Watch Ted Lasso, please. I beg you will watch Ted Lasso. I am saying this for your own good, because I want you to feel positive emotions in your life, and frankly where else can that happen? (link)

How to throw a non-terrible con. (link)

“NXIVM was a distillation of all the failures and lies of corporate feminism.” No, I am not yet finished being fascinated by cults. (link)

(White) women’s anger as marketing strategy. (link)

Who gets named in crossword clues? (link)

Whatever did happen with all those white people buying books about antiracism this summer? (You already know the answer.) (link)

“I now know about so many consumer goods I previously had no idea existed.” Roxane Gay on pandemic dread-induced shopping. (link)

Nothing is fun anymore. (link) Except for Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is fun.

And this; this one thing is fun. Romance novelists and readers raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Stacey Abrams flip Georgia all the way blue. (link)

Speaking of blue, THE GREEKS DID HAVE BLUE. I am shook and cannot believe so many people have misled me for so long. (link)

The National Theatre has rolled out a new subscription-based plan where you can watch their plays online for free! They launched this month with a library of 11 plays, and they’ll be adding new plays monthly. (link)

How should you incorporate food into fantasy worlds? NOT RACIST-LY, PLEASE. (link)

In conclusion, watch Ted Lasso. You may report back to me when you have finished it.

The post Two Words: Book. Concierge. (A Links Round-Up) 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.

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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!

The post THE MILLIONS BOOK PREVIEW: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Quillette is bad and people who write for it should feel bad.

We do not know what Baby Yoda’s first words are going to be, but we should not assume he will talk like Grown Yoda.

The BBC endeavors to identify some of the bookish trends of the last decade. I particularly like the first one.

This Arielle Gordon piece on a music fandom (fandom?)’s teen girl message board is… it’s a lot.

Fast Color is the small superhero movie we need. I am unbelievably excited for this movie to come out on DVD so I can watch it. Gugu Mbathu-Raw is gorgeous and great and should be in everything.

“I sit and ask myself: Does anyone else in this room know Jane Austen is… white? Do they even know they are all white?” I feel genuinely fortunate to have studied Mansfield Park in a class that was specifically devoted to Literature of Empire, because I think it made me more aware of like, what the fuck is going on in the background of a lot of these white classics (slavery! empire!), but anyway, this Marcos Gonsalez piece is about experiencing the white literary canon as a person of color, and it’s excellent.

Here is a weird and slightly surrealist piece about what the internet does to us all. (It’s surrealist because it’s so fucking real. What is this world.)

The worldbuilding of the A Christmas Prince franchise has… raised some questions.

Are brands ever just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing?

TIL Lurlene McDaniel was inspired to write all her tragic books after her son was diagnosed with NOT KIDDING juvenile diabetes.

Cancel culture isn’t a real thing: By the numbers.

“I’m pretty behind on every single geek franchise out there.” Keidra Chaney, formerly of The Learned Fangirl, considers herself geek-adjacent these days. Lightly geeky.

Here’s what your phone is really doing when you do those autocomplete memes.

“Ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?” A very blessed oral history of that Folgers coffee ad.

The memes that defined the 2010s.

Common Sense Media and their ratings system are enormously comforting for parents. Here’s what’s behind them!

Ruth Wilson left The Affair under mysterious circumstances. Now it appears that it may be down to the show pressuring her to do nude scenes well past her comfort level.

“This year I picked up a pastime I thought was reserved for white people: fighting with my family about their terrible politics.” Scaachi Koul on talking to her family about Kashmir.

This Jia Tolentino essay on Cats is broadly excellent but you WILL have to live with the knowledge that Known Racist and Anti-Semite TS Eliot and Entire Fascist Ezra Pound used to write to each other “in black dialect for fun.”

Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie have such a beautiful friendship, I adore them, I want them to be in a buddy cop movie together. A buddy cop franchise!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

The post Somehow Only One Link about Cats: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

But anyway! On to the links!

The cost of reporting while female.

I always love reading the Lithub discussions of how book designers come up with their book covers. This is a particularly good one.

If you want to read romance, but you’re not sure where to start, Kelly Faircloth has your recs. I can cosign just about every one of these that I’ve read, so trust and believe that this is a good list for a romance newbie.

Oh yeah and then Kelly Faircloth talked to a bunch of romance novelists about how to make consent sexy. What a great idea to ask this question of people who spend their professional lives doing that very thing.

“Wakanda is a fictional place, but Wakanda is also an idea.” Sayantani DasGupta (middle grade author!) on spaces created by and for people of color.

(There is probably a ton of amazing writing on Black Panther, y’all, but since I haven’t seen it yet, I haven’t read any of it. Please drop your favorite Black Panther takes in the comments for after I do see it.)

Who wants a list of anticipated 2018 debut novels? ME OBVIOUSLY.

Tanita Davis writes about Daniel Handler and the way we respond to racist vs sexual harassment.

On Bari Weiss and the concept of the perpetual foreigner.

The Oxfam sex scandal arises from the charity industry’s white savior mentality, says Afua Hirsch of the Guardian.

Have a wonderful weekend, one and all!

The post Seeing Kara Walker Tomorrow: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

The NPR Book Concierge has arrived once again! Every year I get zillions of recommendations from this thing, and you should too!

How fantasy movies portray the experience of oppression in near-totally white terms (by the fabulous Zeba Blay).

Vann R. Newkirk II is flames emoji as usual on calling out racism and the value of civility.

The Eritrean soccer league keeps defecting en masse when it goes to games overseas. The author of this article, Alexis Okeowo, allegedly has a book about resisting extremism in Africa, and I am going to read it twice because this article on Eritrean soccer is incredible.

2016 was the year America finally saw the (black) South: A super-great article by Jesmyn Ward. Oh! I forgot to tell you! Last night I dreamed I met Jesmyn Ward, and I wanted to tell her that I admired her work, but all I had read of hers was THIS ONE ARTICLE, and I felt terribly embarrassed that I hadn’t read any of her books yet. I was like “But — I mean, but, I have The Fire This Time at my apartment right now!” and Jesmyn Ward, in my dream, couldn’t have been more polite about it.

The rise of the romance novel (including the genuinely fucking awful The Flame and the Flower, dear God I want those hours of my life back). This article notably includes a picture of romance novelist Rosemary Rogers in a sari because of course.

Authors from around the world discuss colonialism and literature.

It’s been a while since we had a bonkers story in this round-up! Let’s have one: Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, is embroiled in a deeply weird financial scheme regarding Hatchimals (a prime Christmas gift for children).

Zadie Smith talks about the experimental (or otherwise) nature of multiculturalism and her hopes for the future.

The post NPR BOOK CONCIERGE TIIIIIIIIME: A Totally Chill Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.