Archives - Weekly Update

For the first time in decades, we are not going to be hosting Easter at our house. Our anniversary (our 39th of marriage and 42nd since we met on a ski slope in Crested Butte, Colorado) is on Saturday, and somehow the idea of going out to dinner to celebrate sounded like a lot more fun than shopping/cooking/cleaning to host dinner. There were a few times when I felt like maybe we should just do it, but luckily I caught myself. Easter always is a tough holiday; unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is not an extra day to clean up and get life back to some semblance of normalcy.

It was a great week for reading. Last weekend, I read WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? by Dervla McTiernan. We actually find out what happened to Nina, who had been away with her boyfriend at his family’s 400-acre (yes, you read that right) property in Stowe, Vermont, sooner than you might expect. But where the story goes from there is just as interesting. Yes, you will think about the Gabby Petito case, but there is a lot more to ponder here. It will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection, and I will write more about it in the weeks to come.

Audiobook listening is on the rise. While for years the success of a book was calculated by its print sales, now the trifecta of print, e-book and audio all are tallied to talk about a book’s success. Audiobooks were the subject of one of the panels at the London Book Fair this week. In a piece in Shelf Awareness, an industry newsletter, I saw this research that was interesting:

“Michelle Cobb, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association, outlined the U.S. audio market, the biggest audio market in the world. There's been double-digit revenue growth for 11 years in a row, and now a majority (53%) of American adults have listened to at least one audiobook. Audiobooks account for about 11% of the U.S. book market, roughly the same as e-books. Cobb said cannibalization is not a problem. Some 17% of people take in books only in audio format, and about a quarter of library patrons borrow only audiobooks.”

Here comes my least favorite weekend of the year --- the one with one less hour! The past two weeks, I have been waking up before my alarm goes off and hitting my exercise bike early, but I think that is destined to end quickly as soon as the clocks change. I read my morning emails --- and answer some --- while I ride. Multitasking to start the day!

I love it when February has 28 days in it, as the calendar then is mostly the same for March. That means I do not have to think about what the numerical date of the second Wednesday of the month is for March's “Bookaccino Live” event, as it would've been the same in February. But in a leap year, the March calendar is one day off.

Also on the subject of March, years ago I wrote something about March coming in like a lamb or a lion, which my sons got a huge kick out of. So, once again, here you go. It’s been a lamb start to March so far.