A personal account from a former teaching assistant to Avital Ronell, the NYU professor accused of harassment.

The brilliant Carol Anderson recommends books about democracy and its challenges.

Okay, maybe — MAYBE — I will consume this Sherlock Holmes property. MAYBE.

Design a spaceship: Some instructions.

Over at the Book Smugglers, Foz Meadows reminds us to critique the critics when we’re talking about problematic elements in media.

Constance Grady goes in on redemption narratives for men in Hollywood, versus women. Guess who gets the benefit of the doubt.

I absolutely love this piece about the jokes comedians regret making. The people who aren’t white dudes generally have more interesting, thoughtful things to say.

Deadspin and Jezebel understand how hard this time is, and they have accordingly switched out their editors. Two Jezebel writers attend a football game, and a Deadspin writer covers a fashion show.

Why the Serena Williams thing was so viscerally upsetting for black women.

I don’t know what this partnership between Sony and the owners of The Ripped Bodice but I am ALL ABOUT IT.

I just adore this piece about how authors dress their characters — with accompanying fashion images!

Want to know how Crazy Rich Asians managed to look so, like, crazy rich? The Wrap has you covered!

How to fart when sharing a bed.

Here’s some measurements and statistics about how stupid and useless the pockets in women’s clothes are WHEN WE EVEN GET TO HAVE THEM.

Women retell myths from classical antiquity: a top ten list.

Is social psychology in a replication crisis? Professionals differ on the answer.

What women really want from Jian Ghomeshi. Also: a conversation with the editor who decided to run the Jian Ghomeshi piece, in which Isaac Chotiner gives no quarter to bullshit, and which I believe led to the editor being fired/resigning. Also: Rebecca Solnit on the tradition that men are objective and women are subjective. Also: Mo Ryan on abusive men rewriting their stories (badly). Megan Garber on the question of (vis-a-vis Kavanaugh) whether sexual assault is Just How Things Are. Jia Tolentino on dudes being not very sorry at all. Also Lili Loofbourow on Kavanaugh because Jesus Christ this fucking week.

Are we in a romcom renaissance? God I hope so.

Willa Paskin reviews (with spoilers) the show Forever, and gets into some of the reasons I find it frustrating when the whole marketing push for a thing is KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS THING GOING IN or it will be COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY RUINT.

Everything you know about obesity is wrong.

Have a great weekend! Cuddle up with blankets and gin and good friends, as I will be doing.

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I thought we’d start this week’s links round-up with something heartening: An article about why the AskHistorians subreddit bans Holocaust denial on their platform.

Here’s what’s been happening with the programming at WorldCon. For heaven’s sake. Mary Robinette Kowal and a team of other cool people have stepped in to help fix it.

If you can get through how much R. Kelly makes your skin crawl, Hannah Giorgis has a wonderfully thoughtful take on his new (vile) song and all the wrongs he thinks he’s suffered.

Welp this Buzzfeed piece about sex positivity and working in a sex toys shop broke my heart.

An authoritative ranking of all the secret siblings on CW shows. Luckily they rank One Tree Hill number one, as any other decision would invalidate the whole ranking.

Uncanny Magazine is Kickstarting a fifth year, now with stretch goals to cover launching a vid channel! I love Uncanny Magazine, which has the shiniest special issues ever, so definitely consider kicking in.

Therese Marie Mailhot makes a point about the world “civilized” as adjective vs verb that I absolutely love, in this piece about marginalized groups and the demand for courtesy.

The Queer Eye reboot may be the cure for toxic masculinity. (It’s not.) It’s the porn of emotional labor.

Here’s a story about how a high school teacher took advantage of her student — and why we need better ways to talk about teachers and students.

Why is nothing wheelchair accessible in science fiction? Ace Ratcliff investigates.

How women get punished for society’s fears about children’s independence.

I hope y’all all have a wonderful and amazing weekend! Stay cool, and happy August!

The post Banning Nazis and curing toxic masculinity: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Fantasy author NK Jemisin on disrupting the status quo. Note that the author of the interview refers to “stereotypical fantasy series like Lord of the Rings,” which is sort of insane because Lord of the Rings didn’t partake of those stereotypes, it invented them, so settle down with that.

And also, a good thing to know about about tragic queerness in NK Jemisin’s latest book, The Fifth Season, before you start reading it (featuring spoilers).

Same-sex desire in African fiction.

A female author sent out manuscript queries under a male pseudonym, and you’ll never guess what happened next! (Except, yes you will. You’re not naive.)

It turns out that writing a romance novel in which a Jew in Nazi Germany falls in love with the commandant of her concentration camp is not the world’s greatest idea. But Anne Rice is fine with it because of course she is.

Mary Engelbreit is doing a thing to support the Black Lives Matter movement, and that’s going to have to mark the official end of the days in which it was fine for me to mix her up with Lisa Frank.

Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation.

Relatedly: A thoughtful response to that David Brooks review of Between the World and Me.

When we talk about trigger warnings, I feel like we do not often enough point out that people mostly want them as a heads-up, not an excuse note. But let’s do keep that in mind.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! I will be reading the latest books from Amitav Ghosh and Meredith Duran, which I think sums me up as a reader pretty thoroughly.

The post The Season for Franzen Mockery Has Begun: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

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 all broke and well-intentioned.

Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, and Courtney Summers, author of All the Rage, are in conversation at Book Riot about stories of sexual assault. It’s really good.

Pop culture genius Adam Sternbergh invents the term “purge-watching” for when you’re watching a show unlovingly just so you can have it off your docket. This is a term we needed. Well-played, sir.

There is an open-access journal called Neo-Victorian Studies, and that’s pretty much all I did on Tuesday.

Ta-Nehisi Coates fears that the movies have ruined X-Men (I know, dude), but he’s got a lot of other thoughts on the rise of superheroes.

What it’s like to be a first-generation scholarship student at an Ivy League.

Oh, you may have missed it, but there’s a new Star Wars teaser. It ends by trying to make every Star Wars fan in the whole world cry. But my heart is made of stone.

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