 As a teenager, I lived about two-and-a-half hours south of my grandmother. I’d drive up about every two weeks to stay the weekend, and whenever I did, I visited Borders. (At that time, my town had only a Barnes and Noble.) I almost always bought a book when I went. Sometimes, I bought one I knew I wanted; other times, I bought one that turned out bad—or mediocre. There is only one book I remember turning out fabulous.
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 Dear readers,
We hope you are surviving The COVID and The Quarantine just fine! We know that all this time inside and with our families can be trying for both introverts and extroverts. Even the Thinklings staff members who’ve always worked from home have had to deal with the upheaval. Jeannie’s learning how to homeschool, Sarah has moved her weekly lunch dates with her best friend (her mom) to online or phone interactions, Ali’s husband is home all the time, Christopher Light's neighbors' children are running wild, Deborah’s quarantine negotiations with her roommates have stalled, and Gene (our extreme extrovert) has started hallucinating parties.  If you’re like us, you’ve been feeling the need more than ever, lately, to get lost in a good book and forget our chaotic world for a while. Looking for some recommendations? We’ve compiled a list of ten excellent, humorous, lighthearted books that are perfect for escaping into!
 Hello, Sarah Awa here again. You may know me as the bubbly social media lady, writer of werewolf novels, and purveyor of puns. My right brain LOVES those parts of my job! But my co-equal left brain needs its share of exercise too, which is why I also enjoy proofreading—getting to analyze and work with details. The concrete as well as the abstract.
 I hate white noise. No, honestly, I do. White noise machines to me might as well be grumbling obscenities to themselves. I mean, why would you choose to listen to that?
(Because we’re all different, etc., etc., not my point.)  This week we decided to have some speculative fun and talk about which houses we would be sorted into if we were students at Hogwarts.
In case you’re not familiar with Harry Potter, each house at Hogwarts (the school for wizards that Harry attends) comprises students with certain characteristics in common.  My name is Christopher Light, and I’m in charge of acquisitions here at Thinklings Books. Unlike the Bosses, my background isn’t in fiction writing or in editing, but in literary criticism—you know, the field in which clever nastiness is lauded for its hilarity.
 Whether it’s a doctor’s office waiting room or a two-hour-long blizzard-induced traffic jam, we’ve all been stuck somewhere. That’s why most purses I own are big enough to hold whatever book I’m currently reading.* At least when we’re physically delayed or detained, our imagination can still fly free.
What if you were stuck somewhere for months—or years? Stranded on a desert island, no phone or other tech to call for help, just basic survival necessities. AND five books. (Yes, you can argue that counts as a necessity!) Which five books would you want to have with you? . . . Aside from How to Get the Heck Off a Desert Island by Sandy O’Shipwreck! ;)  In our digital age, book publishing involves so much more than, well, publishing books. Gone are the days of only a few companies printing and distributing all of the country’s literature. There are so many books and so many publishers now that skillful marketing has become essential. Life-and-death, even, to a company.
That last sentence sounded so serious! Maybe a bit dramatic. I promise this post is going to be fun—hang tight.  Thinklings Books is a publisher of speculative fiction. You may have heard the term (often shortened to “spec fic”) and wondered exactly what it meant. Today we’re not just going to speculate on what it is; we’re going to provide concrete answers!
When you speculate, you ask “What if?” But all fiction books pose that question in one way or another; it’s what makes them fictional. So whether something is spec fic or not depends on what, where, whom, etc., a book is speculating about. |
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