The news right now is absolutely devastating, and any words of mine feel inadequate. I am saying prayers for trans kids and families in Texas, and for everyone in Ukraine (and Afghanistan, still; I have not forgotten about Afghanistan), and I am always on the lookout for ways to help, even though overall I feel very helpless. If you have recommendations of good places to send money, drop them in the comments! I continue to derive so much comfort from reading, and to that end I’ve got some links. I also recommend the brand new television show Abbott Elementary and…
Leave a CommentReading the End Posts
Whew, we made it to Friday once more, friends! I had a weird, hard week, which turned out to mostly be because I was pre-menstrual, but also a little bit because I lost a contact lens that now has to be expensively replaced, plus I have been feeling sad that free Wordle fun times are coming to an end. (I’m happy the creator is getting paid, though!) I’m seeing my sister this weekend, however, and I’m hoping I can con her into watching Yellowjackets with me. We’ll see. In the meantime, have some links! Nasim Mansuri finds a way to…
Leave a CommentWell, look. I did not manage to get this podcast edited and release in January. As it’s going to probably be our second-to-last podcast (more to come on that), I was truly hoping to have it out earlier in the year, but then life got in the way, and I had to settle for having it out before the Super Bowl. (Bengals!!!!) We chatted about alllllllll the books we acquired over the holiday break, discuss some superlatives in our 2021 reading years, and then the rest of the podcast is just FISH FACTS. Which is honestly very on brand for…
Leave a CommentBecause I am a person who derives energy and motivation from inventing goals and assigning them to myself as homework, January is a month in which I tend to be wildly energetic. Everyone else is lying in bed huddled up against the cold as they try to recover from the holiday season, while I charge around like the Energizer Bunny doing so many tasks it gives my mother a headache to hear about1 and being really, truly, genuinely annoying to my friends. But they have to deal with it because they know that the next time they want to make…
Leave a CommentBecause it’s January, and I was posting a links round-up, I happened to wander over to The Millions to check on the status of their semi-annual book preview. AND IT IS LIVE. AND I MISSED IT. I somehow blame Wordle for this. I love Wordle, but surely if it hadn’t been taking over our twitter feeds, I would have seen people talking about the The Millions semi-annual book preview on Twitter. And then I would have known. HERE IT IS. (link) “I doubt Joanna Gaines had ‘Build a Personal Brand Empire Increasingly Reliant on Data Scraping’ on any of her…
Leave a CommentLook. 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.…
Leave a CommentThe weirdest thing about writing this post was looking back at my reading spreadsheet for this year and going “Wait, that was this year?” In some cases, I was so sure I’d read the book in a prior year that I went and checked its publication date online to see if I was losing my mind. Result: I was! The feeling that 2021 passed by in a morbid, exhausting flash and also lasted for two thousand and twenty-one years would be notable were it not for the fact that all of the past few years have felt that way. At…
1 CommentDid you miss us? We missed you! It’s the holiday season, therefore the perfect time to talk about how to be ethical when doing art. tldr; you still have all the same moral responsibilities when making art that you have at any other time. We also have the opportunity to chat about TL Huchu’s The Library of the Dead, a very fun ghost story and the first in a series of ghost story mysteries. (Huzzah.) You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go! Episode 153 Here…
Leave a CommentThe mercenary librarians are back in The Devil You Know, and they’re just as librarian as before! If possible even more librarian, insofar as there are multiple scenes of scanning books so the books will be shareable to a wider group of people. Y’all may remember me screeching and carrying on about the first book in this series, Deal with the Devil, and how gosh-darn fun it was despite being about a dystopian future in which a few scrappy and independent-minded escapees of government torture banded together to carve out a small space for happiness and community. Well, this is…
Leave a CommentWell, well, well, another week gone, and another week closer to Thanksgiving, a time at which I hope we can all look forward to having a few days of goddamn peace and quiet. Events keep flying at my head at very high speed, despite the fact that I have clearly stated in writing that I don’t want things to happen very suddenly. I want none things to happen! At slow speeds! My position on this has been clear from the beginning! However, since that seems not to be in the cards for me or for anyone, I am enjoying the…
Leave a Comment