Volume 4, No. 25: Cats, Mice, Vegetables, & Names

mini reviews of picture books

Greetings, book and treat people! It’s been so hot. I’ve been swimming in the early mornings before retreating to my cave. Folks keep sending me memes about how awful summer is. I appreciate this. And it’s really hot.

Before we get into today’s newsletter, some housekeeping: I am not going to be able to follow through with the Bookshop.org giveaway I announced a few weeks ago. I’m sorry. I know this is bad form. I thought a raffle for a fun prize might be the nudge folks needed to go ahead and finally subscribe. It was not. So few people subscribed during the giveaway that every time I thought about spending $60 on prizes, I started to panic. I have been agonizing over this for days, until I realized that, in the scheme of bad things people can do, backing out of a giveaway hardly registers.

It’s still embarrassing to admit. It’s embarrassing to admit that I haven’t even been able to reach 100 paid subscriptions since making the announcement back in May that Books & Bakes will not continue unless I’m fairly paid for the work I put into it. It’s embarrassing to admit how much I’ve been struggling to write the newsletter each week, knowing how few people are reading it. I suspect these are all things I shouldn’t be admitting, but at this point I’m not sure it matters what I say.

I know most of you are here for books, so let’s talk books!

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