Tag: Miscellany Page 131 of 179

Here are the odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye—Lithub and BookRiot are heavily featured this week. Been awhile since I dipped into those so hard, but I really liked what I saw this week. I wish I could figure out a way to get a kickback (or sponsorship—I’m open to negotiation, folks!) from one/all of them for this… You’ve probably seen some/most/all of these, but just in case:

• Game of Thrones: George RR Martin FANTASTIC Winds of Winter release date news—I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about this, which means it’s full of bunk or everyone in the world is as cynical as I am about it. Also, I’m not sure I care at this point (I’m going to have to re-read everything prior to the release just to remember, and I’m not sure I have that much energy. Is there a decent re-cap site?)
• I was nominated for the Bad sex award. Don’t laugh—I disagree with almost everything Gough says about the award/culture around it. But I do find his experience interesting to read about. Also, this means that Two Crime Writers and a Microphone might actually release a new episode of their sadly infrequent podcast soon.
• 20 Ways to Read More Books in 2020—19 of these are good ideas. Skimming, though? Barbarians.
• What Was the First Book You Fell in Love With?: The Center for Fiction’s 2019 First Novel Prize Authors Weigh In—I’m probably not going to read most of these authors first novels, honestly, but I always enjoy reading about what book got people hooked on books.
• The Life Cycle of a Library Book
• Most Anticipated Reads of 2020—for those of you who’ve started planning.
• Women in Historical SFF
• Venators: Legends Rise (Venators #3) By Devri Walls Cover Reveal—The Cover for Walls’ Third Novel is her Spiffiest Yet
• One Man at One Week—Harry Connolly writes a very honest post about the first week of One Man sales. If there was one author I could make you all read, I think it’d be him. If not One Man (which is coming up on my TBR soon), then find something else on his site that strikes your fancy.
• The Guide to affordable Audiobook Binge-Listening—this could prove handy.
• Tips for Writing Speculative Detective Fiction: How can you keep a commitment to reason and procedure when rules of reality no longer apply?—I love it when Detective/Crime fiction blends with SFF, here’s some tips on how to pull it off.
• 26 Books From the Last Decade that More People Should Read: Our Favorite Writers Recommend Some Underappreciated Gems—LitHub’s editors have come up with an interesting list of things I’ve never heard of.
• Speaking of LitHub, they bring us the first Best-Of for 2019Our 50 Favorite Books of the Year: Highlights From a Year in Reading by the Literary Hub Staff
• Bernardine Evaristo, Lee Child and more pick the best books of 2019—The Guardian assembled a handful of authors for their picks.
• The December issue of Envie, a Magazine for the Literary Curious—features a profile ofour pal, Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub.
• The Tattooed Book Geek shared his Blogging Plans for 2020—I’m seeing a lot of plans for 2020, his is probably the most likely to be accomplished (maybe that’s projection on my part—but I look at some of these lists and am boggled)
• Tropes in YA Fiction that Do Not Butter My Croissant—I’d co-sign this and I need to work “Do Not Butter my Croissant” into my everyday conversation.
• A History of… The Hobbit—Probably my favorite blog post of the week—Bookstooge, longtime Friend of IRR, talks about his personal history with the classic.

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Authors on a Podcast Talking Books Ep. 3 – Jonathan Wood—David Walters (FanFiAddict.com) talks to Jonathan Wood. I read Wood’s first two books forever ago, and loved them. Don’t ask me why I haven’t read on. That ends in 2020, thanks to this episode. BTW, isn’t this the best podcast title? Tells you exactly what it is.

This Week’s New Release that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon (I’m sure there were others that I should’ve spotted, but…):
• Perfect Murder by Rebecca Bradley—A mystery writer tries to pull of the perfect murder—a plot that I’m sure made none of Bradley’s family/loved ones/friends nervous at all.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Freedom is the luxury I seek and APB813 for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

Wow. Everyone really took advantage of the holiday week. I found practically nothing for this post. Oh, well—it gives me a chance to focus on other bloggers, not the pros. Thanks to The Write Reads where I got most of 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:

• Constable to publish Lee Child’s authorised biography—looking forward to getting The Reacher Guy next year.
• What I’ve learned as a book blogger—If she learned this much in the first 6 months, I wonder what Meredith Rankin’ll pick up after two years…
• To Track or Not To Track? – Progress While Reading—Anyone out there track progress? I really can’t be bothered most of the time (also, I tend to read too quickly to bother)
• Favourite Books Without 5 Stars—It always surprises me every year when I do my “Best Of” lists that I skip past some 5 Star books to complete them. It shouldn’t, as The Narratess helpfully points out

A Book-ish Related Podcast you might want to give a listen to:
• I don’t have a particular episode to point to, but I listened to a few episodes of this new-ish podcast this week: Under a Pile of Books—It focuses on SF and Fantasy. Sometimes it’s just the host, sometimes he chats with a blogger or author. It’s pretty good and I can see it falling into my regular rotation, check it out.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• One Man: A City of Fallen Gods Novel by Harry Connolly—A Fantasy Thriller, is the best way I can encapsulate it. Connolly describes it as: “big, odd, ambitious book about crime and magic and a screwed-up guy who has one last chance to do something decent in this world.” It’s his first novel in four years, and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t get to it for at least a week and a half. If there was one Fantasy/UF author that I could convince the world to notice, it’d be Connolly, and this looks like his most ambitious novel to date.
• Evil Valley by Simon Hall—After One Man, I’m diving into this one. I was lamenting recently that FP had seemed to stop with these TV Detective books, I’m so glad I was wrong!
• The ABCs of Metallica by Metallica, Howie Abrams, Michael Kaves—An Alphabet Picture book that pays tribute to the Metal Band. I talked about it some yesterday.
• The Hero by Lee Child—Child explores the concept of hero and narrative from pre-history to his own work. I gobbled it up on Thanksgiving to talk about it.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to overtherainbowbookblog and simplyclaudianicole for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

Phew. It’s been another week where I’m surprised that I’ve surfed around enough to have any fodder for this post. Clearly I need to work on self-awareness. There’s some good stuff here, chums.

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:

• The First Annual Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award!—was announced this week. This is an international “competition for indie authors (both self-published and published by small indie presses).” Both bloggers and authors should check it out!
• I stopped reading novels last year. I think you did too.—this brought out my inner-Sherman T. Potter — “That is grade-A, 100% bull cookies!” A primer on fallacies could be written from this one source.
• B&N Cuts Freelance Writers from Its Teen and SFF Blogs—I saw a number of people tweeting/retweeting about losing their gigs from this. I feel bad for them, but am interested in seeing what happens to the site next.
• ‘Your throat hurts. Your brain hurts’: the secret life of the audiobook star—One of my favorite reads this week. Thanks to Portable Mistletoe for this one!
• The Best Thing You Can Do to Support a New Book—from Lifehacker.
• Best Strategy to Support a New Book—Ilona Andrews differs.
• A Word Museum Is Opening In Downtown D.C. Next Spring—I dig this idea.
• Why You Should Re-Read Paradise Lost—hmmm…maybe.
• How to be a Book Blogger…and not lose your mind—There’s some really good stuff here (some things I should heed, too).
• Why Should We Read the Classics?—Like, maybe, Paradise Lost? I’ve posted a few things along these lines lately, but Ramona makes a point or two I don’t think have been covered.
• 10 Up and Coming Indie Fantasy Writers to Watch Out For—I’ve only read one of these, and probably should get to at least 3 others.

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Once & Future Podcast, Ep. 201: Cherie Priest—Live from Gen Con 2019.
• NovelSuspects’s podcast—Okay, I haven’t listened to anything from this new podcast yet, but there are some really good looking episodes here that you’d probably enjoy.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon — a couple of these helped me have a great reading week:
• Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes by Ace Atkins—Spenser returns to L.A. and gets to work with Sixkill again. And, yeah, everything you remember from Spenser and the City of Angels is discussed and old friends/allies are visited. I’ve read it and will be saying some very positive things about it soon.
• The Lights Go Out in Lychford by Paul Cornell—The fourth Lychford novella is a high-point of the series, as I talked about this week
• Going Rogue by Neil Lancaster—the follow up to Going Dark is a fast-paced mix of procedural and action-hero thriller. I said a little more about it here.
• The Dead Don’t Sleep by Steven Max Russo—Another great thrill-ride. I talked about this last month. By the way, I have a Q&A coming early next week with Russo that you should definitely check out.
• Twenty-one Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks—It’s been a few years since I’ve read a Dicks novel (nothing against him, I just haven’t gotten to them), this looks good enough that I’m going to dip back in.
• Firefly: The Sting by Delilah S. Dawson and a pack of artists—Yo-Saf-Bridge teams up with River, Zoë, Kaylee and Inara? Say no more.
• Sabbath by Nick Mamatas—An 11th Century warrior in modern Manhattan to save the world? What could go wrong?

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to tracy cole, lidija.biskup, Notes Kecil, Beth Tabler, and R. for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

Good reads, but just 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:

• Publishers Should be Making E-Book Licensing Better, Not Worse—EFF weighs in. Not the most in-depth analysis, but a good one (and the internal links are groovy).
• Why Seth Meyers Loves Having Authors on His Show—I thought this was fun, and particularly liked his comments on shelf organization.
• Why I Always Read the Acknowledgements—do you skip these? I tend to skim the lists of names, but focus on the parts describing why the name was listed.
• Femmes Fatales and the Shattering of the Capitalist Dream: Reconsidering a 20th century crime trope, and what it says about the evolution of noir.—I’d differ with the politics undergirding Kolakowski’s piece, but I appreciated the look at the fiction.
• The 10 Commandments of Reading—I should get these framed.
• How To Read a Book PROPERLY—well, yeah.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• You Must Have A Death Wish by Matt Phillips—Phillips’ Know Me from Smoke was so good that I don’t care what this is about, I’m excited. (oh, it’s about a rookie hitman, if you must know).
• Action At A Distance by Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch, Brian Williamson, Stefani Renne—the newest Rivers of London comic paperback looks into Nightingale’s WWII past.
• Paradox by Jeanne C. Stein—It’s been six years (wow! six years??!?) since Stein has published an Anna Strong novel. Can’t wait to see what brought her back.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to babblingstories, Zoé O’Farrell and kerrimcbooknerd for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?