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MAILING LIST: I just started a mailing list for my publishing company. Will mail out every 2 months and will include excerpts from my Robert’s Roundup columns and other random stuff. https://booktoot.club/@nagletx. (Mastodon) and nagletx.bsky.social. (Blue Sky). See also my annotated list of litbloggers/book reviewers.
My Personville Press sells literary titles (mainly short stories) at budget prices (and several freebies). Gradually I have been doing “elevator pitch” videos on YouTube summarizing several of these ebooks in three minutes or so.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited and NYP means “Name Your Price” (that’s an option on Smashwords and other booksellers). If you’d like to submit an ebook to me for review or mention in this column, see my instructions here. Here is my article about methods and search queries I use to locate ebook deals. See also: Indie Author Spotlight, Interviews by RJN,
Note about Reviews
As I was compiling a list of a chronological list of my columns, I totally forgot that I had started a different category, Robert’s Raves and Reviews which would link to book reviews by myself and others. I only did two or three of those columns (it seemed easier to roll everything into my Robert’s Roundup column. But book reviews often can be readable and interesting for their own sake (quite apart from the book), so I think I will do more of these. I recently created a list of book bloggers and book reviewers which should allow me to read more reviews (which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post). Stay tuned.
It’s actually a big deal, but I’ve decided to stop buying ebooks from Amazon whenever possible. Practically speaking, a lot of books and authors are discounted only on Amazon, so I have no choice but to buy things there sometimes. I’m spending maybe 75% less on Amazon.
Mini-Report: Armadillo in Austin
For once in a blue moon, I am attending a writers’ conference — ArmadilloCon 2026 in Austin, A lot of the authors are also on bluesky and many have domains (unlike literary authors, who have trouble figuring those things out).
Actually I will focus more on sci fi authors than normal.
Armadillo Authors
Rudy Rucker is a distinguished mathematician, computer scientist, sci fi author who will be attending. I am currently reading “Mad Professor” story collection. I’m also browsing through his Complete Stories. If I can get access to it, I might also read through his Collected Essays.
Other authors and Organizations
- Tachyon Publications, a nice well-established publisher of sci fi,
- Josh Rountree. (Home) Austin-based scifi/horror author; mainly story writer
- William Ledbetter (Home, W), Dallas-based sci fi
Critics/Editors/Etc
- Paul Weimer (from Nerds of a Feather) Reviewer, critic,
Articles and Essays
Collection of interviews with SF authors from the 1970s on Tangent Online. Included Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester, Clifford Simak, Ben Bova.
Speaking of Zachary Gillan, here’s a longish piece he wrote for Ancillary ROB connecting weird fiction to fighting fascism.
The lack of this closure is one of the hallmarks of weird fiction. The inexplicability and productive ambiguity emphasized within the mode ensures that the unsettlement of the narrative is mirrored for both character and reader, avoiding closure for either, thereby channeling Robert Aickman’s dictum that an effective piece of weird fiction “must open a door, preferably where no one had previously noticed a door to exist; and at the end, leave it open, or, possibly, ajar.” Weird fiction doesn’t enclose discordant energies or possibilities; it thrives in their ungraspability.
Jesse Hudson’s index of SF book reviews on Speculiction is exhaustive .
Emily Barton has an insightful essay about the importance of plot in novels. She also links to a great essay by John Barth (a former teacher of mine), “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know whether you’ve got a plot or not.” (PDF)
Media / Podcasts
Here’s a delightful and penetrating 1995 radio program & interview featuring Barbara Kingsolver and Mary Lee Settle. (58 minutes, YT)
4 hours of Norton lectures with Borges(with subtitles even though they are unnecessary)(YT). Here’s another lecture 48 minutes (YT) and an interview with William Buckley (YT).
Quite randomly, I noticed several YT lectures with poetry professor & critic Helen Vendler. Here’s a 60 minute lecture of Wallace Stevens (YT) and a two part video lecture about poetry (Part 1, Part 2)
I’ve been watching podcasts/video interviews with Eric Maisel (Home) who is a counselor with a background in working with creative types. He’s an existential wellness coach; here are some talks (YT 1, YT2, YT3, YT4, ) Probably others as well. His blog has lots of short posts on the creativity/coping process.
Coode Street Podcast is a distinguished SF podcast that’s been around since 2010. Mostly author interviews, but also general topics. This year, Kelly Link and Jeffrey Ford discuss Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles
Under the Radar
Primal Urge by Brian W. Aldiss.
Winter Run by Robert Ashcom. Acclaimed novel of 1940s Virginia boyhood.
Man in the Orange Suit and other Stories by Don Auber.
Sneaker Wave by Jeff Beamish.
Charity Girl: A Nellie Bly Novelette by David Blixt.
Whiskey River (Take My Mind): The True Story of Texas Honky-Tonk by Johnny Bush. Memoir of Texas musician Johnny Bush (who wrote “Whiskey River” and sang and performed with several country bands).
Amigoland by Oscar Casares.
Hell or High Water by Joy Castro.
This is the Way Novel by Gavin Corbett.
Opium and Other Stories by Geza Csath. I’d actually read this book in college. It’s a classic story collection by this Hungarian author known for pessimism and dark imagination. (He killed himself at 31). Angela Carter wrote, “Csáth’s short stories are and extraordinary, uneasy mixture of sentimentality, sadism, and sexual repressions—nasty tales, not dissimilar to some of the fictions of the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, both countries in which the collective dream has, latterly, also broken down under the impact of too much reality. During Csáth’s lifetime Sigmund Freud, the scrutineer of dreams, built up the enormous hypothesis of the unconscious in Vienna, the greatest city of the empire, which encompassed Hungary, Csáth’s homeland, more and more uneasy. It is difficult to read Csáth, a specialist in ‘nervous disorders’ himself, without thinking of Freud’s analysis of the subtext of human experience…. [An] opium addict and therefore a specialist in dreams, [Csáth] wrote short stories comfortless as bad dreams, sometimes decorating them languorously with art-nouveau impedimenta of lilies, lotuses, and sulphurous magic, at other times relating them in the cool, neutral language of the case-book. He was also a doctor. No real contradiction here; the medical profession not only offers a free access to narcotics but often, since it involves considerable exposure to human suffering, implicitly invites their use.”—
Dungeon Crawler Carl: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 by Matt Dinniman. This LitRPG novel was talked about glowingly at ArmadilloCon (esp. the audiobook version).
Three by Echenoz by Jean Echenoz.
Myself with Others: Selected Essays by Carlos Fuentes. (I actually read this book too in print form, but wanted a digital copy).
The Cosmology of the Wider World by Jeffrey Ford. (W, Home) Story about a Minotaur (!?) In his review of the novel, Tony Keen writes, “Unusual, red of claw, and, at 173 pages, refreshingly short, The Cosmology of the Wider World is a charming divertissement that should appeal both to the regular SF audience and to those who enjoy the fantastic but affect not to.” (Another review on Speculiction). Here’s a YT panel discussion of Ford’s works (YT, 51 minutes) Strangely, his first trilogy “Well-Built City” is not available as an ebook even though an audiobook is available. Zachary Gillan has written a nice discussion about reading the trilogy at the eve of American fascism. FYI I just listened to a nice interview with Ford on Coode Street Podcast.
Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth by Donna M. Gershten.
The House Gun by Nadime Gordimer. Mixed reviews, but second-rate Gordimer is still first rate fiction. “Nadine Gordimer, too, in her most recent novel, The House Gun, has written astutely about post-apartheid violence in her parable of a white man who murders his lover and then is defended in court by a black lawyer.”
Symbiography: A Novella by William Hjortsberg (W, Obit)
History on a Personal Note: Stories by Binnie Kirshenbaum (Home, W). (In RR #46 I also obtained Disturbance in One Place (still on sale) Here’s an interview with Mary Wang on Guernicamag. BK on separating fiction from memoir: It takes courage to write memoir, to expose your vulnerabilities to the world, to risk being judged or the subject of gossip. To write fiction takes patience and fortitude to fend off the assumptions that our novels are memoirs. Of course, this doesn’t always happen. Along with the aforementioned speculative fiction, I doubt anyone thought that Tolstoy was Anna Karenina or that Flaubert was Madame Bovary. Even when he made the claim, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” what he meant was that we all are Madame Bovary, that in one way or another, we all are dissatisfied with our lives. Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are Istina.
Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam.
Two novels by Joan London: Gilgamesh and Good Parents.
Fake Creativity: a Novel by Blake Loch.
Awakening by Joseph Lyttleton.
Human Nature by Kate Marvel.
Angel Maker: Short stories of Sara Maitland. 1996). Kirkus says, “The metaphysics of feminism and the baroque influence of the late Angela Carter are weighty presences in this generally accomplished collection of 30 stories by British author Maitland (Ancestral Truths, 1994), etc. A suave, amused narrative voice–sometimes first-person, sometimes omniscient, unafraid to address the reader directly–is a virtual constant in these witty, skillfully woven tales, whose variety and vitality are compromised chiefly by a recurring (and off-putting) impression of smugness.”
Sharpshooter Blues by Lewis Nordan.
Herodotus and the Question Why by Christopher Pelling. In the fifth century BCE, Herodotus wrote the first known Western history to build on the tradition of Homeric storytelling, basing his text on empirical observations and arranging them systematically. Herodotus and the Question Why offers a comprehensive examination of the methods behind the Histories and the challenge of documenting human experiences, from the Persian Wars to cultural traditions.
Dominique’s Journey by D.J. Pratt.
Woman with the Bouquet by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. (translated from French). (I have several of this author’s collections). Kirkus says of this story collection: llluminating stories about the everyday—self-image, problematic relationships, the need for love—marred only by Schmitt’s unfortunate tendency to use heavy-handed irony in the stories’ conclusions.
The Escape by Adam Thirlwell.
Pleasure House by Kitty Thomas. Unapologetic Smut.
Portable Promised Land Stories by Toure. (Home, W) First story collection in the mythical Soul City . “Agreeably shocking, sharply perceptive, quite funny.” Kirkus. Toure is mainly an African-American journalist and music writer based in NY.
LBJ’s Neglected Legacy: How Lyndon Johnson Reshaped Domestic Policy and Government by Robert H. Wilson and others. (UT distinguished prof who was Deputy Assis Secretary of Defense under LBJ. )
Wild Fox Ridge: A Multi-Voice Literary Epic Across Time, Death, and Desire by Xuemo. (Home)
Blink and its Gone
Planet Funny by Ken Jennings. A pleasantly academic journey through the evolution of the American style of comedy.
Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud. Been waiting forever for this collection to be discounted.
Library Purchases/Printed Books/Creative Commons
Standard Ebooks has been compiling a free download of winners from the Prix Femina—Vie Heureuse. Here’s a complete list of winners.
The Far-Away Bride by Stella Benson (1892-1933) (W) 1931, Public domain. Fadedpage has a collection of her stories.
Thompson’s Cat by Robert Moore Williams. (W) PG Classic public domain sci fi novel from the 1950s about a space crew who land on an abandoned planet and find it overrun by insects. Seemed aimed at the younger reader.
Links to Older Columns
I have had fun revisiting old Robert’s Roundup Columns and seeing what books were coming onto my radar. My link to my columns shows the full text of my last 6 columns. That’s helpful for the person casually surfing this blog, but frankly it’s hell on my WordPress database. That makes it cumbersome to go to my archives.
To solve this problem and partly to make older columns easier to access, I have created an Index of all my Robert’s Roundup columns.
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