And now, some links!

How do you feed the Olympic athletes? Step one: Buy 3 million bananas.

Celebrity book clubs are run by enthusiastic and voracious readers, but that doesn’t make them immune to publishers’ campaigning for their top titles.

“Everything I did on these friend dates was aggressive, pathetic, or insane.” Kelly Stout set out to make a new friend in an (1) month. (That timeline is way too short imo.)

Two humanitarian surgeons, with extensive experience of working in war zones, write about their time in Gaza, “None of [our experience] prepared us for what we saw in Gaza this spring.” This is a hard read, but a very important one. What’s happening in Gaza is straightforwardly genocide, and the US is eagerly supporting it.  I also recommend this piece by a former IDF soldier and scholar of genocide.

“If there’s one fundamental human impulse that the internet has indulged more than anything else, it’s our desire to be huge bitches.” Twenty years of Yelp.

The queerness of monsters.

“When he asks how much we paid for this vacation, he is unable to best the low price that Ramona has given us. This makes me feel like we are in an armored truck of value, impervious to the rest of the world’s scams.” Traveling via Costco.

A big chunk of undersea cable disappeared. Did Russia take it?

“Some of my past times, including Combs’s stalking me at the Vibe office, had to be redacted. I blacked them out in order to keep the lights on.” A really, really stellar piece from Danyel Smith on her own experiences with Diddy.

Oh my God this piece about The Gods Must Be Crazy and its apartheid legacy, oh my God.

Mo Ryan begs her fellow white women not to let what happened to Nicole Beharie on Sleepy Hollow (I’ll die mad about it) happen to Kamala Harris.

“[J.D. Vance is] still really only good at one thing: advancing by slavishly attaching himself to people richer and more powerful than himself, casting them aside when they become inconvenient.” lol

Wake up, babe, new UNESCO World Heritage sites just dropped.

“People don’t just bring their aspirations to the city. They also come with their wounds. The city is a segregator of wounds.” On Sinéad O’Connor.

“Your child does not need a comms strategy.” Linda Holmes does not support AI-written fan mail.

The journalist for this piece deserves a Peabody. What happens when writers break up? I loved this piece so much. I have forced it upon everyone I’ve ever met. They’ll never stop hearing about it. NEVER.

CALL ME BASIC, but this interview with the Supermarket Sweep gays made me feel tender towards the world.

What are we to make of White Women for Kamala and similar events?

Locked cases may prevent products from being stolen from retailers like Target and CVS, but they’re also preventing products from being, like, sold.

Rose Eveleth is doing a terrific new podcast about sex testing in sports, and she writes about the ethical challenges of writing about athletes’ bodies.

What Tim Walz has is tonic masculinity.

Lydia Polgreen on the Cass Report. This piece is so good.

KLAXON KLAXON WE HAVE NEW EURIPIDES CONTENT.

Why do the family members of crime victims show up for events like CrimeCon?

“There is no playbook for a President Kamala Harris because presidential politics has never imagined a Kamala Harris.”

“How sports gambling came to be such a hulking, clanging presence in our life is the ultimate sports media story—which is funny, in a ghoulish sort of way, given there’s not a lot of sports media left to tell it.”

“Believing you have no part in it is as naive as believing that touching a hot stove won’t get you burnt.” Morgan Jerkins can’t turn away from the tradwives.

“Over a twelve-year period from 1989 to 2001, virtually none of the winners of any high-value prizes were legit.” This story about the McDonald’s Monopoly game is Wild.

The news media is—again—utterly failing to meet the moment.

A prominent advocate for accessibility in gaming appears… never to have existed?

Buy physical media, friends! You won’t regret it!

The post I own a lot of DVDs now: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Here’s the definitive update on the indie romance writer who faked her own death. It is, perhaps not unexpectedly, a pretty sad story.

On the resemblance of dinner to a magic show.

There’s a growing conspiracy theory on the right about asexuality. Unsurprisingly, it has its roots in anti-transness and white supremacy.

How travel influencers use their white privilege to make their money.

This is an article about people who own super-yachts. I hate everyone in this bar. All of them, without exception. As one of the people quoted in the article jokes, it really HAS made me want to bring back the guillotine.

What it’s like to go to Antarctica on your honeymoon.

A review of Spare by someone who doesn’t give a damn about the royal family.

Pamela Paul wrote about American Dirt, for some reason. Here’s some edits for her piece.

The marvelous Gina Apostol explains the unexplainable José Rizal, and it is just as delightful as you’d expect.

“We’ve come to think of art–all art–as commercial goods that warrant this calculation of the ‘Moral Nutrition Facts‘ to ensure we’re not feeding anything ‘bad’ to our brains.”

Extreme content warning for sexually violent content, but this article on rape and child sexual abuse in Amish communities is really important.

How gig workers have become care workers.

When women gain financial or reproductive independence, backlash always follows. That’s where we’re at now.

LitHub has their giant list of books to look forward to in 2023. GO NUTS.

“‘People are stupid’ is the gateway drug to a lot of worse ideas.”

“This is like The Purge, if The Purge was solely about committing crimes against North American marsupials.” For five days a year in North Carolina, you can do anything you want to possums.

W h e n will there be justice for Gina Prince-Bythewood. ANSWER ME THAT.

Is there an end in sight to the New York Times trans panic? A massive group of NYT contributors wrote an open letter to the newspaper requesting more journalistic integrity when reporting on trans issues. The next day, the New York Times published an opinion piece by (again, inevitably) Pamela Paul entitled “In Defense of JK Rowling.” So like, yeah. No end in sight, I guess.

This article on Justin Roiland of Rick and Morty includes a quote from someone who describes his behavior as “the eccentricity of a genius weirdo.” Ha ha I hate it here.

The always-excellent Wesley Lowery talks about the racial reckoning that never came.

There is an enormous battle going on about How To Botanical Garden Correctly. I love this shit.

Stitch discusses the power of collective grief in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

What happens to our online presence after we die? The Archive of Our Own can point the way for other sites.

Speaking of the archive, they’ve introduced new muting and blocking functions, which is great!

“RICO charges have become a go-to strategy for taking down hip-hop artists.” (This is the first of a two-part article about crime, gentrification, and Cop City in Atlanta, so make sure to click through!)

I will DIE MAD about Sleepy Hollow. Here’s a look back at a buddy cop supernatural procedural that should have run for fifteen seasons, and how the showrunners did Nicole Beharie so, so wrong.

Dang, Pablo Neruda was poisoned?

“Bring back the oil paintings that fuck.” A history of the clinch cover on romance novels.

Andrea Long Chu’s reviews are always a good read, and here’s the latest, on the new HBO adaptation of The Last of Us.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is… a win for creative freedom? (Seriously, though, it is.)

As a closer, I recommend subscribing to this newly launched queer epistolary romance, which you can get in installments in your inbox!

The post Lies, Conspiracies, and Scandalous Emails: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

The post Book Previews and Other Diversions: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

AT LAST it is Millions Book Preview O’Clock wooooo!

Brandon Taylor really really REALLY did not enjoy the new adaptation of Persuasion. I do not have a dog in this fight.

“One of [Elon Musk’s hobbies is that he sometimes likes to pretend that he will acquire public companies…. This is an expensive hobby!” Matt Levine explains what’s going on with Elon Musk and Twitter.

On Costco and the immigrant experience.

Ed Yong is, thank God, back once again to explain what we need to know about the BA.5 variant of horrible stupid COVID.

This article about the politics of English in India is fascinating and has definitely made me want to read the author’s whole book.

Thanks to Strange New Worlds, Star Trek feels like Star Trek again. This is not an argument I can personally weigh in on, as I am working my way through DS9 at the moment and have not yet gotten to the new shows. But it seems right.

“I don’t know how else to explain it, they just clean the way you clean in a kitchen.” The Bear gets Chicago wrong, but it gets restaurant kitchens so right.

This Vulture interview with the subtitlers for Stranger Things fails to capitalize d/Deaf appropriately, but it’s still a very interesting look behind the scenes at what goes into the art of subtitles.

Pop culture is reevaluating Tracy Flick. Not me, though, I was always horrified that people acted like she was the villain of that movie. Like, wtf.

Ravynn Stringfield was not nourished by academia, but by the presence of Black women in the world of comics.

In case you’ve missed the wild and wacky world of Funny Girl‘s recasting, here is an explainer of what is going on.

In this thread, Alexis Hall answers every question Carrie Bradshaw asks in the original Sex and the City.

“People don’t die for no reason; Aquarians just occasionally get reckless on the freeway. Simple.” A story about doing astrology.

Here are some extra-good books by indigenous authors this year.

The head of the New York Antiquities Theft Task Force has some surprisingly insightful things to say about how to be a good person. Also lots of good, juicy art theft details.

Speaking of Interesting Jobs, I’m obsessed with movie sound design, and this article on Foley artists FED MY SOUL.

David Treuer’s Austrian father viewed America as a land of rescue and safety; for his Ojibwe mother, it was a land of injustice.

Rolling Stone reported on bot activity in favor of the Snyder cut (and what Zack Snyder had to do with it). Gita Jackson responds, noting that despite higher-than-usual bot activity, fandom is QUITE capable of being terrible organically (and, in this case, they were).

When your coauthor is an AI.

Happy Friday, friends! In case you didn’t click that last link, I will leave you with a piece of AI-generated writing; may it blossom weirdly in your souls. “The moon was truly mother-of-pearl, the white of the sea, rubbed smooth by the groins of drowned brides.”

The post Really the Millions Book Preview This Time: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Nasim Mansuri finds a way to love a book — CS Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy — that doesn’t love her back. (link)

The first generation of school shooting survivors has grown up. (link)

Who gets to go with their gut in the movies? Who gets to be the hero who saves the day? (SPOILERS, it’s men.) (link)

Anne Helen Peterson’s description of why Candy Crush is addictive and empty, and Wordle is fun and sweet, is so spot on. (link)

In news that will surprise nobody, Noom is just a diet app, rebranded. I hope the Maintenance Phase podcast does an episode on Noom soon, but I suppose that would be giving them more attention I don’t want them to have. Fuckin diet culture. (link)

Another review of To Paradise, this one getting into Hanya Yanagihara’s pretty messed-up attitude toward disability! Among other things! (link)

I absolutely love The Secret History, but even so, this essay about the moral vacuity of its world is very good. (But I still love it.) (link)

Do you want Bernardine Evaristo to recommend you some books, of course you want that. (link)

“Let people like things” is a credo that has stepped way beyond its original context. (link)

How much do influencers charge brands? NOBODY REALLY KNOWS, not even the influencers or the brands, but one company is trying to change that. (link)

“For kids today from poorer backgrounds, the path I took through education no longer exists.” A $4000 Pell Grant changed Tara Westover’s life. (link)

What is all the constant tracking and counting doing to our reading habits? (Despite having insanely read 31 books in January, I cannot relate to this article because I never set numbered reading goals.) (link)

Sarah Raughly considers what it means that it takes Black tragedy to get publishers interested in Black books. (link)

That’s all for now! Wish me luck on a very busy weekend!

The post When your favorite Narnia book is the racist one: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Never doubt that if there is a good article about The Westing Game, I will include that article in my links round-up. The Westing Game 5ever! (link)

Someone has to stop Paul Hollywood. Brian Phillips has a plan. (link)

The bind of being first. (link)

A fact: I will virtually ALWAYS pick up a whodunnit set in India & written by an Indian author. (link)

Catullus is a wonderful, rebellious, vulgar mess. Also, Cy Twombly. Because why wouldn’t Anne Carson write about both? God, I love Anne Carson. (link)

Talia Levin wrote about white supremacist online spaces, and the results are… expectedly horrifying. She talks about it here with ZORA‘s Anjali Enjeti. (link)

Rediscovering women authors from the heyday of ghost stories. (link)

This piece about anonymous Republican critics of Trump is a biting indictment of its own genre. (link)

I am Second Murderer but I did quietly disapprove of Macbeth’s policies. (a companion piece to the above) (link)

DOLLY PARTON. That is all. (link)

An appreciation of Witch Week. (link)

Nisi Shawl is very smart on the topic of what to think about when you’re considering writing a story about a marginalization you don’t share. (link)

This is a wonderful interview with two wonderful romance authors, Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon! (link)

And this is an also-wonderful interview with some of my favorite SFF editors, talking about how SFF has changed and where it’s headed. (link)

Dwight K. Schrute kinda typifies our Political Moment, which makes it hard to watch him. I personally stopped my The Office rewatch sometime in season four because I couldn’t take Dwight OR Jim OR Michael, so ban men, basically. (link)

I guess “ban men” is not a bad note to leave things on! Stay safe out there, friends!

The post Fixing the Great British Bake-Off: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Nevertheless: The Millions Book Preview, July – December 2020 Edition. (link)

Hope Wabuke on the KKK joke. (link)

Isabel Wilkerson considers the persistent caste system and the old, broken-down house that is America. (link)

The Netflix Babysitters’ Club is the cutest sweetest show of all time and you should watch it immediately, and also you should read Constance Grady on why the books were such an enduring pleasure that you eventually got very sick of. (link)

“A carefully veiled invitation to use dehumanizing rhetoric under the bastion of ‘the free exchange of ideas.'” Gabrielle Bellot is so great in this response to the Harper’s letter. (link)

What’s brought us to the current situation of harassment and toxicity in the comics world? (link)

“What it signals is orthogonal to what it says.” Lili Loofbourow decries the refusal of those who condemn “cancel culture” to admit the realities that shape online interactions. (link)

“What is the value of a debate that considers some human lives mainly as rhetorical quandaries?” Hannah Giorgis is, as ever, brilliant. (link)

What does power look like in the age of social media? Or, how to have healthy parasocial relationships. (link)

If you are wondering why everyone has been making cake jokes this week, Jaya Saxena is here to help. (link)

It is never appropriate to be attracted to a David Tennant character, and yet. (link)

The situation with John Ortberg and Menlo Church has been … I want to say shocking, but the truth is it’s been tiresomely predictable. (link)

Two STEM scholars put together 10 simple rules for building an antiracist lab. (link)

Seriously, though: Am I even a human person if I am not thrilled and elated with the Millions book preview?

Anyway,
Jenny

The post I’m Weirdly Not That Into the Millions Book Preview: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

“At your best, a companion. At your worst, a danger.” Linda Holmes examines white/black relationships (and complicated love) in Do the Right Thing and The Help. (link)

Television loves white suburban criminals. (link)

John Paul Brammer recreates the Left Behind (For Kids!) books from memory. (link)

The National Book Critics Circle has imploded over discussions of racism. (link)

Books that emphasize Black pain aren’t the only Black books worth giving support to. Those are just the books the publishing industry and white audiences choose to uplift. (link)

Alex Brown looks at diversity in YA publishing for 2020 to date. (link)

This actress fell in love with her stunt double! It’s fuckin wholesome! (link)

Why to capitalize Black. (link)

On the allies of whiteness in publishing and journalism. (link)

It’s time for journalists and journalism to be honest about what objectivity is and isn’t. (link)

Can RWA be saved after its moment of racial reckoning? (link)

On Confederate monuments, with a content warning for discussions of slavery and rape. (link)

Hamilton, in our political moment. (link)

Why are so many rich people such assholes? An investigation by Wired. (link)

You may have noticed that although it’s July, this links round-up does not include the second half of 2020 book preview from The Millions. This in spite of my absolutely desperate desire to know what books I should anticipate in the second half of 2020. If my next links round-up does not contain the Millions book preview, you must assume that I have been taken hostage or The Millions has. Happy 4th!

The post A Links Round-Up for the Long Weekend appeared first on Reading the End.

I never liked ironic detachment. Emily VanDer Werff goes in on why it fucking sucks and we should care about stuff. (link)

“You are not permitted to watch a police precinct erupt into flames under a canopy of fireworks and whisper to yourself, “good.”‘ Tochi Onyebuchi on the responsibility of Black writers in America. (link)

Michael Arceneaux makes the case against forgiveness. (link)

In order to fix our country, white women need to face a clear-eyed reckoning about the role we have historically played and continue to play in upholding white supremacy. (link)

Dear Holmes looks so fucking fun and I don’t even like Sherlock Holmes. (link)

Quarantine is a terrific time to rediscover The Westing Game, which is as cynical about capitalism as you are right now. (link)

“Someone at some point has to get down to the business of reading.” Lauren Michele Jackson on anti-racist reading lists. (link)

Angelica Jade Bastien is typically eloquent and brilliant on Michaela Coel’s new show, I May Destroy You. cw for sexual assault. (link)

What does K-pop owe to the Black Lives Matter movement? (link)

Here is a story about racism in NOW. (link)

White writers of crime fiction are complicit in the valorization of police in American culture. They can change how they write. (link)

Lauren Francis-Sharma hoped that quarantine would let her protect her children from American racism. It did not. (link)

A Letter From a Black Woman in Publishing on the Industry’s Cruel, Hypocritical Insistence That Words Matter, by Mariah Stovall (link)

Why we all turned on Glee. (link)

As we all wait breathlessly for the Millions second half of 2020 book preview, Lithub has used math to compile a list of the mathematically most anticipated books of summer. (link)

And now, the JK Rowling sucks links. Kacen Callender talks about staying alive for the Harry Potter books — and why JK Rowling’s transphobia is so deeply harmful. (link) Gabrielle Bellot writes about how JK Rowling betrayed the world and the readers she made. (link) Mallory Yu on why this is so personal. (link) Aja Romano on finding their nonbinary identity through Harry Potter, and realizing that had nothing to do with JK Rowling. (link) Emmet Asher-Perrin on saying goodbye. (link)

Do you think there’s any chance that JK Rowling being an asshole will save us from further Fantastic Beasts movies? The first one was Not good, and I heard the second one was even Not gooder. But maybe that will be the only two we have to suffer through.

The post Down with Forgiveness and Also Ironic Detachment: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Patricia Highsmith’s diaries are going to be published in 2021. I still haven’t read The Price of Salt, and I am mad at myself about it. Maybe that will be one of my small goals for 2020.

The kids are frankly fucking inspiring.

I was super intrigued by this post about the sexist ways the Austens and Brontes are often portrayed in biographies and fiction.

“Most of us writing now were not educated by that expanded canon.” Alexander Chee on writing stories about people who are different than you.

Dahlia Lithwick hasn’t been back to the Supreme Court since Kavanaugh was confirmed. From the reporter who brought us the Chaos Muppet / Order Muppet theory as part of her Supreme Court reporting, this is devastating. It’s devastating anyway. Fuck the patriarchy.

Listen. Listen. Listen. I have no opinion about whether Jeffrey Epstein was murdered or died by suicide because I am not qualified to assess the evidence. But I do want to be able to depend on people who are qualified to assess the evidence, which, um.

Dialogue from the husbands in every haunted house movie.

Carmen Maria Machado wrote her memoir of surviving a queer abusive relationship because she could not find such books to support her when she was in the midst of the experience. Here’s also a review of her book that I thought was really good.

New English Canaan was a 1637 book that harshly critiqued the Puritan colonizers in America. Sounds fascinating, no?

The demise of Deadspin has been miserable to witness. Anna Merlan reports: Blogging is hard.

“Romance novels are social novels.” Adriana Herrera (an awesome writer!) on the possibilities that diverse romance novels offer.

Attention please, these are all the holiday movies. Brace for incoming.

Malka Older talks utopia, dystopia, and the necessity of imagining better futures for ourselves.

Feminist bookstores are having a renaissance in the South.

That’s all for today! Have a wonderful weekend, please topple the patriarchy responsibly, and I’ll see you back here on Monday, when we will all recommence weeping and tearing our hair over the future (slash, doom?) of the world.

The post I Really Need to Read The Price of Salt Already: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.