YES THAT IS RIGHT IT IS THE BOOK PREVIEWWWWWWWW. (link) I haven’t read it yet because I discovered it’s there approximately thirty seconds before writing these very words. I am saving it as a treat for the end of the work week. Yay. Yay. Yay. I love this book preview. I thank The Millions so much for doing it. I know it is a lot of work.

Okay! On to the rest of the links! A lot of them are about television! Watch Leverage: Redemption on IMDBtv!

LET LEVAR BURTON HOST JEOPARDY (link)

Jeannette Ng unpacks some of the history and political assumptions of the wuxia genre. (link)

Molly Ostertag considers queer readings of Lord of the Rings, and what Tolkien might have meant. Including: a surprise guest appearance by Mary Renault! (link)

“Sex/Life is the most boring and meager of sexual fantasies for straight women stuck in mundane marriages who wish they had something better to cling to.” I love a good pan, and Scaachi Koul’s of this Netflix show I’ve never heard of is excellent. (link)

“I do not want to win someone else’s game.” Nikole Hannah-Jones’s statement on why she is walking away from UNC is excellent, and heartbreaking. (link)

Products that go viral on TikTok are typically a flash in the pan. (link)

NEW LEVERAGE IS HEEEEEEEEEEERE so please enjoy this interview with the cast. Then go watch New Leverage. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be. Except for in my vision there would be more Hardison, but I understand Aldis Hodge is a fancypants movie star with a fancypants movie star schedule, sob. (link)

So-called “pot-hunters” regularly loot Native American graves, removing not just funerary artifacts but even human remains. When will it end? (link)

Surprise! People actually enjoy commutes. I can confirm this: Adding a small commute to my day (like 15 minutes) gives me time to decompress before and after work, and get some dedicated reading time. (link)

The life of an assistant in Hollywood has worsened drastically with the fall of network TV. (link)

Not prosecuting people for low-level misdemeanors turns out to reduce crime all around! Hooray! Let’s all just do that, then! (link)

This joint interview with Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham, of Ted Lasso, will make your heart sing. What a lovely pair of women. Also you should watch Ted Lasso. It is not a perfect show but it is really great in many ways. (link)

I am crushed to learn that despite the incredible cast, Gunpowder Milkshake is boring and bad. CRUSHED. (link)

In closing, please watch New Leverage. If you don’t know what New Leverage is, I highly recommend repairing to IMDBtv (it’s free!) or Amazon Prime and watching the pilot of Leverage. It is very close to being a perfect pilot. Every time I think about the pilot of Leverage, I want to watch the pilot of Leverage. I want to watch it right now, typing this. It slaps. Thank you for your time.

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“Its central question is whether one should approach the wholesale massacre of the innocents with indifference or with hypocrisy, and its conceit is that this is a relevant or fascinating distinction.” This absolute pan of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book is very good. (link)

Leni Riefenstahl and L. Ron Hubbard were gonna make a movie together, because frankly why not. (link)

Germany has acknowledged its genocidal actions in Namibia in the early 20th century and committed to sending money that they are definitely not calling reparations. Is it enough? (link)

“As Dick Snyder was later to say: ‘A publisher has an obligation to believe in the first amendment but not to publish everything that’s sent to him.’” Publishing faces a dilemma when higher-ups make junior staff work on books that directly oppose those staff members’ freedom and identity. (link)

I loved this interview with Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of the new novel The Other Black Girl. (link) Also very much loved this breakdown of how she wrote her book’s twist ending (but spoilers, of course!) (link)

The worst insult in Mean Girls is lesbian. (This movie really did not hold up.) (link)

“They didn’t get on unemployment because they’re lazy. They got on unemployment because they were fired.” Restaurant workers aren’t refusing to go back to work because they like unemployment benefits so much; they’re just refusing to go back to shit jobs that pay like shit and treat them like shit. (link)

“Teigen’s reputation-damaging tweets all share a certain essential DNA. They are all tweets mocking girls and femmes whom the pop culture of the late ’00s and early ’10s had made it clear were fair game for mockery.” The rise and fall of Chrissy Teigen. (link)

Apropos of the above, a celebrity publicist explains how to craft a perfect (or as perfect as possible) public apology. (link)

Another feminist revisits The Beauty Myth in the light of Naomi’s Wolf turn to anti-vaccine propaganda. (link)

The Hot Zone is apparently totally unreliable and carries a racist legacy that continues to affect us to this day THIS VERY DAY? I did not know! It was always kind of vaguely on my TBR list but I have stricken it from the list. (link)

I will always share a cult article. This one’s about a woman who escaped from a cult led by her mother, leaving behind her three children. The pain of this escape and her prior life has never fully left her. (link)

AND ANOTHER ONE: Amanda Montell is interviewed about her new book, Cultish, which I cannot WAIT to read. (link)

Rachel Lindsay speaks about her decision to step away from the Bachelor franchise. (I love Rachel Lindsay.) (link)

Happy weekend, my friends! Don’t join any cults! Including do not sign up for reality dating shows!

The post So the Year’s Almost Halfway Done: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

The first half of the year book preview is up at The Millions! And here’s the Lithub one, which I haven’t perused yet so I can’t speak to how solid or unsolid it is or isn’t.

This is a very good review of Marriage Story.

Women can write spy thrillers too! Goddammit.

ZORA Magazine has released a new canon of all Black women writers, and it’s pretty great. Let’s update all the high school syllabi.

Meghan Markle is my full and complete hero, and that’s what I’d just like to say about her and this whole royal family situation. And here’s Afua Hirsch on the decision and how easy it is for Black Britons to understand.

Harvey Weinstein believes he can shut up the people talking about the allegations against him, and avoid all consequences. The hell of it is that he might be right.

“My food is my story, and it’s complicated and imperfect, but it is just as worthy, and I am the right person to tell it.” Jenny Dorsey spent years feeling ashamed of her family’s Chinese food. Now she’s making a place for it at the table.

The RWA mess is somehow still happening??? But Chuck Tingle is here to help us with this new RWA website. It is very, very blessed.

Also if you don’t know what “the RWA mess” means, here’s a breakdown for you!

What are the Oscar-nominated white men of film angry about this year? Vulture has a helpful guide. They also have this very angry roundtable about what the Academy considers worth rewarding.

Here’s what happened with the attack helicopter story.

What have you been reading around the internet, friends? And what do you have planned for the weekend? Not that any weekend is a bad weekend to appreciate the radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr., but this is a particularly great weekend to do that. Do some service! Combat racism!

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