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.

The post I Love Television: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

I miss Grantland all the time, but I’m so glad The Ringer exists. Here’s a terrific piece on how The Bachelor became a pipeline for social media influencers.

A wonderful profile of NK Jemisin, one of the most amazing SFF authors currently working.

Cancel culture is chaotic good (with some history and context).

“It’s like the Hunger Games, but dangerous.” How to not get murdered if you find yourself in an English murder village.

Here’s a guide to protecting your security online.

Myriam Gurba, on the death threats you’ll receive when you challenge white supremacy. And Patrice Caldwell on how publishing continues to shut out the voices of people of color, to the benefit of books like American Dirt. And David Bowles on the whiteness and brokenness of the publishing industry.

And yes, to answer your next question: The publishing industry remains very, very white.

The British royal family has a massive online fandom. It is now in turmoil.

Marginalized people can tell true authentic stories that in aggregate contribute to dominant cultural narratives that are harmful. This is because the culture chooses which marginalized voices and stories to uplift.

Men have talked us to death about the sex they’ve had with women, but they have said very little about the abortions they did or didn’t pay for.

Here’s Evette Dione on Kobe Bryant and his complicated legacy.

How did fingers get their names in all different languages? Today is a good day to find out! (Also, this is your semiannual reminder that if you are ever in a kidnapping situation and the bad guys are going to cut off one of your fingers to show your family that they mean business, and they let you choose which finger, you should choose the index finger on your nondominant hand. You need the other fingers for gripping stuff, but your middle finger makes a pretty good substitute index finger.)

Happy weekend, friends! I hope yours is calm and peaceful, or if not that then I hope it’s full of reading Gideon the Ninth and shrieking in giddy glee as you read.

The post Sacrifice Your Nondominant Hand’s Index Finger: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Here’s a history of all the times New York Times opinion columnists wrote opinion columns about how unkind the internet is to New York Times opinion columnists.

THE ARCHIVE WON A HUGO THE ARCHIVE WON A HUGO WE ARE ALL WINNERS, look, I’ll be very honest, this video of AO3 winning the Hugo for Best Related Work made me cry.

In other very thrilling Hugo news, Lady Business won for Best Fanzine! Wooooooooo! They are the greatest!

The writers’ room for Friends sounds awful omg how do people live like this?

This story about Robert Pattinson is kinda nuts. What a fucking weirdo.

“In Twelfth Night, I played Feste, the arch clown dressed in a motley coat, full of japes and bons mots. In Call of the Wild: The Musical, I played Spitz, the evil dog with sleeves that had fake tattoos on them.” On being in a traveling Shakespeare troupe.

Demanding likability leads us to dehumanize others.

400 years ago, the first enslaved people arrived in North America. The New York Times has created The 1619 Project to discuss the ways slavery shaped our country.

Here are 5 myths about American slavery that historians would like to see corrected.

“What we’re witnessing today is an [homelessness] emergency born less of poverty than prosperity—occurring not despite but precisely because of the economic boom.” Inadequate affordable housing is putting thousands of families out on the streets.

In spite of the authoritarian government in Uganda, Ugandan literature is thriving.

I’m furious about Amazon moving in across the street from Parnassus. In some communities, Amazon is the best option and indie bookstores are not available, but that’s not the case for Nashville. Fuck these guys. And fuck them even more for releasing The Testaments early.

Also, Amazon-owned company Audible wants to introduce a new “captions” feature that contravenes the rights of publishers. They are now being sued.

After Jeannette Ng’s extremely accurate criticism of the Campbell Award’s namesake in her award acceptance speech, the magazine that gives the award has decided to change its name. Yay! The Tiptree Award is currently considering a name change, and I’ve emailed them to recommend that they do make the change.

This exploration of what gets accomplished when white people are forced to articulate our racial situatedness is very interesting and also depressing.

To close out the week in links, I give you this blessed Twitter thread. It is old but very blessed.

I hope for you that your weekend contains many baby animals and nothing annoying, unless it’s baby animals mildly annoying you by being too adorable and wiggly. In the absence of baby animals, I wish you zillions of excellent books to read!

The post OLD NEWS: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Just kidding! Those things are both incredible! So I’m kicking off this links round-up with Isaac Chotiner’s very magical interview with Bret Easton Ellis, as well as a review of the “old man yells at cloud” book Ellis has, apparently, written. Be blessed.

“It felt hidden, like I said a magic word and there was Prague.” An interview with Helen Oyeyemi.

The rise of publicly thirsty women.

Some thoughts on cultural appropriation, rules, and self-censorship, from Jeannette Ng.

An extremely normal and fine profile of Carmen Maria Machado. (I advise reading it in its entirety.)

How bad is EL James’s new book? SO BAD.

The medical establishment uses men as a baseline for almost everything — which has led to massive health inequities for women.

Katy Waldman found her own experiences in a book (not in a good way).

Celebrating Easter Sunday among the black congregations in Louisiana whose churches were burned by an arsonist this year: an exercise in generosity and forgiveness.

Nathan Robinson attended the Zizek/Peterson “debate” so we wouldn’t have to.

Wesley Morris grieves for the demise of the romantic comedy (and so do I).

Have an incredible weekend, friends! Mine is going to contain brambles and crawfish, so I will be the happiest camper the world has ever known. (Also a little bit of phone-banking but I’m trying not to think too much about that.)

The post Making Fun of Bret Easton Ellis: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.