Tag: Saturday Miscellany Page 26 of 54

No time for an intro this week—too much to read before Jan. 31 to bother rambling on. (mostly a joke)

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:

• George RR Martin opens bookshop next to his cinema in Santa Fe—great, another distraction, just what he needs. That was too sarcastic, I think it’s cool that he’s doing it, and would absolutely love to check it out.
• These are the 10 best-selling books of the decade.—I’ve seen some people react to this like it’s a sign of the Fall of American Culture (which actually ties into the Collins and Roth work), but outside of #s 1-3, I don’t see this as too bad. (and have contributed to the success of four of these in my own, small, way)
• Speaking of Collins and Roth (and others listed above): The Decade in Young Adult Fiction: As a publishing phenomenon, YA literature entered the decade like a lion. Now it seems to be eating itself alive.
• Notes from the Winter Solstice Meeting—Rick Riordan gives hope to legions and legions of readers with this talk about a better adaptation of the Percy Jackson books. Also, just an entertainingly-written post.
• The Best Books of the 2010s—Several lists of goodness from the editors of Paste.
• Typically this time of year, I post links to various “Best Of” lists, and have done so a couple of times this year, but on the whole, I haven’t been that inspired by/interested in those from the usual suspects. However, most book bloggers are putting out their lists now, and they’re resonating more with me, so…let’s look at a few of them, shall we? (not an exhaustive list, and one that we’ll revisit soon)
  • 2019 Best Books Read and Reviewed on Beforewegoblog
  • Best Books of 2019—from Books, Bones & Buffy
  • What were my top crime reads of 2019?—from Crime Book Junkie (there’ll be some good overlap between this list and mine when I get around to compiling it, I wager)
  • Top Reads of 2019—from Fan Fi Addict’s David W
  • PaulsPicks Best Books of 2019 and PaulsPicks Best Graphic Novels of 2019—which also demonstrates that I’ve been putting an extra space in the blog name. Whoops.
  • Best of the Best: My Favorite Books from 2019—from Witty & Sarcastic Book Club
• Why Is Reading so Unpopular?
• How was the book? – Describing the Reading Experience—Armed with a Book trumps the 5-Star System with Data Analysis (I found this fascinating)
• Happy Holidays and 365 Posts in a Row—Yeah, third PaulsPicks post this week—no, he didn’t pay me for clicks (but he could…, just sayin’), I think the dude deserves a tip of the cap for 365 Posts in a row. More than that, he deserves the break he’s giving himself…
• David S’ Non-Comprehensive and Entirely Unrealistic List of Completed Series to read in 2020—If you’re like me, you’re coming up with reading plans for 2020, David S is at least honest enough to realize his is entirely unrealistic (unlike mine, which is going to be totally doable and not cause me any undue stress or sleepless nights in December)

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Under a Pile of Books’ Episode 43 – SPECIAL EPISODE: Top Coverart of 2019—Calvin Parks attempts (and largely succeeds) to convey his favorite bits of cover art on an audio podcast. This is a heckuva feat.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Mental Health •Lifestyle •Finance, Kelly Curtis, and brainyjaney (also, welcome to the weird world of book blogging) for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

It’s clearly the end of the year—I’ve got a bare-bones collection this week. But who has time to read things that aren’t books right now between the hustle and bustle of December—not to mention the rush to finish off your reading goals of the 2019? (or is that just me?)

Here’s the handful 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:

• Moments in Reading That Salvaged an Often Sour Year—I didn’t think the year was that sour, but okay . . .
• Perfect Gifts for Bookworms: For those who can’t get enough of book culture.
• I’ve got a pair of M. W. Craven reads this week: Writing is a Form of Magic—Everything you never realized you wanted to learn about Craven and his writing process.
• Desert Island Crime with M.W. Craven—Craven answers: “If you were stranded on a desert island and had to choose 8 books to take with you, what would you pick and why?” This is a great list, made even better by his choice of Darkness, Take My Hand over Hannibal Lecter.
• The Music of Harry Bosch—The Michael Connelly Facebook page shared this spotify list this week. Good writing/reading music (even if I really never think Jazz when I read Bosch. Sorry, Harry!)
• 12 Insightful Quotes About Plot—from Before We Go Blog
• How To Crush Your TBR List
• Fifty @ Fifty—Tracy Fenton commemorated her 50th birthday with this list of her favorite 50 books from the last ten years.
• Book Blogger / Reader Spreadsheet Template (2020)—I think I’m replacing my (increasingly clunky) spreadsheet with this one next year.

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

Shorter list this week, with less of the other stuff than usual. Hope I’m not missing anything, and that it’s just the end-of-the-year-blahs. I can understand not a lot of things being put out there in the world this week—you likely noticed that I was pretty quiet. I had big, semi-ambitious (yet attainable) goals for the week and hit none of them. I did get three posts partially written, however, so . . . yeah. That’s pretty lame, actually. Non-blog life was just weird this week and the results (or lack thereof) were plainly visible in my posting. Onward and upward though.

Anyway, 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:

• BBNYA – The Book Bloggers’ Novel of The Year Award – Coming in 2020—A few weeks back, I shared a post announcing the BBNYA, but here’s another one — a bit more detailed.
• 30 Seconds With Your Favorite Author: Book Signing Conversation Tips—Tips that could come in handy (I could’ve used them at least once)
• 7 Things Crime Readers Will No Longer Tolerate: Crime fiction is getting harder to write—and that’s a good thing.—I’m not so sure I’m as intolerant as Christopher Fowler thinks I should be, but . . .
• NPR had some good articles lately: Not A Regular Reader? 4 Strategies To Make Reading A Habit and How To Read More Books
• Hopepunk and Solarpunk: On Climate Narratives That Go Beyond the Apocalypse: Alyssa Hull Tries to Find Optimism in Teaching Cli-Fi to Terrified Students—While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with a lot of what’s said here, I’m intrigued by the ideas of Hopepunk and Solarpunk (particularly the former)
• Black Orchids 2019 , plus a Nero and a BONA—The Wolfe Pack (a society for the appreciation of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series) gave out the Nero Award and the Black Orchid Novella Award
• 2020 – Hot New Books – January – March—Compulsive Readers has put together a list of first quarter releases that could probably fill a schedule by itself.
• The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019: As Chosen by the Experts, the Designers Themselves—LitHub assembled some designers to compile this list of very eye-catching covers.
• My Visit To Harper Collins—Must have been a blast.
• My Top Five Book Blogging Omissions—Reading this makes me think Stephen is Wiser than I am.
• The Books I Gift Most Often—Better than “Who’s your favorite author?”/”What’s your favorite book?” Ramona Mead answers “What books do you give the most?” (which is also easier than the others).

Also, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Maya’s Musings, David W, Rain Alchemist, alittlebookproblem, forwarddog and Tim Onayemi for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

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?

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 Strange Things You Find on Authors’ Websites
• A Simple Solution for Bookish Forgetfulness—This (and the article it references) are pretty good reads, and there’s some good ideas within.
• On The Casual Sociopathy of The Traditional Mystery: Should There Be Such Thing As A “Comfortable” Murder Mystery?—I’ve wondered about this a little myself lately. Not as articulately, I note.
• The Joys of Rereading Books on Audio—This is my experience precisely.
• “Who is your favourite fictional detective?”—Novel Heights compiles answers from various authors.
• The Veracity and Heart of Modern Action Thrillers: Infusing Esoteric Fact and Heritage into Fast-Paced Crime—Good piece. And (as it was intended to do), makes me want to read Eldridge’s new book.
• (At least) Two New Twenty Palaces Books!—Someone else is as excited as I am about these upcoming books.
• #R3COMM3ND3D2019—I can’t believe I forgot to mention this last week. Damppebbles has brought back their series where authors/bloggers/etc. get a chance to talk about 3 books from the last year they’re excited about. You need/want TBR ideas? Great place to find some.
• Why I Reread Books—Witty and Sarcastic Book Club’s got a great post on this (also ties into some of the earlier pieces this week).
• Canon fodder: Please, I am begging you, stop telling me which good books are actually bad.—Good stuff.
• The importance of endings—Really well done.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Maxine Unleashes Doomsday by Nick Kolakowski—Post-apocalytic heist novel (well, more mid-apocalyptic), is just a blast. I tried to titlesummarize my thoughts about it yesterday.
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Illustrated Edition) by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Elise Hurst—I got this a few days ago, it’s just gorgeous. I don’t need another copy of this fantastic book. But I don’t care. This trailer gives you a feel for the illustrations.
• The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge—”An action-packed thriller about a Chinese-Norwegian modern-day ninja with family issues who fights the Los Angeles Ukrainian mob, sex traffickers, and her own family to save two desperate women and an innocent child.” How do you say no to that?
• The Last Dance by Martin L. Shoemaker—An investigation into space mutiny. Looks like a winner.
• Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky—I’ve been wanting to try Tchaikovsky for a while now, this might be the one that gets me.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Tom Gamache, proofreadingebooks (the name is making me nervous about my content), Yvonne and Fragilistic for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

This week’s list seems a bit more miscellaneous than usual, but that’s cool. I honestly didn’t think I’d spent enough time online this week to cobble together a post. Thankfully, I was wrong.

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:

• 10 Famous Authors With Surprising Day Jobs: Or, 10 reasons to hang on to that office job
• Should We Pay to Enter Bookstores?—The cheapskate in me balks at this, but really, not a bad idea.
• The Most Popular Books In Libraries, July–September 2019—It’s sort of a pain to read, but if you skip around by headings, this is some pretty interesting stuff.
• 7 Crime Tropes We Really Could Do Without: It’s time for a genre full of cliches to clean up its act.—Yes. But, no. If the right author can make any of these tropes work really, really well. They are overdone, but if pulled off juuuuuust right, I love ’em.
• Atmospheric Pressure: The Big Sleep at Eighty: 80 years ago, Raymond Chandler reinvented crime fiction with a novel that valued atmosphere—and style—above all else.—Case in point.
• How Objective Are Your Reviews?—This is possibly the best post I read this week, we all like to think our evaluations are objective (we might not admit it, but we like to think it), but yeah…they’re not. Unless we’re talking about the end of Harris’ Hannibal, or Dan Brown — because, really, we have to have some standards.
• Dragons of Autumn Twilight Read-Along—I tried to shuffle my schedule so I could do this, but I just couldn’t manage it. But this novel was one of the Big Ones in my development as a reader, you should follow along with what’s produced this month.
• 3 Reasons to Quit the Book You’re Reading—She makes it sound so simple…
• Dear authors, I can dislike your book if I want to! – My Ity Opinion.—but if you don’t quit it, feel free to sound off

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Shattered Bonds by Faith Hunter—Jane Yellowrock is back in the aftermath of the devastating 12th novel to find that things can always get worse. I rambled on about it this week.
• Blue Moon by Lee Child—Jack Reacher. ‘Nuff said.
• Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson—I’m not even sure how to summarize this without reading it. Just click the link.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Lee, likeherdingcatsblog, caffeinefocus, intentforcontent, entertainingly nerdy, The Awesome Dad, and juniorgareth42 for following the blog this week (gotta catch my breath for a moment, that was a long list). Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?

So I saw a pretty decent bump in traffic this week thanks to The Write Reads featuring one of my posts as their Review of the Day, if you’re reading this because of them–hi! Thanks for stopping by. I’ve been meaning to say this for a few weeks now, but I keep forgetting—if you’re not following The Write Reads feeds on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram, you really should be. Their Post/Review of the Days are some of the best reading you’ll see from Book Bloggers out there. Sure, you’ll end up having too much to read (either posts or the books they talk about), but it’s worth it.

Anyway, 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 (especially if you follow The Write Reads), but just in case:

• Every Child Can Become a Lover of Books: Michelle Martin, a professor at the University of Washington, helps librarians create spaces that are welcoming to kids of all backgrounds
• 7 Author Pseudonyms That Were Cracked—and 6 That Haven’t Been (Yet)—Who doesn’t love a good pseudonym?
• Beowulf: Epic Adventure or Tale of Loss?—I just love the fact that there are people blogging about Beowulf.
• All the *WARNINGS*!!!—The Oranguatan Librarian sounds off on Trigger Warnings. As per the usual, it’s a good read.
• Fearless, free and feminist: the enduring appeal of Jack Reacher—Lest any reader be put off by the title (yeah, I’m talking about you), there’s very little feminism in this piece (I expected more, anyway). What there’s a lot of is good analysis of the series, the character and why so many like them.
• The Evolution of Dragons in Western Literature: A History—Hic sunt dracones, do you need me to say anything more to get you to click?
• We Need Noir—Because the Truth Is Dark, Messy, and Sometimes Ugly
• Fantasy: A Plethora of Choices—The Witty & Sarcastic Blog takes a look at types of Fantasy Novels (particularly handy for those not sure where to wade into the genre).
• 5 of the Most Useful Animal Sidekicks in Fiction—I’m only familiar with one of the 5, and there’s a part of me that wants to respond with a much longer list. But…how do you not recommend anything that talks about Falcor? Quick poll: how many of you have read the book The Neverending Story? Without getting into the merits of it, were you better off just watching the first movie?
• Judging a book by it’s cover…—I love stories about cover design (as long-time readers know and maybe regret), here’s some gorgeous examples of what a cover can be.
• How Do You Read Series?—I think I would go insane if I lived like this reader (that’s not a criticism, it’s a bit of “how do you manage that?” said with incredulity tinged with awe). What about you?
• Book Blogger Spreadsheet Template—my own spreadsheet is getting unwieldy and overly-complicated (it’s still a lot better than it was!), I think I might abandon mine next year for this one. It’s a work of art.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon — or, if I had more time, I’d get to (the last four of these fit into this category. I can’t see finding the time for them, but I bet it’d be worth it):
• Famous in Cedarville by Erica Wright—a small-town mystery that leads to Hollywood in all it’s glory and vice. My post about the book.
• The Night Fire by Michael Connelly—Bosch. Ballard. Haller. ‘Nuff said. I have 2.6 books to go before I get to this one. Yeah, I’m counting down already.
• The Girl with No Face by M. H. Boroson—an Urban Fantasy set in 19th Century San Francisco’s Chinatown? Fantastic idea.
• Ghoster by Jason Arnop—I’ve seen this title a lot this week, this social media satire/thriller looks like a good way to spend some time.
• From Hell to Breakfast by Meghan Tifft—I’m not even going to try to summarize this one—click the link read more and get as tempted as I am.
• Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters by Emily Roberson—Percy Jackson meets Reality TV?

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Anthony Day Grandin, Donald Wilson, lisasbooksgemsandtarot (say that five times fast), Adrianna and Scarlett Backus for following the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger, and use that comment box, would you?