Music Monday’s originated at The Tattooed Book Geek‘s fantastic blog and has shown up here and there since then.
yay…nothing seasonal today.
Tag: Miscellany Page 49 of 175
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:
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
Five for Them, One for Me, with S.A. Cosby—a nice, quick, interview with Cosby
Another week, another batch of Best of 2023 lists. I’m telling you, these are not helping me cut down on my TBR lists:
On Before We Go Blog, we have Nathan’s Top 25 Reads of 2023
Jo Linsdell’s Best Reads of 2023
Top 10 Books I Read In 2023—Steven Writes is done with his categories and goes nice and straightforward here at the end.
My 10 best books of 2023—from Spells and Spaceships
Fan Fi Addict’s David S’ Top 5 Books I Read in 2023
Raven’s Books Of The Year 2023
Peat Long’s Top 10 Books Read in 2023
The damppebbles Top Ten(ish!) of 2023
Bookstr Predictions: Bookish Trends We Think We’ll See in 2024
Trends I Think We’ll See in Book Blogging in 2024—Pages Unbound has another take
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.
Top Book Bloggers to Follow in 2024—a good list
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:
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.
Welcome to my first WWW post of 2024, starting with this one, we’ll (very likely) be taking 52 looks at what books I’m reading and listening to throughout the year through the magic of this weekly meme. Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your WWW or just tell us what you’re reading. I enjoy reading these!
This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words—and shown to me by Aurore-Anne-Chehoke at Diary-of-a-black-city-girl.
The Three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
Seems easy enough, right? Let’s take a peak at this weeks answers:
What are you currently reading?
I’ve got two really entertaining Fantasy novels that couldn’t be more different here. I’m reading Book 3 of The Azure Archipelago by K.R.R. Lockhaven, and am listening to The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman on audiobook.
What did you recently finish reading?
I just finished Russell W. Johnson’s The Moonshine Messiah and Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison, Kristen Sieh (Narrator) on audio. One of those was great and the other was good enough.
What do you think you’ll read next?
My next book should be the ARC for The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, which looks great (and will finally cross Bennett off my “Authors I Should Try” list). My next audiobook should be Miles Morales Suspended by Jason Reynolds, Narrated by: Guy Lockard and Nile Bullock. Almost everything I know about Miles came from Reynolds’ first novel about him, I’m so glad to finally stumble onto this one.
How are you starting 2024?
Well…this doesn’t look the way I want it to. But here goes:
My plans this year focused on the two series that I’ve started—Literary Locals and Grandpappy’s Corner—both of which went well last year.
Then there’s the perennial, “Cut down on my Goodreads Want-to-Read list and the unread books that I own.” How did I do on that?
| Audio | E-book | Physical | Goodreads Want-to-Read |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| End of 2022 | 5 | 45 | 42 | 143 |
| End of 1st Quarter | 4 | 44 | 54 | 142 |
| End of 2nd Quarter | 5 | 50 | 56 | 145 |
| End of 3rd Quarter | 5 | 51 | 58 | 151 |
| End of 4th Quarter | 6 | 47 | 68 | 153 |
Let’s move right along to see how I did with the Reading Challenges…
2023 Book Challenges
Goodreads Challenge
It should show a few more read, but Goodreads doesn’t have them in the list, and I’m too lazy to bother submitting them. Still, there I’m success.
and now, it’s time for the less than successful marks
12 Books
I got behind in March and never got back to this. It really drove me crazy, because I wanted to read these, but the idea of being behind ended up being a mental block. I’m working on this for next year. And I only wrote about one of the three I managed to read.
2023 While I was Reading
I finished this one…although #4 isn’t probably what Ramona was going for. This is the last time I’ll be participating in this challenge, as Ramona’s retiring her blog. I feel bad that I didn’t do better for this last go-round. But…eh. I gave it a shot.
- A book with a protagonist over 40.: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
- A book considered a classic.: The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
- A graphic novel.: Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith, Boulet (Illustrator)
- A book that has been banned or challenged.: The Freedom of a Christian: A New Translation by Martin Luther (proscribed by the Edict of Worms in 1521…yeah, it’s a stretch, but I ran out of time for the more contemporary titles I picked)
- A book set in a place on your bucket list.: Blood Runs Cold by Neil Lancaster
- A book published before you were born.: On the Apostolic Preaching by Irenaeus of Lyons
- A book related to a goal you have for 2023.: Church History in Plain Language, Fifth Edition by Bruce Shelley, Revision Editor Marshall Shelley
- A book by an author of color.: The Raven Thief by Gigi Pandian
- A book with a clever title.: Kneading Journalism: Essays on Baking Bread and Breaking Down the News by Tony Ganzer
- A book by a famous author you’ve never read: The Last Dance by Mark Billingham
- A non-fiction book about a topic you love.: The Worst We Can Find: MST3K, RiffTrax, and the History of Heckling at the Movies by Dale Sherman
- A novella: Bad Memory by Jim Cliff
Your TBR Reduction Book Challenge
I’m on-target for this one (as much as I can be), and have even got a couple of the Stretch Goals accomplished.
January – End to end temptation I give you permission to read the most recent book you have got on top of your TBR. For many this is one we only get to read eventually but for now I want you to pick up the newest book in Mount TBR and read it. Can you remember the last time you did that? It’s a good habit to get into and January is all about starting good habits: The Perception of Dolls by Anthony Croix, Edited by Russell Day
Stretch Goal – Read the oldest book in Mount TBR it has waited long enough: Bartleby and James: Edwardian Steampunk Chronicle by Michael Coorlim
February – Short steps For the shortest month of the year I want you to read 28 short stories. This can be a TBR collection, anthology or even backlog of magazines that you have. Life is fast but use this challenge to appreciate the skill of the short story writer. Play your skills right you may get more than one book read this way. eh…I get partial credit for this, Noirville contained every short story I had unread, but it’s only fifteen stories. I did read extra novellas for the Stretch Goal, though. So I’m calling this okay?
Stretch Goal – Read four novellas one for each week of the month. Bad Memory by Jim Cliff, Anna and the Vampire Prince by Jeanne C. Stein, and Broken by Don Winslow (which is six novellas).
March – Fresh Starts This time for the beginning of spring you need to start a series you have never read before. Release this work from Mount TBR! Justice Calling by Annie Bellet
April – Open and Shut Case For the month named after the latin for ‘to open’ you need to read a standalone book with no sequel or links to any other book. Something new and something you can let go after reading it: The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
May – Crowning Glory? the UK has a lot of bank holidays including a coronation this month so suitably let’s pick a book about revolution or a change of those in power. Questland by Carrie Vaughn
June – long reading days or longest nights Irrespective of your hemisphere you have time for reading either in the joys of summer or depths of winter. Your challenge here is to find the largest tale on Mount TBR and finish it. Let that monster get off your back: Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
July – Holidays are coming! let’s go travelling find a book by the author who lives the furthest from you on the globe. I give you seven months to do the maths! Let’s explore the fiction of places very much not like our own: Eternity Fund by Liz Monument (Australia)
August – Holiday Treats reward time you get to choose the book in your TBR pile no Themes, clues of queries to ask. Just take one off the list!: Lemon Man by Ken Bruton
September – Seven Deadly Tempts read a book linked however you want to one of the seven deadly sins. Booktempting I stress is not one of them. Indulge yourselves: Cash Rules Everything Around Me by Rob Gittins. If that title doesn’t scream Greed, I don’t know what does (the other 6 show up as well in the book)
October – Spooky Season cometh read a book with a spooky or dark theme. Unsettle yourself prior to Halloween: Evil Embers by Cristelle Comby
November – Small Press Big Stories read a book that is published by a printing house that is not connected to the auk/US Big Five publishers: Evil Valley by Simon Hall
December – Don’t forget to say thank you it’s been over a year treat yourself to a book someone else gifted you. If you liked it tell that person!: Vicious Dogs by Henry Brock
Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge;
I’ve got 16 of the 24 categories taken care of. So, I guess I’m okay-ish here. I’ll have a few others accomplished by the end of the year, but I think this is going to be an incomplete challenge.
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Basically, 2 out of 4 (the Goodreads challenge isn’t really much of one). Not really my best. But…these things are for fun and to make me think about reading in a slightly different way. It succeeded there, as much as I didn’t.
(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)
Music Monday’s originated at The Tattooed Book Geek‘s fantastic blog and has shown up here and there since then.
(last holiday season song for a while)
When going through the posts, etc. I had collected for this week, it felt like this was going to be nothing but a list of lists. Which would’ve been fine, but strange, you know? I did eventually get mostly past the lists to some other things. But I’ll warn you now, if you are looking to keep your TBR from exploding, there are several things I linked to today that you’ll want to avoid.
On the other hand, if you’re wanting it to explode with goodness…
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:
If Not For Libraries: Authors on the Importance of Public Libraries—The New York Public Library put this together earlier this year, and I’m not sure how I missed it until this week.
Five years and 2m copies later, self-published author lands UK book deal—Granted, the overwhelming majority of self-pubbed authors won’t see this kind of success. But doesn’t it make your heart warm to see that some do?
A.I. : In the Age of the Absence of the Author
Why Readers Love Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Series —this is a good overview of the series/good intro for those who’ve thought about dipping their toe in.
Before We Go Blog is always a reliable source of good material, but three of the posts the team put up this week caught my eye.
Top Urban Fantasy Series To Get You Hooked on the Genre—I enjoyed (the?) previous version(s?) of this, but this updated one makes me feel positively un-read in the genre.
Top Ten Fantasy Characters That Probably Listen to Taylor Swift—Kudos to them for even coming up with this idea. I’m not a Swiftie (at least not after her second album), but I enjoyed the post
Seven Favorite Cinnamon Rolls in SFF Novels—Is Cinnamon Roll a term I should already be familiar with? Either way, I’m adding it to my vocabulary.
Top 20 Most Recommended Audiobooks of All Time—according to Libro.fm
Another batch of Best of 2023 lists:
Top Five Most Dramatic Twists I Read In 2023—Steven Writes comes up with another good category
10 of My Favorite Reads in 2023—from Pages Unbound’s Krysta
Adam Holcombe provided “A handful of great books, given to you in the form of specialized awards”
FanFiAddict’s A.J. Calvin’s Top 10 Reads of 2023
Favorite Books in 2023—from A Literary Escape
Out of This World SFF’s My Top 10 Reads of 2023!!!
Most Memorable Reads of 2023—from Reading Ladies Book Club
Top 5 Books of 2023—Top 5? As I’m going to demonstrate next week there’s no way I could get things down to 5. My hat’s off to Books are 42 for pulling it off.
Tales from Absurdia’s The Best Books I Read in 2023
Esmay Rosalyne’s Best Surprises of 2023
What Makes a Story Comforting?—another good one from Molly Templeton. I’m also tempted to (somewhat reluctantly) rewatch Grimm.
How to Plan for Your 2024 Reading Challenge —some good advice from NetGalley’s We Are Bookish blog
Backlist Bingo 2024—it’s been a minute since Armed With a Book did a Bingo, this looks fun
Read What You Got—a month-long push to clear up your unread books
The 2024 Booktempter’s TBR Challenge—the last two of these from Runalong the Shelves have proved helpful to me. I’m back for a third go-round.
The Project Backlist Reading Challenge—another good-looking challenge
Bookish Travel: Visiting The 50 US States 2023—what a great idea…
2024 Ultimate Book Blogger / Reader Spreadsheet Template—a great tool for Bloggers and super-organized readers (or those wanting to be)
Quotables: Words that Stuck with me in 2023—I love this annual post (which inspired my monthly posts…that I will get back to!)
This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Sundry Notes of Music: An Almost Memoir by Ian Shane—some of the bigger moments of Shane’s life are described through the filter of important (to him) songs. Humor, love, loss, and a lot of music. I talk a little more indepth about it here.
Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Little Reader, who followed the blog this week. I hope you enjoy the content and keep coming back.
This was supposed to be the 2nd or 3rd post of the day, but you know how things gang aft a-gley sometimes. Hopefully, I can eke out something else, too.
In the meantime, I’ll get to business with this and see you in 7.
This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words—and shown to me by Aurore-Anne-Chehoke at Diary-of-a-black-city-girl.
The Three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
Easy enough, right?
What are you currently reading?
I’m reading The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri, Daniel Miyares (Illustrator)—a book I’m not even going to try to sum up in less than a couple of paragraphs. I’m listening to Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison, Kristen Sieh (Narrator) on audiobook. I’m not so sure about the story as a whole—but it possibly includes the best description of someone becoming a werewolf that I’ve ever come across.
What did you recently finish reading?
I just finished Henry Brock’s Vicious Dogs, a clever PI novel, and the superlative The Curator by M.W. Craven, John Banks (Narrator) on audio.
What do you think you’ll read next?
My next book should be The Moonshine Messiah by Russell W. Johnson. Next, I’m going to try the audiobook of The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman—I’m not 100% I can devote the attention to it that it deserves in audio format, but I haven’t been able to find the time for the print version, so we’ll see how I do.
How are you closing out the year? Trying to squeeze in a few more books for whatever your goal was?
(I’ve got three more I hope to finish. Will get at least one of them done 🙂 )
Music Monday’s originated at The Tattooed Book Geek‘s fantastic blog and has shown up here and there since then.
I’m glad you stopped by for this today, but I really want you to read my earlier post of the day, I had more fun with it than I usually do. So take a moment if you haven’t to check out: The Grandcritter’s First Festivus.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the “serious business” of today.
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:
Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text, say researchers—Not the first time I’ve heard this, but I do find it interesting. Would you all prefer if I started mailing these so you can understand it more?
‘It’s totally unhinged’: is the book world turning against Goodreads?—pretty sure I’ve posted things like this before, too. One of these days, the death knell may truly ring.
Last week, I linked to the first 20 of these, and now we can read The Biggest Literary Stories of the Year: 30 to 11 The 10 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year—(at least according to LitHub). Some interesting things here…many of which I was previously unaware of. That’s how in-tune with the Big News I am.
Before We Go Blog brings Five Recommended Books for Winter Reading—(or other times of the year, too)
Announcing the Picture Prompt Book Bingo Challenge for 2024—It’s like Dixit or Mysterium mixed with a Reading Challenge.
It’s time for some more 2023 Best Of Lists.I agree with a lot of these (and added more than I should to the overburnded TBR)
The Ultimate Best Books of 2023 List—Lit Hub’s Emily Temple compiles results from 62 published lists to list the best of the best.
Top Five Character-Driven Books I Read In 2023—from Steven Writes
Operation 2023: Success! (Or Favorite Books From this Year)—Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub has some real winners (and you’ll never guess the 2nd book on this list!)
Favourite Series of 2023—from Novel Deelights
CrimeReads’ The Best Noir Fiction of 2023
The Best Books I Read in 2023—from Read Betwixt Worlds
Tiny Elf Arcanist Character Awards 2023
CrimeReads’ The Best Traditional Mysteries of 2023
Why Stories About Stories Bugs Me
This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
Death in the Dark Woods by Annelise Ryan—should’ve been mentioned here last week. Moving on from lake monsters, cryptozoologist/bookstore owner Morgan Carter looks into Bigfoot.
Down The Well by Veronica King—this just sounds like a ball. Sentient lamp posts? You can never go wrong with lamp posts in fantasy, making them sentient is a heckuva bons.
Grimdwarf: A Magaine of Fantastic Tales edited by JCM Berne—1. It’s free. 2. It’s good. 3. It’s a quick read. 4. It’s good. I have no idea how/if I’ll be talking about this zine regularly, but for now, I’m just going to promote it when I have the opportunity.
(can’t like back to the creator, since I don’t know where it came from)
Shunning the commercialization of Christmas*/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Santaween/Chrismukkah, we’re again celebrating Festivus (for the rest of us) here at The Irresponsible Reader. But this time, we’re doing something extra special—my Grandcritter is joining us as I share with him the wonders of the day.
And no…this isn’t just an excuse for a proud grandparent to show you all pictures of this adorable guy. You’re just going to have to take my word for that.
Let’s begin our observance!
We start by setting up the Festivus pole. See how he’s taking in the very high strength-to-weight ratio (because it’s a mighty fine pole) and how he’s fascinated by it without any need for distracting tinsel. It’s very important to take in the simplicity.
And now, let the Airing of Grievances begin.
I initially assumed that I’d be handling this myself, the kid’s not even a year old. So, sure he has a gripe or two, but they can’t be book-related, can they? Turns out they can.
The Grandcritter’s Grievances
Board Books need to taste better! Sure, the texture is interesting and provides an interesting mouthfeel. But the taste is rather plain. Can’t we get something that tastes like food mixed into that coating on every page?
Related to that, try as I might, I cannot fit an entire book into my mouth at once. I don’t know if it’s a me problem or a publishing/book design problem, but I think it’s the latter. I don’t know why, but I think it would be really satisfying if I could just get one to fit the whole way, you know?
(Grandpappy’s original idea for my Feat of Strength was to get a picture of me trying to pull this off, but Mommy wouldn’t let him. Apparently, he’s supposed to discourage that, not try to get me to do it. I’d make this a Grievance, too. But Mommy probably knows best, and Grandpappy says I should wait at least 13 years before pushing back like that in public.)
I’ve got a beef with the people that make those “Indestructibles” books for people my age. Do they not understand how satisfying it is to rip a page in a book (and maybe to stuff it in your mouth)? That sound…that feeling of power…it’s so good. And then these mean grown-ups make it so my people can’t do that? It’s the worst. (also, Grandpappy says they’d do better selling multiple copies of books when adults replace the ones with missing pages)
Lastly, my TBR is too huge! I’m never going to catch up at this point. Never mind the books that Mommy and Daddy have picked out for me, or that I might be interested in—do you have any idea how long the list that my Grandpappy has for me is??? Talk about Irresponsible…
Grandpappy’s Grievances
(Yes, some of these are only slightly revised from previous Festivus posts. This is to be expected, it’s not like the entire universe fixed itself after I threw up a few posts. I’ve got to keep up the pressure.)
AI’s takeover of publishing, from covers to audiobook narrations to writing and illustrating! It’s just too much. This is about human creativity, not close approximations of it. Also, you’d think that people who publish/sell/read dystopian fiction and SF would know better than to give the reins of anything to an AI.
I have a grievance with the book publishing/selling/marketing industry. It’s 2023, why are we still placing stickers on books? If we have to do that, why hasn’t Science come up with a sticker that doesn’t leave a gummy residue behind? C’mon, Science, if you can’t give us a cure for cancer, a pill so people with Celiac disease can eat bread, or an Oreo that will help me lose weight—at least you can give us stickers that don’t leave gunk on our books! Especially, especially when it covers the ISBN number for those of us trying to scan them.
What’s worse than stickers are those things that look like stickers, but aren’t. Just stupid, garish circles that have been printed on the cover and really only serve to obscure the image. What’s the point?
I have a grievance with Movie/TV covers on books. C’mon people, this is stupid. Sure, it may help sell more copies of the books—but has any book been improved by one of these covers? No! Knock it off! And especially, stop it with sticking pictures of actors on books in a series that haven’t been adapted, just because some have (yeah, I’m looking at you, Longmire).
Similarly, what’s up with publishers changing the look of series covers—and or the height of the books—in a series? I like when they match and I resent having to go buy second copies of the old ones to have a nice matching set. (which I generally avoid, but I think about doing it a lot).
Whether it’s from a mainstream publisher, indie press, or a self-pubbed book, we have the technology and (theoretically??) the education so there’s no reason for there to be missing/extra punctuation or misspelled words in books. We all understand human error, some are going to slip through, but…
Obviously, this doesn’t apply to book blog posts. No one paid for these.
I have a grievance with the Book Blogging Community. There are way too many good book bloggers out there to keep up with. Some of you need to write less often! Also, you make the rest of us look bad.
I’ve got a grievance with running out of places to put books and bookshelves that aren’t like a bag of holding or TARDIS and can’t take an increasing number of books. So…physics, I guess. Yeah, that’s right, Laws of the Physics, I’m calling you out. Get your act together!
And what’s more…I lost my train of thought. Still, I managed to get a little off my chest, and that felt good.
And now, the Feats of Strength…
This was tricky to capture in a photo, but I think you can make it out…The Grandcritter is lifting my The Lord of the Rings Illustrated hardcover. Yes, one corner is resting on (read: digging into) my arm, but he’s picked up the other end on his own. All 3.54 lbs. of it–with one hand, mind you.
Let’s see how the rest of you do with your feats.
I hope you enjoyed this bit of fluff and regardless of what holidays/festivals you may or may not celebrate that you have a happy one!
* I’ve gotten a little feedback about this—it’s pretty clear I’m a Christian. So why do I do a Festivus post instead of something about Christmas? While I do think that believers have the liberty to celebrate the Nativity if they desire to, I’m ambivalent toward the day, and hesitant to make a big deal out of it. So, I don’t. If you’re curious, I thought this episode of The Heidelcast did a decent job of articulating many of the issues (without getting nasty about it).
On the other hand, Festivus is just silly fun. Hope you don’t mind…
