Are you snappy with your loved ones? Incapable of focusing on a task, even by the unfocused standards of 2020? Well, don’t worry, because everyone else is in the exact same boat! It’s a horrible, leaky boat, and we all hate it here! Remember when there were nice things and we liked those things? How nostalgic I feel for the time of nice things, such as “seeing friends in different cities” and “going to the grocery store” and “not feeling miffed when I saw a stranger’s nose while standing in a building.” Hopefully by the time I do my next links round-up, there will be better news, and a good future to look forward to. Or at least a future that doesn’t feel 100% doomed? IDK. Just like, eat however much cake and drink however much wine you need to get you through the next fortnight or so.
Never doubt that if there is a good article about The Westing Game, I will include that article in my links round-up. The Westing Game 5ever! (link)
Someone has to stop Paul Hollywood. Brian Phillips has a plan. (link)
The bind of being first. (link)
A fact: I will virtually ALWAYS pick up a whodunnit set in India & written by an Indian author. (link)
Catullus is a wonderful, rebellious, vulgar mess. Also, Cy Twombly. Because why wouldn’t Anne Carson write about both? God, I love Anne Carson. (link)
Talia Levin wrote about white supremacist online spaces, and the results are… expectedly horrifying. She talks about it here with ZORA‘s Anjali Enjeti. (link)
Rediscovering women authors from the heyday of ghost stories. (link)
This piece about anonymous Republican critics of Trump is a biting indictment of its own genre. (link)
I am Second Murderer but I did quietly disapprove of Macbeth’s policies. (a companion piece to the above) (link)
DOLLY PARTON. That is all. (link)
An appreciation of Witch Week. (link)
Nisi Shawl is very smart on the topic of what to think about when you’re considering writing a story about a marginalization you don’t share. (link)
This is a wonderful interview with two wonderful romance authors, Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon! (link)
And this is an also-wonderful interview with some of my favorite SFF editors, talking about how SFF has changed and where it’s headed. (link)
Dwight K. Schrute kinda typifies our Political Moment, which makes it hard to watch him. I personally stopped my The Office rewatch sometime in season four because I couldn’t take Dwight OR Jim OR Michael, so ban men, basically. (link)
I guess “ban men” is not a bad note to leave things on! Stay safe out there, friends!