Tag: Miscellany Page 51 of 178

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:
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.
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.)
Small Press Economies: A Dialogue—If reading this doesn’t make you love those in Small Press/Indie Press Publishing all the more…
MWA Announces 2024 Edgar Award Nominations—here’s a ready-made reading list full of sure-fire winners for you.
YA Isn’t Just for Young Adults—from The Millions.
Out With Book Clubs — In With Book Trades!—Cole Rush has a good alternative to buddy reads, book clubs, etc.
Why Authors Need Cover Reveals—David W nails it. (they’re good for lazy book bloggers, too! Consider this an open invitation)
Seven Science Fiction Novels to Expand (and Blow) Your Mind—a good dose of temptation from John Mauro over at Before We Go Blog.
Books With the Best Beginnings!—A great collection of opening lines from the Organutan Librarian.
Reviews: Subjective or Objective? Can we do both—one would think we could.
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…
2014 The Edgar Awards nominees—what a coincidence!
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
The Top Ten Books People Lie About Reading
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
…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:
Dream Town by Lee Goldberg—Eve Ronin investigates the murder of a Reality TV star.
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.
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.

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.

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:
Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon
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.
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
7 great but notoriously hard-to-finish books—I have started 2 of these (multiple times)
An Ode to Acknowledgements: Sarah Wheeler on the Joy of Learning About the Village Behind a Book
Celeste posted her 2023 Book Blog In Review for A Literary Escape. Looks like a pretty good year.
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.
Mark Each Year in Books: Thoughts on Reading Traditions
FanFiAddict’s TBRCon2024 is a little more than a week away.
Top 5 Bookish Resolutions for 2024—Books are 42’s resolutions may inspire some for you
Reading Less in 2024—this is really healthy and wise. Good reminder/thoughts from Bec.
Are Reading Goals Worth It?—Worlds Unlike Our Own has some along the same lines.
The Joys of Backlist Books
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:
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.
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.”
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.”

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.