I hope y’all are having a happy New Year so far! I have not yet made a determination about how mine is going, as I find there have been pros and cons. I have been super duper productive, yet there is still so much more to do. How? Science doesn’t know. On the up side, there are all these book previews to enjoy. You decide! Today’s Friday the 13th! What is anything?
Well, we know what one thing is. We know what the Millions Book Preview is. We have looked upon it, and we have found that it is good. A very blessed thing about 2023 is that they have released the book preview really, really promptly. Here it already is! Amazing!
Electric Literature has some Most Anticipated queer books for 2023, and Lithub has some Most Anticipated SFF for 2023. If that’s not enough for you, check out this Metafilter thread of many different book previews. I rest in my abundance.
I strongly believe that people’s lives belong to themselves; and, simultaneously, it’s been terrifying to read about Canada’s right-to-die program.
The nanny school where very very posh people get their nannies.
Seven Nigerian men were accused of hijacking an oil tanker. That doesn’t seem to have been remotely true.
“MI5 was concerned about female applications plummeting after a 2002 episode of the BBC spy drama, Spooks, in which a young female trainee was plunged head first into a deep fat fryer, according to reports at the time.” These are the lives of the women who work as spies for the British government. (That scene with the deep fat fryer did, I confess, prevent me from watching any more of Spooks.)
Here’s what you missed on BookTok in 2022.
Google is aggressively seeking access to a massive cache of tissue samples from American service members. It is disturbing! I don’t want them to have the tissue! Stop it, Google! Trying to get large caches of tissue samples is cartoon evil shit!
Gen Z is redefining its relationship to work, and sometimes that looks like so-called “quiet quitting” (an actually really annoying term to describe DOING YOUR JOB).
“When I was in high school, I would lie in bed at night and think about how to outsmart a serial killer.” Same, bro. Sarah Marshall on the serial killer industrial complex.
How can history — even the most recent history — be knowable?
“Me and my friends did everything we were supposed to, and shootings still happen every day.” This piece from X Gonzalez, who survived the Parkland shooting, is gut-wrenching.
Constance Grady reviews Spare.
I hope your Friday the 13th is very lucky, and that your long weekend (if you’re in the US) brings you rest and recovery.