I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Daniel Abraham, The Spider’s War: ( series ender )
Micaiah Johnson, The Space Between Worlds: ( not positive, sorry )
Leigh Bardugo, The Lives of Saints: ( short sharp shock )
K. Eason, How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse: ( also no )
Mercedes Lackey, ( a whole bunch of Valdemar books )

T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead:( mushrooms of the House of Usher )
Classic Monsters Unleashed: New Stories of Famous Creatures, ed. James Aquilone: ( today's monsters )

Robert Jackson Bennett, Locklands: ( trilogy ender )
Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters: ( fan/author romance )

So, that all happened. I am definitely doomscrolling and hope you all are doing ok.

Michael Marshall Smith, The Best of Michael Marshall Smith: ( bleakness )
Alaya Dawn Johnson, Reconstruction: Stories: ( sometimes a little less bleakness )
Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace: ( palace politics with aliens )
Naomi Kritzer, Chaos on CatNet: ( they won't leave the AI alone to enjoy cat pictures )
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Someday All This Will Be Yours: ( veteran of the time wars )
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ironclads: ( veteran of the corporate wars )
Brenna Twohy, Swallowtail: ( poetry )
R.F. Kuang, The Burning God: ( and here my troubles began )
Jim Butcher, Battle Ground: ( boss fights )

Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” using only the 1000 most common words: surprisingly the same. Via upgoer5, which prompts you to explain things the same way xkcd did.

Alaya Johnson, Wicked City: Zephyr Hollis, vampire rights activist and general do-gooder, has some trouble with the mayor in this alternate Roaring Twenties NYC; Prohibition is in full swing and the city council is about to vote on the legality of a similar intoxicant that vampires use, when tainted bottles start killing vampires in a very unusual way. Also, Zephyr is bound to a djinn, and if she doesn’t start wishing soon Very Bad Things will happen, unless she can convince a different demon to break the bond. I liked all the worldbuilding—which includes a chilling explanation of Zephyr’s unusual immunity to vampirism—and Zephyr’s prickly friendships with a psychic and a reporter, both women struggling to do important things in a world that didn’t want them to be important. I’m hoping for a sequel soon! (There’s a short backstory bit up at Tor for completists.)

Stacia Kane, Personal Demons: Therapist Meg has a new radio show as “the demon slayer.” Unfortunately, Meg is psychic, and real demons are convinced she’s targeting them—so they plan to get her first. A hot (literally!) stranger shows up to protect her, along with a meddling reporter, and other threats. To survive, Meg’s going to have to figure out how to control her powers—and her anger. There was plenty of worldbuilding and explicit sex, and Meg’s anger at bad things happening to her was never treated as wrong, just in need of tactical refinement. Still, for whatever reason, this series starter didn’t grab me with the urgency of Kane’s Churchwitch books.

Still grading, also sick; send help or anaesthetic.

At least I'm participating in this:

Everything Mitt Romney likes, autotuned.
( Irredeemable, Sime/Gen, YA vacation horror stories, post-apocalyptic America )

Note from the past week: Guys, I appreciate that you come to DC to march and are unfamiliar with the Metro. But even if you were home at the mall, it would still be rude to stand at the top of the escalator. Thank you!

Dessa, A Badly Broken Code: Much love for this album. “And it’s just not true that I’m a man-eater; all the same, we should probably go dutch.” Cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes for the whole album.
( cheap thrills, Joseph Priestley, regulation and the internet )

Stuck on my remix; I'm at the "why do I sign up for these?" stage. Oh well.

Can’t say it better than the Columbia Journalism Review:
( innovation and financial meltdowns )

From MIT, a conversation about popular culture and Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You, which I reviewed here. There's also an audio version available on the site. I found the discussion of the complexity of today's TV storylines versus older TV particularly notable since I was just listening to the commentary on the pilot of American Gothic, in which the producers discuss the network's initial opposition to having Sheriff Buck whistle the theme from The Andy Griffith Show as he jauntily went to kill someone. In 1995, they say on the commentary track, before Buffy, network execs resisted references to other shows, but they think they were allowed to do it because Pulp Fiction had just shown the popularity of cross-reference.

Anyway, the MIT series is pretty cool; you can find other conference reports and papers on the same site.