Look. LOOK. Is it much too late for links about Netflix Christmas movies? Yes. Obviously. But in my defense, I was very tired in December and did not post links round-ups then, and I don’t think you should be deprived of good strong links just because they are no longer timely. So, you know, here we are. Here. We. Are.
I read bell hooks’s work in a gender studies my senior year of college, and I have desperately admired her ever since. I’m heartbroken about her death this week. Here’s a round-up of social media tributes to her. (link)
SHARKS. (link)
The new documentary about the Janet Jackson / Justin Timberlake thing will infuriate you. Relatedly, between this and the Brittany Spears thing, do we feel that the New York Times Presents team has a grudge against Justin Timberlake and are now hunting him most-dangerous-game style? Love that journey for him. (link)
You don’t have to finish books you’re not enjoying (but you can if you want). (link)
Everybody alllllllways stays saying they’re right about to find proof of the grandeur of King Solomon’s kingdom, and they never, ever are about to find it. But still this archaeology is cool. But omg, everyone calm down about Solomon. (link)
“The last essay I’ll need to write about David Foster Wallace.” (link)
IT’S NOT JUST YOU: Movie dialogue has been getting less comprehensible, and it’s due to a lot of factors relating to sound design, and also it is not the fault of the sound design people. (link)
Funny cat pictures as trojan horses for misinformation campaigns. Whew. (link)
THEY’RE ALL MORMON. All of them. Every single one. (link)
The American prison system is cracking down on books, because honestly why not. Why not make everyone’s lives as fully bad as possible? (I hate it here.) (link)
Ijeoma Oluo offers some guidelines for thinking about when a story you want to tell belongs to you. (link)
The Netflix Christmas movie cinematic universe is an absolutely wild place to be. (link)
“Professors on campus learned the university could cite no research to support its arguments that Munger Hall’s windowless bedrooms are more than glorified torture chambers.” I love the Dormzilla story so much; it’s so fucking deranged. (link)
Why are university press books so expensive? Hint: It’s not because academic publishers have a boner for keeping costs high. (link)
“What happened next felt like a windfall, an affirmation of my work.” Research makes your fiction richer and better, period. (link)
This piece about Latasha Harlins, the Black child whose murder sparked the 1992 riots in L.A., made me cry. (link)
“I implore you to remember that they are people, not mysteries for you to solve.” Couch Guy on virality and the sleuths of TikTok. (link)
“There’s an entire talk about this wave of Shrek culture at the symposium by a baffled Englishman who has carefully documented the fan fiction of extreme sexual violence, erotic fiction, and in my case, selling nudes covered in green body paint at the tail end of 2015.” The incomparable Jamie Loftus discusses the fan cultures of Shrek online. (link)
This woman went to a restaurant that appears never to have heard of dinner. The chef responded with a three-page declaration that’s somehow even better than you hoped it would be. (link)
Stephen King really REALLY hates fat people. (link)
The discipline of philosophy hates fat people too, but noted feminist philosopher Kate Manne is trying to divest from her internalized anti-fatness. (link)
“The terms for what becomes a culture war story are not decided by the public. Instead, they are decided in newsrooms that don’t mirror reality but certainly help shape it.” (link)
Why is there a typeface called Jim Crow? (link)
“A curious side effect of eliding the explicit queer romance in both the donghua and the live action is that rather than straight-washing the story, it just makes every character and every relationship read as approximately 400% more gay. Why is that? I do not know. Research is ongoing.” This is a post about storytelling in The Untamed, a show that I adore. (link)
Some anticipated books lists for you to enjoy while we all twiddle our thumbs waiting for The Millions to do its thing: The Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022 (link). Queer Adult SFF Books of 2022 (link to Twitter thread). Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022 (link). The Year of YA Authors Publishing Adult Fiction (link to Twitter thread).
Please feel free to link me to other Anticipated Books of 2022 lists, for I cannot get enough of them! I am sorry because I know there are too many lists possibly but omg I love lists.