Tag: Saturday Miscellany Page 35 of 61

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:

• Comeback story: A new chapter for indie bookstores—”While their numbers aren’t what they once were, independent bookstores are reclaiming their place in society. Behind their surprise resurgence is renewed emphasis on fostering community.” Yeah, I’ve posted a variation on this story before, and I’ll keep posting them as long as they are written.
• A #thread about #preorders.—A great thread about the business side of publishing.
• The Radical Transformation of the Textbook—Textbooks aren’t really the kind of thing I tend to talk about here (although, I can think of a few that I could have, if this existed in the 90’s), but this is pretty fascinating.
• Last Stand in Lychford—Paul Cornell announces (well, echoes Tor’s announcement) that next year’s Lychford novella will be the end. Which is a shame, but I never expected the series to, well, be a series. We got three or four more of what I expected, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he wraps things up (and what happens right before that, actually).
• Megan Abbott on the Difference Between Hardboiled and Noir: In Conversation with the Author of Give Me Your Hand—I haven’t read a lot of Abbott, but I liked what I have—but this discussion about the distinction between hardboiled and noir is fantastic. I’m going to refer to it a lot (I should probably track down her dissertation).
• Why Hacking is the Future of Crime Fiction—sure, it’s a bit self-serving, “hey, my novel is the future!”, but it’s a great point. And his book seems promising. But so often (on screen and in print) hacking in fiction is so . . . hacky?
• Cartoonist Randall Munroe Will Be Your Answer Man—Not sure this book is for me, but I’ll probably try it, Munroe rarely disappoints.
• Summer Flings – 5 Fantasy Standalones—cute idea for a list, at least two good books on the list (have heard good things about at least one other).
• Classically Cool- Let’s Talk Classics!—I dig this post from the Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub (incidentally, I don’t see that much sarcasm there — wazzup with that, pal?). I’ve been trying to find the time to write a similar post myself, but in the meantime go read hers.
• Are books still relevant today?—Obviously, the answer is a resounding, “YES!”, but you should still read the post.
• The Ultimate Summer Playlist to Inspire Your Summer Booklist—I’ve never heard (to my knowledge) any of the songs on this list, and probably wouldn’t like most of them. But, I thought this was a cool idea, so am passing it along. What songs/books would you add?

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Author Stories Podcast Episode 692 | Robert Crais Talks A Dangerous Man—fun, quick moving, interview with Crais.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• A Dangerous Man by Robert Crais—possibly Crais’ best since Suspect, loved this novel about Joe Pike running errands and stumbling onto a kidnapping. I’ll talk more about this early next week.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Vee Aozoraa, happytonic, Elizabeth Ruggiero and adiswings for following the blog this week.

A very diverse batch for ya this week, but there are some gems here among 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:

• Online book-selling scams steal a living from writers—An Op-Ed from the LA Times
• Why Don’t I Read All My Books? Karen Olsson on the Ghosts on Her Shelves
• The Perils of Designing a Cover for a Novel You Truly Love—I’ve never heard of this designer or the book, but this was pretty neat.
• The Backwards Bookshelf: Aesthetic or Abominable?—there are strange people in the world
• We Asked 13 Novelists, From Lee Child to Ruth Ware, ‘What’s the Best Murder You Ever Wrote?’—it’s from the New York Times, so there’s a paywall you may have to contend with, but it’s a good use of your 1 free article per whatever…
• The Fictional Foods We Wish Were Real—I thought this was a re-run, but can’t find it in the archives. A fun thing I should have posted last year.
• Finding Our Way Into Fantasy Fiction—I really dug this post.
• 25 Literary Characters Sorted Into Hogwarts Houses—a fun little post from the deluge of posts in honor of this week’s birthday of a certain Boy Who Lived and his author.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Chances Are . . . by Richard Russo—this seems out-of-the-norm for Russo, but should still be worth the read
• Dark Age by Pierce Brown—another installment in the Red Rising saga, this one is huge and looks good. A little daunting, really.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to lindajacksonblog and Self Development for following the blog this week.

Unexpected fatigue and dadding kept me from being as productive this week as I’d thought I would be six days ago — I spent an entire day without touching my laptop! Practically un-heard of.

Still, I managed to find 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:

• Barnes & Noble’s fate rests in the hands of a British indie bookstore owner — It’s just as convenient for me to go to an actual independent book store as it is to get to B&N, so I really don’t have much of a dog in this race — but still, I know a healthy B&N is good for publishing in the States.
• 14 Great Readers’ Advisory Tools You May Not Know — I should use some more of these, but I tend to lose hours when I look at, say TVTropes.
• Raymond Chandler: The Art of Beginning a Crime Story: The 10 Greatest Opening Paragraphs from a Noir Master — In honor of Chandler’s 131st birthday, they shared some of his openings (which are just about the best opening paragraphs ever)
• Behind the Scenes: The Making of the Heart of Barkness Cover! — Maybe not the most enlightening of posts, but it’s fun. And I’ll always take an excuse to link to something about Chet and Bernie.
• Nick Kolakowski – A BOLO Books Composite Sketch — a nice interview with blog fave Kolakowski.
• Crime writers mystified by Colm Tóibín’s criticism: Literary author’s dismissal of genre fiction provokes backlash — Last week Colm Tóibín (a literary writer of some note, apparently),who I was introduced to by this brouhaha, said the typical snobbish things about genre fiction. Which is really just an excuse for genre writers to fire back, which is generally amusing. Not surprisingly, Steve Cavanagh had one of the best responses (all are good, Stephen Fry and Declan Burke in particular).
• The Silence of the Lambs: The Seminal Serial Killer Novel, and Still the Best — Title says it all. Great post.
• Time to switch genres. Seanan McGuire’s Personal Top Ten Urban Fantasy Books For Adults — I wouldn’t include some of these on my list, and should check out a couple of the others. Still, McGuire knows her subject, it’s good fodder.
• Author Myke Cole talks writing hard science fiction in his space-set Coast Guard novel Sixteenth Watch — Cole’s typically a good interview subject. This really makes me want to read the new one
• 10 High Fantasy Books to Read If You Hate High Fantasy — haven’t read any of these, but I probably should
• A Food Guide To Middle Earth — snicker-worthy

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry — Literary characters being pulled from their books into our world, sounds like a great idea. Until someone starts pulling the villains out for their own ends. Killer concept. Read what my pal over at Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub had to say about it
• The Last Astronaut by David Wellington — in a future where humanity has given up on space exploration, something unknown shows up in our solar system so the last person trained to go into space is called into action. Interesting concept, seeming great execution. See what Char’s Horror Corner had to say.
• The Wolf’s Call by Anthony Ryan — second week in a row for a fantasy title that makes me think about diving into the world some more.
• Jade War by Fonda Lee — I liked Jade City (just not as much as the collective reading community did), an am intrigued by the second volume in the trilogy. Looking forward to seeing what people say about it.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to brian2010, TooFullToWrite and fionac13 for following the blog this week.

Here’s a facepalm moment, I thought I posted this before I closed my browser this afternoon. But…well, what are ya gonna do? Better later than never, eh?

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:

• A Literary Vandal Is Ripping Pages Out of Books and Putting Them Back on Shelves — This person is a monster and must be stopped! (cue dramatic music)
• What is a ‘good bookstore’?
• The Stillness of Reading a Humble Mass-Market Paperback — Jezebel’s not normally a website I’d use for, well, anything. But somehow I stumbled on to this nice piece.
• Mark Haddon on the magic of audiobooks: ‘I haven’t read a book properly until I’ve had it read to me’ — I liked this — and his point about not being able to speed up or slow down is great, I’ve noticed that myself, but couldn’t articulate it as well.
• The Evolution of Walt Longmire: Somewhere Between Laughter and Death: A Bookseller’s Guide to Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Series — only a month until the next installment, and this just gets me eager for it
• How Japanese RPGs Inspired A New Generation Of Fantasy Authors — I wonder if I can use this to get my computer-game fixated son to read some of these books
• 8 Really Strange Facts About Famous Authors
• 8 Book Bloggers Share Their Costs of Book Blogging – Part I — an interesting series from The Quiet Pond
• Do You DNF a Book? — a good post about the topic from Devouring Books
• Tom Gauld’s thriller concept generator — hard to go wrong with Guald

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Bark of Night by David Rosenfelt — one of the stronger non-Christmas-related installments in years. A fast, fun mystery. As I said using more words
• The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter — for reasons beyond my ken, I’ve become resistant to jumping into a new Epic Fantasy series, but this Game of Thrones meets Gladiator, drawing on African traditions adventure just might make me give it a go. Looks great, and my feeds have been glowing about it.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to penninkreviews, Diana and miscellanypages for following the blog this week.

A small (but interesting!) list of odds and ends, a killer bunch of new releases, a nice podcast interview and some new friends. Short intro, good week. Enjoy the post!

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:

• You Should Own Your Favorite Books in Hard Copy — yup
• The State of the Thriller: A Roundtable Discussion: Thriller authors weigh in on the genre’s most pressing issues — the 2018 version of this was great, haven’t had a change to read this year’s, but assume it’s worth the time.
• If Crime Novels Were Food — An odd little post, but fun.
• And the above reminded me of this: Sandwich Ratings — another odd, but fun post from Friend of the Blog, Bookstooge.
• 5 Reasons To Start Reading #UrbanFantasy — A nice lil’ post, I read plenty of UF (not as much as I used to, like most everyone, judging by sales), and have only heard of one of the authors mentioned here.
• Five Ways to Support an Author — yes. Do these.

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episodesyou might want to give a listen to:
• Episode 674 | Abbi Waxman Returns — Hank Garner talks to one of my new favorite authors, Abbi Waxman about her new book.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon is probably the strongest list in months:
• The Chain by Adrian McKinty — The hype for this is huge. And seems desereved. For the 2.7% of you that haven’t heard about this, here’s the synopsis: “You just dropped off your child at the bus stop. A panicked stranger calls your phone. Your child has been kidnapped, and the stranger explains that their child has also been kidnapped, by a completely different stranger. The only way to get your child back is to kidnap another child within 24 hours. Your child will be released only when the next victim’s parents kidnap yet another child, and most importantly, the stranger explains, if you don’t kidnap a child, or if the next parents don’t kidnap a child, your child will be murdered. You are now part of The Chain.” This is either gonna be fantastic or a waste of time. My money’s on the former.
• The Shameless by Ace Atkins — how can this be the ninth Quinn Colson novel already? The stakes have never been higher than they are in this book, sure to be a winner.
• And for an entry with no guns, kidnapping or killings, here’s: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman — a charming tribute to books and readers — I gushed over this one last week.
• Null Set by SL Huang — the second installment in this series isn’t quite as good as the first, but it develops a lot of what was hinted at while setting up bigger things for the future. I dig this character and even “not quite as good” is still a good book, my fuller thoughts are here.
• Ash Kickers by Sean Grigsby — I was blown away by last year’s Smoke Eaters‘ tale of firefighters vs. dragons. And now you add in a Pheonix for the sequel? Come on. . . how do you say no?

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Shana Gorian, Caroline Vincent, Tales of alenshy and The Unseen Library for following the blog this week.

It seems like half of the things I found for this post this week were links I already posted this year. I guess everyone was having a holiday week. Maybe there’s not a lot, but I like what I did see.

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:

• Death of the novel is greatly exaggerated, say UK booksellers
• Adam Hamdy (@adamhamdy) summarizes the case for Books being Cool in this twitter thread, lots of good points in one handy place
• No need to feel guilty about the pleasures of mystery books — this applies to other genres as well.
• My Summer Reading by Michael Connelly — Well, this could easily fill up the rest of a summer.
• About half the book bloggers this year seem to be doing a mid-point best-of lists (I have a hard enough time doing these annually, doing them bi-annually? Fuhgeddaboudit.) A couple of my favorite bloggers have posted theirs — some good things to read here. Check out The Tattooed Book Geek’s My Favourite Books of 2019 (so far). and Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub’s 2019 Mid-year check-in
• Tom Gauld on literary fiction nursery rhymes

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Ink To Ashes by Russell Day — technically, one of last week’s new releases — but I somehow missed the news. Doc Slidesmith (possibly my favorite new character of 2019) and Yakky are back for more Miss Marple-y action (if Miss Marple was a voodoo-practicing, motorcycle riding, tattoo artist with a PhD).
• Heart of Barkness by Spencer Quinn — It’s been four long years since the last Chet & Bernie novel, I’m so looking forward to this new one. Don’t know what it’s about yet — don’t care.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to karishmarele Aurore-Anne-Chehoke, Sovely Matters and chapterinmylife for following the blog this week.