American folklore (fictional and real), illustrated in 1946 ...

Timing is everything. An article declaring that indie book blogs are dead made the social media rounds just yesterday, as I was about to announce something new on Litkicks: my first podcast. Well, it's true that a lot of book blogs are dead, but Literary Kicks never followed any trends — except the ones we want to follow, like podcasting. It's more fun trying something new than dying, right?

The second episode of "Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera" is out! This one tells the story of how I turned myself into an opera freak by forcing myself to listen to nothing but opera music — 100 selected arias in random order, eight hours a day every day while I worked for months — until osmosis took effect and I honestly started recognizing, appreciating and eventually deeply enjoying the melodies ...