Citizen Reader

A weekly selection of reading and book news, sometimes with completely inappropriate commentary.

Wow, J.K. Rowling writes fast: she's already penned the sequel movie to Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Everyone's turning to writing thrillers...even Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate.

The Gay Talese situation. In short, Talese is a well-known writer of the "new journalism," like The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World. He's currently disowning his new nonfiction book because it seems he relied a bit heavily on the definition of an unreliable narrator.

If you like McSweeney's, and A Game of Thrones, you are going to love this link. (Related: if you can't wait for Season 7 of Game of Thrones, well, you're going to have to.)

Scholastic to publish still more American Girl books. Are American Girl dolls still a thing? Who knew?

Studying steampunk: the documentary.

Ooh, I just put this book on hold at the library. Now I'm really interested to see it.

A round-up of new crime fiction. I really don't like crime fiction but it seems like all that people are reading these days. On a related note, that article's from the New York Times, and I've hit my limit of ten free articles for the month, which blows, because I'd kind of like to see some other articles, like this one: Two Books Recount How Our Postal System Created a Communications Revolution. Is it just me or have they really upped the quality of their book writing lately?

Do I have to re-evaluate James Patterson? Because I'd still prefer not.

I'm really starting to like millennials. They voted for Bernie Sanders, and TV is really important to them.

They're giving book and TV deals to nine-year-olds now!

Okay, sometimes I find Amy Schumer's show clips funny. And now her head writer has a book of essays out.

Marvel's working on the whole diversity thing: their new Iron Man "is a fifteen-year-old black girl."

Now Jonah Lehrer is getting book deals out of apologizing for lying and plagiarizing in previous books. Tee hee: MobyLives weighs in.

BookShots, BookBreaks, brother, I miss the days when we sometimes had a chance to read for twenty whole minutes in a row. (Related: Harlequin is also looking into expanding into the "literary" market.)

Audiobooks: they're great, okay? But they're not the same as books.

Clear your schedule for the next few minutes: you've got to look over the Second Half of 2016 books preview at The Millions (it's the fiction list). Anything there look good to you?

This is a very witty story about Amazon building a bookstore in Manhattan. Please go read it immediately.

Amazon, Amazon, always Amazon: Audible is now launching on-demand audio services and channels.

Here's a guy after my own heart: Dennis Loy Johnson says, about adult coloring books, "they make me despair for humanity."

The Huffington Post on a new way to help you find what you want to on Netflix. This is an interesting article, describing their new bot for offering "personalized" TV and movie recommendations. I've never understood the difficulty with book and movie or TV "discoverability"--everywhere I turn there's another book or TV show I want to watch--but perhaps now the problem is there's too much available, and we need to narrow our choices down. But I'd always rather narrow my choices down based on a PERSON's suggestion, not a BOT's or an ALGORITHM's. How can we all be talking all the time (it seems we are) without ever offering each other any recommendations?

Christopher Myers: will launch a new book imprint at Random House Children's

Reddit Book Club pick: Emma Newman's Planetfall. Anyone here belong to any online book clubs? How do you like them?

Top trends, as found by Amazon in 2016: psychological thrillers and books on healthy eating are hot. Wow, Amazon, thanks for blowing the lid off nookie with that research.

This week's Obligatory Neil Gaiman Post*: book trailer for his How to Talk To Girls comic book adaptation.

Completely unrelated to books: Russell Brand is going to be a father! This news makes me happy, for whatever reason. I really enjoy Russell Brand.

*When I wrote for the Readers' Advisor Online blog, I scanned probably 500-600 Internet headlines a day, and nearly every day, there was some sort of headline about author Neil Gaiman. I couldn't get over the guy's ubiquity. So I thought I'd continue that trend, because now my eye is just drawn to Neil Gaiman headlines no matter what I do.