessarily the best, but those that shaped a generation. The fact that this is a relevant topic to the AARP’s site has cost me some sleep. (I got my membership card earlier this year, for the record, which didn’t cause me to lose sleep because it made me put a big dent in a bottle of bourbon)*
Too Much Information! Two Big Reasons Not to Over-explain Your Novel—Naturally, Paul Goat Allen nails this. I haven’t read him much lately…I need to fix that.
Let’s Get Honest About Reading (And Blogging)—some wisdom here
Author vs Author and Author with Author is Complicated—good thoughts from Mr. Long
Cyberpunk: The Truth Behind the Shades—in the mid-90s, I got really into Cyberpunk, but since then I really have only dabbled. This piece “fact check[s] some assumptions about the genre” and rekindles my interest.
Why I Enjoy Reading Negative Reviews of the Books I Love – & Mid-July Thoughts—I did snicker a lot at some of these featured reviews
How I Select Books to Read—I can relate to a lot of this. I don’t know that I’ve ever broken down my reasoning like this (not sure I can), but I enjoyed reading it.

* I feel compelled to stress that I’m joking about the sleep and drinking.

A Book-ish Related Podcast episode (or two) you might want to give a listen to:
Story Craft CafeThe Western Renaissance With Craig Johnson | SCC 113—Craig Johnson telling stories about whatever is almost more reliably entertaining than his books (like I said about a Story Craft Cafe episode last week, the audio quality on Johnson’s part isn’t great, but it’s not that distracting)
The Thriller Zone Episode 147: Lee Goldberg, author of Malibu Burning—Goldberg gets on a roll here and I challenge you not to chuckle

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson—There’s a chance I get to start this today, and I can’t wait. I have no idea what this is about—something to do with an old case and digging into Walt’s relationship with his grandfather.
Sleep No More by Seanan McGuire—I haven’t written anything about last year’s Toby Daye novel because I’m very conflicted about the ending—and am almost never satisfied with the kind of story it set up. So now…here we go with part one of the payoff. I trust McGuire, but now it’s time to put it to the test. (click the link there to get an actual idea of the premise)
It Ends with Knight by Yasmin Angoe—I can’t imagine that the conclusion to this trilogy is anything but fantastic.
Spider-Man’s Bad Connection by Preeti Chhibber—I had a lot of fun with Chhibber’s take on young Peter Parker and figure the same is in store for her follow-up.
Look Out for the Little Guy by Scott Lang—the autobiography of Ant-Man. Yeah, go ahead and roll your eyes that I mention this. Roll them even harder when I say that I bought the hardcover.