Skip to content

Category: Misc.

The best thing I learned from my book about internet dissidents

Sometimes, people in Russia hold these things called monstrations (like demonstrations without the de), which are like protests, but instead of protests they are performance art. And instead of protesting real things, they march all around with billboards that say things like No to colonization of Mars! and You are too boring to talk to! and WET PRIESTS. Ahahaha, Russia, you’re so weird! What a weird thing to do! Protests get stifled in Russia, so Russia has performance art protests instead. Ugh, that wasn’t fair. Sometimes Russia has real protests too. But they also have these fake performance art protests, and I think this should…

9 Comments

Moral amnesty: A links round-up

Some links that have caught my eye over the past two weeks! Enjoy! Are you familiar with the Kennewick Man? Spend some time on his Wikipedia page — it’s a fascinating story — and then read about why the scientists should feel like dicks now. Awesome zookeepers awesomely doing Chris Pratt’s raptor-taming move. Poetry coopted for Supernatural fanfic: An interview with poet Richard Siken that just fills me with joy for the utter weirdness of the world we live in. A linguist explains how we convey sarcasm typographically. LANGUAGE FINDS A WAY. Alyssa Rosenberg on how white supremacists in pop…

18 Comments

The best thing that happened in Marvel’s Civil War event

…was this: Clint Barton sees Kate Bishop for the first time (click to embiggen). Basically Clint sees Kate and is like this: Plus, Matt Fraction — who wrote for the Civil War event, though not that particular issue up there — calls it back in the second issue of Hawkeye, the one where we meet Kate. Overall, however, Civil War was…kind of a downer. Perhaps if Kate and Clint had hung out more?

16 Comments

Over at Lady Business!

I’ll have the podcast up later today, but I wanted to first mention that the wonderful site Lady Business is running a Women in Authority week (or as I described it to myself in order to make my choice of topic plausible, Ladies in Business), and they asked me for a guest post! Behold a quick post about one of my favorite books ever, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

2 Comments

I FEEL GLUM: A links round-up

Jerry Seinfeld is weirdly on a tear about the PC police being the death of comedy. Here are Emily Nussbaum of the New Yorker and Linda Holmes of NPR making me happy on Twitter with their rebuttals. Stacia Brown on the racial prism, saying some super true truths about New Haven, CT, where I lived for a few months. On teaching diverse literature. A round-up of reactions to the utter madness of Rachel Dolezal, of which my favorite is the Guardian article by Meredith Talusan. Plus one more from Jamilah Lemieux. For real, though, authors: Don’t respond to negative reviews…

28 Comments

“That racist thing where I touch your hair”: A links round-up

I could not be more excited about the new Lifetime show UnREAL. “Now I’m going to do that racist thing where I touch your hair.” Saeed Jones on being black in the book world. A moderate voice on trigger warnings for the classics. And another piece on trigger warnings generally, which makes the point that it’s not about whether to teach this or that troubling text, but how. Brit Bennett of the Paris Review on Addy Walker and black dolls in American culture. No joke, y’all, I reread the Addy books recently and they are fucking brutal. Gender differences in…

15 Comments

Greensleeves!

The winner of my Greensleeves giveaway is Jill, from Rhapsody in Books! Congratulations, Jill! However, everyone else should order themselves a copy of Greensleeves anyway. It’s such a good book, and I am tired of being one of like five people who loves it, when the correct situation would be for literally everyone everywhere to love it. GET ON IT book blogging world!

4 Comments

A shortish links round-up for a rough fortnight (plus a birthday giveaway!)

The events in Baltimore and the elections in the UK have been occupying a lot of my internet-browsing time, so this is a shorter links round-up than usual. I tried to keep it positive, because the bad news on top of bad news on top of bad news can really get a girl down after a while. To keep it extra positive, I’m doing a giveaway! My birthday was this week, and I’ve decided to celebrate it hobbit-style. One of my all-time favorite books, Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Greensleeves, was recently put back into print by Nancy Pearl. It’s a dear…

21 Comments

Who-all’s being brilliant on the internet: A links round-up

On “trash food,” class, and the South. The short history of spoiler warnings. You should just assume that I’m going to link to everything Elizabeth Minkel ever writes. Here she is talking about the gendered reaction to responses to Zayn Malik’s departure from One Direction vs. responses to Jeremy Clarkson’s departure from Top Gear. Foz Meadows, being typically fascinating about the way gifs are changing critical discourse. She does seem to think that academic journals are profit-making beasts. Are they? I do not know. I have only worked on the books and online side of academic publishing, where we are…

10 Comments

The Villette Readalong Staggers to Its Inevitably Irritating Conclusion

Yep, I screwed up the reading last weekend. I can only assumed I was blinded by rage when I approached the chapter numbers. Dr. John and Paulina did get engaged last time, and I just didn’t read that far. Whatever, you two. The fact that Dr. John pays court to Paulina by talking about how it felt when six-year-old her touched his cheek is yet another more way in which Victorians in general and Charlotte Bronte in particular are just SO FUCKING WEIRD. So M. Paul announces he’s leaving, and Lucy mopes around because he’s been really nice to her lately,…

14 Comments