Tag: Saturday Miscellany Page 39 of 61

Yup. It’s late — but still Saturday. Spent some quality time with the Mrs. instead of with my laptop. But that’s over, priorities back to where they usually are. 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:

• Boys Don’t Read Enough: Girls read more than boys in just about every developed country, and it’s a big reason they have better educational outcomes. — I’m not sure this is news, but, you never know.
• Let’s twist again, like we did last summer…or let’s not! — Great post from The Beardy Book Blogger.
• Good Reading: The Initial October Daye Trilogy — Aaron Golden has a good post about the Toby Daye books.
• Why Agatha Christie Is Still the Queen of Crime: The Deeply Human Puzzles of Mystery’s Famous Master — a little secret just between us: I’ve never read Christie. This reminds me I really should.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang — an action-packed novel introducing a math genius hero? Give Paul’s Picks post about it a read for more.

Odds ‘n ends over the week about books and reading that caught my eye (yeah, it was a slim week — unless you’re into Reed Farrel Coleman). You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:

• The Strange Writing Habits of Famous Authors — blah
• Raised in South Central, Joe Ide Expands the Territory of L.A. Noir — blah
• The Cartel author Don Winslow says The Border sequel ‘is going to make some people angry’ — Some details on the end of Winslow’s Cartel trilogy, coming in February. Which gives me enough time to read the first two.
• The Writing Dead — The NYT talks about Reed Farrel Coleman and Colorblind
• . . . as does The Big Thrill: Between the Lines: Reed Farrel Coleman (but in greater detail)
• Why Alcoholism and Crime Fiction Are Still Entwined: Reckoning with a Long Legacy of Drinking and Noir — and then Coleman talks about Alcohol, Crime Fiction and his recent moves with Jesse Stone
• Superheroes in Prose by Kristen Brand — Some good recommendations here.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Black Moss by David Nolan — an award-winning reporter takes a swing at fiction in this dark-looking mystery.
• The Agony House by Cherie Priest, Tara O’Connor — looks like a ghost story told in a way reminiscent of I Am Princess X, which sounds pretty cool.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to francestaylorblg, ingrid baker, and blgkaelabl for following the blog this week.

Not my most productive (reading or writing) week, but have had fun with it. Last night I was told I could pass for Rothfuss if I grew my hair out (I’ll take that as a compliment) and I got to see and meet Craig Johnson (post to come) — nothing wrong with an evening like that.

Lacking a segue, 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:

• “It was, and remains, not a book that you happen to read, like any other, but a book that happens to you: a chunk bitten out of your life.” Says Anthony Lane in this great piece about The Hobbit, which was published 81 years ago today (the book, not the piece, which was from 2001).
• Ace Atkins reminds us that Robert B. Parker would’ve been 86 this week with some nice words and great pic of one of the authors that changed my life/aesthetic.
• Books nobody can read
• Audible vs Libro.fm: Which Audiobooks Option Should You Choose?
• Either way, you may want to get your hands on this audiobook: Tatiana Maslany to narrate special-edition Hunger Games audiobook: First listen — which doesn’t technically make Katniss a seestra, but it’s close.
• A book by any other name: why does the US change so many titles? — amusing to read, but not super-informative
• Speaking of that . . . What 10 Classic Books Were Almost Called

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Lethal White by “Robert Galbraith”– the fourth novel in the Cormoran Strike series — a mystery novel that’s the size of an epic fantasy (enjoying it, but wishes the point could get cut to a bit more often).
• How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North — in case you time travel to the far past and accidentally wipe out civilization, this book will show you how to rebuild civilization. Which sounds handy.
• Soulless (Illustrated Hardcover Edition) by Gail Carriger — I rather enjoyed the books in this series that I read before getting distracted. Maybe this new edition will help me get back into it.
• Battlestar Suburbia by Chris McCrudden — humorous SF, I’m not going to try to summarize in a sentence. Click the link.
• The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole — the middle, and likely darker, novel in the Sacred Thrones trilogy.

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

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 Top 10 Books Everyone Lies About Reading — Reader’s Digest hits us up with a list — I don’t know why anyone would bother lying about reading these, they’re all pretty easy reads (Hawthorne excepted).
• The Magical First Reviews of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US in 1998 — 20 years since Potter invaded our bookstores? Whoa. This collection from some of the initial reviews is pretty fun — and at least one was pretty prescient (if underestimating things a bit).
• What is a Review Worth? — One author and blogger’s take on the value of reader reviews.
• Along those lines, Book Riot brings us: How to Support a Book or Favorite Author: 6 Easy Tips (Including Many Free Ones)
• And Aunty Fox reminds us that it’s not just authors/books that need our help, but Small Publishers, too.
• A Reader’s Guide to K-9 Mysteries: 7 Crime Novels Featuring Working Dogs
• How To Read More Than One Book At A Time, According To Reddit Users Who Do It — some handy tips.
• 21 Ways to Organize your TBR Pile

A Book-ish Related Podcast Episode you might want to give a listen to:
• Episode 461 | Reed Farrel Coleman Interview on Hank Garner’s Author Stories Podcast. A lot of this I’d heard before, but not all of it. I also assumed Coleman got the Jesse Stone gig the way he did and was surprised to learn otherwise — great story.

This Week’s New Release that I’m Excited About:
• Colorblind by Reed Farrel Coleman — a pivotal book for the series/character and a plot that’s eerily timely (but unintentionally so, if you listen to the podcast above). Here’s my take on the book

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:

• Is social media influencing book cover design? — huh.
• A Letter to Burt Reynolds: Why you meant the world to a young kid growing up in the South — TBH, I’ve never been the biggest Reynolds fan, I think mostly it was age and what my parents allowed me access to when it would’ve been easier for me to see his work (not arguing with that, for the record). Reading this, by Ace Atkins (in case you were wondering why I was linking to it) makes me wish I’d watched more of his films.
• How to Talk About Policing In Crime Fiction: Good Cops, Bad Apples, and Finding the Nuance in Between
• Murder Book Podcast — Michael Connelly gets back to his roots in this upcoming podcast.
• Craig Johnson on Westerns, Decency, and Longmire Days — a great interview that shouldn’t be read by anyone who isn’t up to date with at least The Western Star — unless you’re still needing convinced that you should read Johnson. Then you won’t care about the spoilers and may find a reason to pick up one of his books.
• Night and Silence: 3 reasons this may be the best October Daye book yet — I’m about halfway through, and I agree with everything said here.
• The Big Idea: Greg Van Eekhout — this particular Big Idea post is probably the most effective that I’ve read in this series.
• So, this past Thursday was National Read a Book day, which I didn’t realize until it was 8 pm or so. I mean, I still read, but I’d have liked to mark the day somehow. Here are a pair of lists that will help track those kinds of dates: A Calendar of Book Holidays To Celebrate Reading All Year Long, from Book Riot and Flavorwire’s Ultimate Literary Calendar: A Bookish Event for Every Day of the Year — blah

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire — my favorite ongoing UF series (until Butcher starts publishing regularly again) gets a new installment, it’s intense, it’s good. I’ll probably be a wreck when I finish it.
• Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson — I’ve been waiting on the edge of my seat since about 30 seconds after reading the last page of The Western Star. This is gonna be huge. Johnson’s doing a reading in town at the end of the month, and a book comes with the ticket, so I have to wait a little longer before I dive in. On the plus side, I didn’t have to choose between this and Night and Silence (that’s a choice that could turn me into Chidi Anagonye)
• The Man Who Came Uptown by George Pelecanos
• The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette — a UFO lands and does nothing for 3 years?
• Voyage of the Dogs by Greg van Eekhout — Homeward Bound in space? Whatever, read that Big Idea article linked above and you’ll see why I feel like I have to read this.

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

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:

• Rediscovered Books, Boise’s best bookstore, is 12 and is throwing itself a party today. I’ll try to make it down, I highly recommend local readers do the same.
• Is Literature Dead? — asks The Paris Review
• Friday essay: the meaning of food in crime fiction
• Deeper and Deeper — I’m not sure I agree with this take on the state of Crime Fiction in the past, but I appreciate his take on the present state of it.
• The Indisputably Best Dogs in (Contemporary) Literature: Beyond Lassie, Cujo, Marley, and Other Very Good Boys — there are some significant lacunae here, but it’s a dandy list.
• Quiz: Would You Survive A Thriller Novel? — According to this quiz, I would — because I thought about my answers. If I had taken the quiz honestly, I’d probably be dead between questions two and three.
• Nicole Hewitt speaks for us all

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames — this follow-up to Kings of the Wyld has a LOT to live up to, but something tells me that Eames is going to pull it off.
• Stoned Love by Ian Patrick — Similarly, Patrick’s Rubicon is going to be hard to match. Enemies on both sides of the law come after this undercover cop, and while I expect he’ll survive, it won’t be easy — but it’ll be done with a certain bit of flair. Fahrenheit Press continues to mess up my well-laid reading plans with their surprise releases.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Cali’s bookcamp, lifecanbebeautifulyolo and wisdomfromafather for following the blog this week.

Wow. Who knew that coming back home and trying to get ready to resume our lives was going to be more disruptive to finding stuff for this post/reading and other bloggy things? Turns out that running hundreds of errands and meeting with all sorts of folk doesn’t leave as much time for bookish pursuits as sitting in doctor’s lobbies, hospital rooms, or hotel rooms. Go figure.

Honestly, I went 2 days in a row without reading any book this week. Finding 30 minutes one morning to fix that made me feel so much better.

So it’s a small list this week, but there’s some interesting stuff here, I think.

Without further ado: 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:

• Why Irish crime fiction is in murderously good health — The subtitle, “If Irish crime fiction has a signal crime it is corruption – public and private, spiritual and secular” sums it up well. I haven’t read a lot of Irish Crime Fiction, but what I have fits this — and is really good.
• 10 Little-Known Children’s Books by Famous Writers: Featuring at Least Two of the Best Titles Ever Written — worth reading for those two titles alone. I’m not kidding. There is one book on this list I am going to have to try to track down.
• Don DeLillo’s Novels, Ranked — I really got into DeLillo in college, and still want to read him (I have more than a few to catch up on), but ever since Falling Man and The Body Artist I haven’t been able to make myself. Still, this is good TBR fodder — and a good way for me to point out that White Noise and Underworld are two of the best things you’ll ever read.
• Yes, a short list this week. But that just gives you plenty of time to read this. August 22 was the 125th anniversary of Dorothy Parker’s birth — which led to her trending on Twitter. I had to do a double take when I saw that, because I was pretty sure she was dead already (1967, to be precise). Take a bit to read some of these great tweets about her.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to RABT Book Tours and PR for following the blog this week.

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:

• Gutenberg’s Revenge: Why books are the only form of physical media whose sales are growing
• Five Reasons to Keep Track of Every Single Book You Read
• Pleasure reading has many benefits — I was exposed to this because of the Nero Wolfe discussion, but there’s a lot more than that
• My Intimate Relationships With Books IV: Foraging at Used Bookstores — I just saw this the day before I went to Powell’s for the first time, kinda neat to see it and my own favorite, Rediscovered Books mentioned together.
• Hollywood Heat: Michael Connelly — I linked to an outtake of this last week, here’s the video from Dateline NBC where “Best-selling author Michael Connelly and Josh Mankiewicz hit the streets of Hollywood.”
• Will The Real Kinsey Millhone Please Stand Up? –How a Private Investigator Became a Writer — one PI-turned-writer tells her story
• eSpotlight – Nero Wolfe Mysteries — The San José Public Library gives a handy introduction to the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin books
• 5 Classics of Rural Crime Fiction — I meant to list this last week, somehow overlooked it. A nice little list from Nick Kolakowski.
• Interview with Rex Weiner — for those of you who didn’t know (like me) that Ford Fairlaine had a history before Andrew Dice Clay. I maybe have to track these stories down.
• Stav Sherez: crime fiction and the challenge of technology
• Doug TenNapel’s BIGFOOT BILL graphic novel — Check out the Indiegogo funding campaign
• Death By TBR — a poem that speaks to many of us from chattymand (Hat Tip: Paul Cochrun)

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• Know Me From Smoke by Matt Phillips — a convicted murderer out on a technicality, a widow still wanting her husbands killer to be caught, “a journey into the shadowy terrain of murder, lost love, and the heart’s lust for vengeance.” Check it out for the fantastic cover, am assured the words are better.
• Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir by Matt Carter and Fiona J. R. Titchenell — a PI with a past and a Super-Hero on the rise team up in a pulpy noir.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to EduPub, Liv Miles, simplymyswank, and Adam Wall for following the blog this week.

Hey! I’m back — I think. We’ve moved into a different place for the remainder (probably) of our time away from home — a Ronald McDonald House. It is great — by the way, absolutely worth tossing your coins (or bills or checks) into the boxes while getting some fries and whatnot — anyhow, their WiFi seems pretty stable, and there are no immediate plans to update it (I think it was a bad job of installing new hardware that killed things at the last place — the poor hotel staff didn’t have a clue what to do with so many angry customers). I should be okay for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, I was still able to pull together 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:

• Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was posting about OceanofPDF and a diverse group of authors taking umbrage with their stealing? Well here’s an update: ‘Elitist’: angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website — authors being attacked for wanting to get paid for their work. World’s gone mad. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
• The Crack Squad of Librarians Who Track Down Half-Forgotten Books: Reuniting stumped readers with the books from the edges of their memories. — Awesome.
• It’s Never Too Late to Be a Reader Again
• An American Original: Rex Stout — this is just a great short piece about Rex Stout and his fiction. I love finding new things written about Stout and/or Nero Wolfe. Also, it has my favorite lines from P. G. Wodehouse.
• The Magic of Longmire Days: Thousands of Readers Make a Summer Pilgrimage to Wyoming. Why? — I have got to make my way there.
• Learn how Harry Bosch in print wound up in San Fernando — Michael Connelly was on Dateline NBC last night — I haven’t seen it yet, and the episode wasn’t online last I had the opportunity to check. But here’s a little taste in the form of some bonus material.
• Lee Child and Naked Blue at work — The video is described as “Lee Child introduces Jen and Scott Smith of Naked Blue as they finish their album: “Lee Child and Naked Blue” available November 2nd, 2018.” Yes, an entire album of songs set in the Reacher-verse. I am so there.
• If you love to read, you’ll get lost in these 11 charming books about books
• Book Bloggers & How To Approach Them — I’ve seen this bouncing around on Twitter a bit and after reading it you’ll see why.
• My Book Blogger Grumbles Vol 1 — there’s a touch of overlap here, but not much
• This homemade literary quote clock is the best way to recycle an old Kindle — I’ve got one that just might do the trick. This is pretty cool — I’ve messed around a little bit with one of the web-based versions inspired by this. Really great idea.
• Your Favourite Book Characters Drawn By People Who’ve Never Read the Book — ” We decided to conduct an experiment to see what people would draw having heard only a single description. We chose not to tell people they’d be drawing book characters – aside from asking them to draw the person based on the description they heard, we provided them with no context at all. The character description we chose are from famous novels and are of famous characters, not that the volunteering artists knew that. We thought it would be interesting to opt for books that had already been made into films, so we could highlight the differences between what people pieced together from the book vs what the films show us the actors should look like.” Some of these are freakin’ fantastic, I should add.

This Week’s New Releases I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
• In the Stacks: Author’s Enhanced Edition by Scott Lynch — a revised and expanded version of his short story.
• See You Soon, Afton by Brent Jones — the second of four novellas about Afton Morrison, everyone’s favorite librarian/would-be-murderer.
• In Truth and Claw by Ari Marmell — the fourth Mick Oberon novel, and the second reminder that I need to read the second Mick Oberon novel (also, #s 3 and 4) — bought it years ago, just need to, you know read it. A Fae living in 1930’s Chicago and working as a PI. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to read that?

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Leah’s Bookish Obsession and Johnny for following some form of the blog this week.

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:

• Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – in charts — I’m not the biggest fan of Wuthering Heights, but this collection of charts/infographics/etc. is great. I love #4.
• The Dos and Don’ts of Supporting Your Local Library
• The Torture Box: A Critical Look at Flannery O’Connor and Her Disproportionate Retributions — I’m not sure I agree with everything here, but this is a really good article on one of the best writers this continent has produced.
• How World War One Gave Rise to the Traditional Mystery: Restoring the Status Quo in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction
• Memories From the South: In Elvis We Trust — This has nothing to do with books or reading, but this is an interesting piece of writing by Ace Atkins
• Rob Hart on Ending a Series — I’ve meant to read the series he talks about, but I haven’t gotten to it. But still, there’s some good thoughts on ending a series.
• Chet the Dog Writes About Happiness — a lot of this is silly, but there’s some great Chet & Bernie stuff here (what isn’t great about Chet & Bernie?) — and an interesting use of the series.
• There’s Something About Harry: A Look into Jim Butcher’s Character Harry Dresden
• Ten Changes Made in the Lord of the Rings Novelization — this was just great fun to read. Hat tip: Harry Connolly.

I didn’t see any new releases this week that really appealed to me — as is generally the case for a fifth week of the month. More time to catch up.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to http120111324 (which is one of the stranger monikers I’ve come across online, which isn’t a bad thing), Clarissa, and Jenn for following the blog this week.