Felt sympathy for that reader over on Tumblr who thought Sayers' GAUDY NIGHT was "too long" & had too much "regular life stuff" happening & not enough quick mystery solving. This is what gives genres a bad name: one-note (easily bored) readers who want action only. 🤔 📚💙 #Mysterysky

As a government information librarian who archives a lot of federal web pages, I strongly recommend this approach. The Internet Archive and similar tools are great, but, as mentioned here, are imperfect tools and there is just too much uncertainty about continued access to federal resources.

Adding a re-read of E.H. Lupton (aka @pretensesoup.bsky.social)'s DIONYSUS IN WISCONSIN to my Fall schedule. Forgot what a jazzy & invigorating catch-you-up that opening scene is when Ulysses meets his old friend Horse at Madison's Lorenzo's Lounge! #ParanormalUrbanFantasy 📚💙 #AlmaMater #UnivOfWI

Humanities Commons is great, and j hope the mass exodus from Academia dot Edu lets us all reconnect there!

Ah phooey...I hate when I decide to DNF a book. One has such hopes. Not completely decided on the one in hand—it's not my usual read, so it may be one of those "It's me not you" things. Will give it a few more sessions. 📚💙

📢Dear beloved authors all. Please include the ISBNs for your titles on your websites. I regularly request that our library system buy your books & it's a real pain in the backside to have to track down the metadata info for your stuff. Thx! 📚💙 #SupportYourLibrary #IndependentBookstores

Jayzus, these EPL players are such drama queens! "Ow! Ow! Someone almost touched my knee. I fall down now. Ow! Ow!" "Oh, no one's looking? I get up now." #soccer #football #EPL ⚽️ 🏃

I like to post the occasional pic of our street library, with its latest comings & goings. Always intrigued by the design & fonts on the book spines. I.e., their legibility (or lack thereof), attractiveness, & effectiveness at making me want to look at the book itself. 💙📚 #BookDesign #CoverArt

Heads up for academically inclined queer/LGBTQ writers & readers. 👉🏾 @queercrimefic.bsky.social 💙📚

"I'll think about that. It would hurt like hell." "What would that matter, if it made a good book?" GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers (pg 311 of the 1936 Harper & Row edition) #FavoriteQuotes 💙📚

Amazed that our local library doesn't have your books! Will be requesting them all this weekend. (PHOSPHATE ROCKS was the bomb too. 😁) 💙📚

How convenient that these paint store color sample strips I've been amassing of late for a household interior redo make for excellent bookmarks! #Booksky #SimplePleasures

For those deleting our Academia dot edu accounts (due to their new exploitative TOC) make sure to follow the instructions quoted below or they'll force you to accept the TOC before you can get to the "delete my account" button. See you all on the open-source alternative hcommons Humanities Commons!

🚨 AUTHORS AND WRITERS 🚨 📚💙 The #1 rule of #booksky is that your self promotional posts may not outnumber your other posts to the feed and almost all of you are in violation of this rule! I get so many complaints about this - it's ruining the feeds and driving everyone's sales down too.

Have put in a hold request at the library for Kamala Harris' new book, 107 DAYS. They've ordered 29 print copies and I'm 74th on the waiting list! Fortunately I have other stuff in my #TBR stack.

Inspired by John Crowley's novel, KA: DAR OAKLEY IN THE RUINS OF YMR (2017), I've added a flock of crows to my academic mystery (WIP), Bk. 3. Curiously, the college coterie of ravens doesn't fight back! 🤔 More here: www.instagram.com/p/DOyDT6YDcd... #AcademicMystery #CollegeCrime #AmWriting

This will always be one of my faves! Sir Patrick declaring that a B is a B (and pronouncing 'zounds' properly). 🎭 #Shakespeare #Hamlet #PatrickStewart youtu.be/hA7lv1SDzno

Hope I'm not stealing @cheaddc.bsky.social's thunder, but I see she's not on this platform much. She just posted this on her IG acct & includes a piece of the abstract. www.instagram.com/p/DOw2JR6jpA... Love seeing marginalized/queer works break the staid glass ceiling of academic scholarship. 🏦👏

👇👇👇 #booksky

Every so often the Tumblr algorithm goes Shakespearean. MACBETH this time. One post speaks of their child having died *immediately* before the play's action & the child is older, not an infant. In another, Duncan is quite old. Both change the interpersonal dynamics hugely. #Shakespeare 🎭

It's fall now, and it's also bisexual awareness week, so I have to talk about Wisconsin Gothic. If you're into creepy autumnal vibes, I have them. If you like chaotic bisexuals, I have those too. Set in the '60s for maximum fun. ehlupton.com/links/ (all links) books2read.com/u/49dN1p (DIW)

So wonderful to hear my old friend Paul Cebar continues to fill the world with his music! Looking forward to picking up his latest album. 🎶

Cutting and drying the almost last of the herbs (the parsley goes today). #herbs #EndOfSummer

I’ve been crafting a content warning statement that addresses one of my WIP mystery series’ ongoing themes: the slow healing of trauma. Whether or not to include them was something I had to consider. New blog post: jajablonski.com/2025/09/16/g... #TriggerWarnings #ContentWarning

So, WordPress wants me to contribute to the dumbing down of the reading population. Just got a note stating my latest blog post "... is considered very difficult to read. Try to make shorter sentences, using less difficult words to improve readability." Multi-syllabic words are too much now? 😠

Happy Birthday to Mr. Lem! I've always enjoyed his MEMOIRS FOUND IN A BATHTUB. 📖🛁 #Booksky

Insanely pleased to own a creation by Lisa Truax (IG: @sheepishpotter & @pickwickpottery), Assoc Professor of Art & Design at Saint Mary's Univ of Minn. She is an active designer & artist whose work, in addition to ceramics, includes graphic & web design, illustration, & photography: lisatruax.com

Ah phooey...I'm not an audio learner so have never gotten into audio books. But there's a book I really like and would love to hear it read to me. Turns out the author (big name) recorded it. And it's, well, not awful, but it's utterly flat and pedestrian. DNF City after only 3 sentences. ☹️ #Booksky

Shout out to everyone only now learning that "Albert Einstein was reclusive at the end of his career, shunning public engagements." Really meant, "For the last *20 years* of his career, Einstein opposed US racism by only speaking publicly at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

For people in a state that is asking for a prescription, try a CVS MinuteClinic. Some MinuteClinic’s are getting around restrictions by having nurses on site who will give you a prescription during a visit. They ask to confirm if you are high risk but don’t ask for proof.

Take some advice from someone who has seen this play many, many times before: this is the same old predatory publishing model, not some innovative step forward. “We deduct our expenses before—“ No, that’s where you can stop reading, everything else is now irrelevant.

Have just preordered the latest edition of GRAPHIC ARTISTS GUILD HANDBOOK: PRICING AND ETHICAL GUIDELINES (coming out in November). #Booksky #GraphicArts bookshop.org/p/books/grap...

Grinding my molars here. Two of the self-publishing info books I got from the library have no indexes! A third does but the book itself doesn't address contracts or licensing beyond 5 very general paragraphs. Argh! 🤬 #SelfPublishing #indexes #licensing

I'd rather be writing today, but doing some necessary research instead. (Publication info in the alt text.) #BookDesign #CoverArt #LegalGuide

The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Ursula K. Le Guin's classic science fiction novel "The Dispossessed". Here, her son Theo Downes-Le Guin considers the artistic process behind it – and why it still resonates today

I’m trying a little trick to deal with insomnia: staying in bed with a small notebook and a lighted-tip ink pen. This morning (between 1-4 a.m.) I was able to scribble five 3.5x5 in pages of notes, finally resolving, at least in principle, three critical plot points. #AmWriting

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Dipping into Sayers' GAUDY NIGHT (1935) for some comfort reading tonight. More than before I am struck how hard she had to push to make her clutch of strong academic women be strong. #DorothyLSayers #DorothySayers #booksky #CrimeFiction #AcademicMystery

Was at a "wool & sheep fair" today. While looking at some handcrafted walking sticks, a person in the next booth over lectured me on how to use one. I happened to be using a PT-recommended forearm crutch for a knee issue. Her final words: "I've been using a cane for 30 yrs, so I know." #BusyBody

Exciting to see this article in the NYT this week! My entire family of 12 all sewed. Clothing but other stuff. (My 6'8" bro sewed a camp tent!). Pro Tip: Our local library has a "Library of Things" with sewing machines to lend! 🪡 #GiftArticle #LibraryOfThings www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/s...

While I appreciate that some self-publish authors use Amazon Kindle to distribute their work, having that be the *only* format they offer is problematic for those of us who would prefer to buy from non-Zon distributers. #SelfPublishing

Not only has the creator of Strange Planet (Nathan Pyle) written a bedtime book, but it's chock full of science, humor, and some seriously sweet backmatter for the younger set. We talk! #kidlit 📚👍 afuse8production.slj.com/2025/09/04/t...

Still laughing over having misread an announcement for B&N's current preorder sale as a preorder sale for "Ben & Jerry's." 💙📚 🍦🍨 🤣

When I taught MLS students, we talked about this sort of thing. "Invisible information" we called it, therefore "invisible work." That it was complex, often quite creatively so, didn't matter. The invisibility of it was used to justify the low salaries received by people who did this necessary work.

Correction: The essay was by @hannahstohelit.bsky.social My thanks to her for letting me know (and being so gracious about it).

Just finished @cheaddc.bsky.social's short, "Finding Jimmy Baldwin" in the just released CRIME INC: ICONIC anthology. Her steady, quiet style mirrors the internal suffering of the characters as they deal with the externals of racially-motivated violence. Deeply moving. #Booksky #QueerSky

Excited and grateful to be featured in this wonderful anthology. Happy pub day, everyone, and thank you to @bywaterbooks.bsky.social @salemwest.bsky.social and @johncopenhaver.bsky.social #QueerLit #newbooks #crimefiction

CRIME INK: ICONIC releases today! A sizzling anthology of crime fiction featuring award-winning LGBTQ+ crime fiction authors. Thrilled that my story, "Heartbreak Alley," is included in this powerful collection. Available in print & ebook. @bywaterbooks.bsky.social #CrimeFiction #QueerVoices

Got some sweet little news just now. The artist I've been in contact with about my buying their work for my cover art has said yes. Happy dance! His images match my stories' vibe perfectly! 🤸‍♂️ #SelfPublishing #AcademicMystery #CollegeCrime

If you're wondering what the concern is over Audible's new royalty model, here's a good overview (in a nutshell: the royalty _rate_ is higher, but because of the way it's calculated, author _income_ is lower) selfpub.substack.com/p/audiblegate2