Welcome back!
How are we doing? I always feel like August is so…boring. Apologies to all the August babies out there; it is not a reflection on you!
I do have some vacay planned soon and I definitely plan to prioritize pool times and nap times with some sweet treat times in between. It’s going to be the calm before the storm before I enter my third trimester and our litany of classes, nesting tasks, etc. begins.
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Ebooks are coming to Libro.fm! There doesn’t appear to be an official launch time, but they are offering a syncing feature if you own both the ebook and audiobook versions of a book. That honestly sounds pretty neat.
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Salty Girl Books is a very cute moble book truck serving coastal communities in Delaware in Maryland. Thanks to Lace for sending this link to us.
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I saw this “vintage book box” being advertised, which sends out special paperback editions with vintaged-style, clinch covers. It’s a neat concept, but Sarah and I did have a brief discussion that “vintage” feels like a misnomer here. Also, I tend to associate clinch covers with historicals, and most of the books featured appear to be contemporary. What are your thoughts?
But speaking of vintage book boxes, I wouldn’t mind shelling out a subscription for a mystery box of old skool titles sourced from secondhand shops with classic covers and step backs.
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The author of McSweeney’s “Things I Hope People Would Say at My Funeral” feels like a kindred spirit.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
A friend (and kindred spirit) sent me this article about why we struggle with DNF-ing a book. As I’ve gotten older, I’m not quite the “completist” I once was, but I still find myself thinking a book is finally going to click with me if I just give it a few more pages.
https://thiswriterreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/17/why-readers-struggle-to-dnf-a-book-and-why-it-s-okay-to-quit/
Ok so I am not fluent in emoji and I am probably just wrong here, but I thought the skull emoji indicates something is killingly funny, it’s like dying of laughter. Touch her and skull emoji thus would mean touch her and die laughing. No? Which is one of many baffling things about the book box to me, including how are sprayed edges such a thing again and it’s $35 (thirty five) for one (1) book? OTOH I can confirm that most romance book covers of yore had clinches, including contemporary. I know in art modern and contemporary mean different things neither of which anymore apply to art that is currently being made, and I had a time adjusting to literally becoming a contronym but I managed, so I’m sure it’s good for my brain to be forced to expand but yes please can someone explain in what way are those books vintage?
How did I get to this age without the word contronym in my vocabulary? My not-math SAT was above average. I attended many years of university. Learning this word at this late date makes me smile.
@DiscoDollyDeb, I also find it easier to DNF books as I have gotten older, but I think Covid was what flipped the switch for me. Before then, I rarely, if ever, DNF’d a book. During that period, my time felt precious and there were things I would rather do or rather read than spending my time on a book I wasn’t enjoying. I have found it freeing. I have way more books on my TBR than I will probably ever be able to read (and I keep buying more!) but I know I am at least able to try more of them now than I used to, because I will DNF after 50 or so pages if the book is not working for me.
@kkw: I think emojis heavily depend on context because I use several in vastly different ways lol
I’m getting my wisdom teeth out today, so that’s gonna be fun. It’s run right up to some time I’d previously planned to take off, and I already intended to make it a staycation, so this is just going to make sure I do.
@Amanda absolutely context dependent – but just like I am unlikely to use an eggplant emoji to mean an eggplant because of the incredibly high opportunity to be initially misread if I did, I feel like using the skull emoji there is a strange marketing choice.
Libro.fm selling digital books is great news. Kobo has become my go-to source since dropping Amazon, but I look forward to seeing what Libro has.
I also am able to DNF a book as I’ve gotten older, and have done so, even by an author I have loved forever in a series that I have also loved. Generally I find that if I don’t really care what may happen to the main characters (I know there’ll be an HEA since it’s a romance) before the end, then I give up. I used to finish everything and there are books that I regret spending my time on, because there are so many other books out there to explore. Since I read for pleasure these days, if there’s no pleasure, there’s no reading that book. That article was spot on for me for explaining why I used to finish even if I was gritting my teeth to get through.
@HeatherS ~ sending good healing wishes your way.
It was being pregnant and feeling queasy for months on end (even when reading) that had me first stop reading books without finishing them. Time to read became even more valuable when I had a young child, and I chose not to squander it on books that were not grabbing me.
I generally have two strategies around novels that aren’t working for me. The first is a gradual breakup. The time I spend reading it becomes less and less until I just stop picking it up and forget about it. Sometimes I’ll pick it up again days, weeks, months, years later and find it works better for me. But most of the time the book just fades away from my memory and my life.
The second method is the skip around — which happens when a story is beginning to irritate me, but I have a faint hope that the ending might overcome the stuff that is annoying me to bits. I skip to the final chapters and read/skim through them. But if the ending stinks, then I’m done. I also use the skip around method when a story is a hot mess, but there is one character or subplot that I like. I’ll then skim through the book looking for that character or that subplot and ignore the rest of the story.
I still use these two ways to DNF. But I am getting better at the “heck no”, slam the cover close after the first lousy chapter. After all I have lots and lots of other books.
Vintage book box: I can’t tell from the way the copy is written on that website whether vintage means that covers are in style reminiscent of vintage clinch covers (which as @kkw notes did occur on contemporaries as well as historicals, albeit the historical covers are more remembered) or whether it means that these are “vintage” stories that Bad Women Books are republishing. The Garwood was first published in 1990s, so I guess it’s vintage.* But one of the other books was first published in 2016 and I refused to say that is vintage.
I can’t complain about 1990s being vintage, when my high school in the late 1970s held a vintage 50s days and I wore my mother’s amazing pleated 50s skirt and matching cashmere twin set. I never wondered how she felt about having her teens and twenties described as vintage by her teen daughter.