However, since that seems not to be in the cards for me or for anyone, I am enjoying the cooler weather, basking in the sunshine like a happy lizard, and collecting good links for your enjoyment. Here they are!

Carrie Wittmer helpfully ranks every vampire by hotness. This is science, and she is absolutely correct about the number one hottest vampire ever. (content note, some lunatic has chosen the YouTube video of the attempted rape scene from “Seeing Red” for Spike. Don’t watch it! It’s very upsetting!) (link)

Rafia Zakaria considers Thoreau and the nature of solitude in Walden and Karachi. (link)

A story was reported recently that a woman was raped on a subway in Philadelphia, while numerous bystanders looked on and did nothing. But we have no real evidence that it’s true. (link)

“The hysterical throng gets a lot less threatening if, instead of a maniacal cabal of liberal despots, they’re just regular folks who are allowed to consume things they like, disengage with things they don’t like, and talk about it with whomever they want.” On cancel culture. (link)

Dune takes place in the desert and makes use of Muslim ideology and Arabic language and culture. But it doesn’t engage with Middle Eastern cultures in any serious way. (link)

There is a specific intimacy in being able to read side-by-side with your friends. (Also, though the article does not get into this, of reading the same thing your friends are reading in roughly the same few days they are reading it, because you like them and you feel like it.) (link)

Netflix is dipping its toe into the waters of gaming. Do they understand the gaming audience well enough to make it work? Also, are they just a buncha dicks? (y) (link)

“These negative representations make so much of the world not only physically inaccessible but emotionally inaccessible, too.” On disability in superhero stories. (link)

A secret 1970 court case established a legal precedent that changed everything for trans people in England. (link)

Though it’s a very niche area that has nothing to do with me personally, I’ve really been enjoying some of the writing I’ve read lately reassessing how MFA programs work (most especially Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World). Here’s another one of those! (link)

What’s the status of the antiracist book clubs everyone was so excited about founding the summer of last year? (link)

I am delighted to learn via this profile that Nikole Hannah-Jones is the middle one of three sisters. Middle children woooooo! (link)

Who’s got lovely weekend plans? Please tell me about them!

The post Vampire Hotness Rankings and Other Important Matters: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

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.

Advice on how to dress professionally hits marginalized women so, so differently than men or even women with more privilege.

Toni Morrison died this month at the age of 88. The Guardian has a round-up of author tributes to her. Hannah Giorgis considers her legacy in American writing.

The interlibrary loan system (in America) is the apex of human civilization. It just is.

Jay-Z’s deal with the NFL is giving them cover for Colin Kaepernick.

Here are the creepiest sexist film reviews ever. (I am delighted that the Wonder Woman review is included here, because Jesus Christ.)

How did escape rooms become such a phenomenon? (I went to one once and I couldn’t stop coughing and it was rather stressful. The game master person came on the intercom to be like “….do you need a cough drop?” and it was like the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me, although it did not cure my cough, in the end.)

A pleasing trend in time-traveling lesbians has emerged; please everyone read The Psychology of Time Travel.

I enjoy it when people get mad about colloquialisms. (I say this as someone who sometimes gets mad about colloquialisms.)

“Rereading Jane Eyre recently, I was struck by how witchy it is.” On the resurgence of witches in pop culture.

These are tiny dollhouse renos. I have nothing to add to that.

The 1619 Project is an initiative by the paper to observe the 400th anniversary of slavery coming to America. It’s a massive undertaking under the leadership of Nikole Hannah-Jones, and if you have NYT access, you shouldn’t miss it. The Guardian is running a week-long series to commemorate the same event, which you can find here.

In many ways things are incredibly bad and getting worse, but here’s a bright side: Looks like humans cured Ebola???

This is a very pure video.

I hope that you have glorious plans for the weekend. It is Thursday as I write this, and I have already used up a rewatch of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, but if you haven’t yet done that this week, I recommend it. However charming you remember it being, you are exactly right. It is that charming. I might watch it another time this weekend. It’s in my top three movies and I mean that, along with Clueless and 10 Things I Hate about You YEAH YOU HEARD ME AND I STAND BY IT.

This has ended on a strangely combative note. I wish you all good luck in this cold dark world.

The post Interlibrary Loans Are Pure Solid Gold: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Black women have largely been left out of the conversation about harassment (quelle surprise). Rebecca Carroll talks about her experience of racist belittlement from Charlie Rose.

On the state of Kentucky and the borders of the South.

Gillian Flynn writes about how those men view women. It is rough. No wonder her books are the way they are.

Debut novelist Naima Coster talks about what it meant to have a black woman as her editor. (Her book sounds really good too!)

This season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been incredibly good. Angelica Jade Bastien talks about watching it while coming to terms (again) with her own mental illness and suicide attempt.

Melissa Harris-Perry contemplates the #MeToo backlash, and how we can stop it.

Nikole Hannah-Jones continues to do incredible work on school segregation in the US, and this interview at the Atlantic is fuego. When she writes a book, when that day comes, I am going to buy 29 copies of it and distribute them to a bunch of people.

On the poignancy of acknowledgements in books. I love acknowledgements in books. I am not ashamed.

Carly Lane talks about negative responses to Star Wars and the perils of becoming too committed to fan theories and headcanons.

How were the Porgs created? The answer is goddamn adorable.

Scaachi Koul thinks Logan Paul is an asshole and says so much more eloquently than I ever could.

And by the way, I’m not linking it, but there’s a Washington Post article making the rounds about how maybe Logan Paul did some good by drawing attention to the suicide problem in Japan. Among other things, it implies that media guidelines for reporting on suicide (which are based in research about suicide contagion) are similar in quality to the culture of shame and silence around suicide in Japan. It makes me want to punch a wall. It’s less harmful for the media to say nothing than it is for them to report irresponsibly (as they consistently do). I am wrath.

Happy weekend! Stay warm!

The post It’s Been Too Long Since My Last: Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

First up, the Book Smugglers are running a Kickstarter so that they can continue to do what they do and pay more dollars to diverse SFF creators. They’re an incredible publisher and resource, and you should support them. Do it do it do it!

Once you’ve done that, if you have dollars left over, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is raising money for a feature film! You can donate there as well if you want to see Phryne’s fabulous wardrobe and Jack’s strangely seductive inability to stand up straight on your screens again.

Boys in college predictably were always trying to get me to watch Boondock Saints, a movie I was confident I would loathe. So this brutal Nathan Rabin piece about its director brought tears of joy to my eyes. (I have still never seen Boondock Saints.)

Taylor Swift and medieval studies have the same problem: Nazis love them. Both of them need to do something about it.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the queen of school resegregation reporting, has a new piece up at the New York Times about how southern school districts are resegregating through secession. Basically southern schools are beginning to follow the northern blueprint of separating school systems at the metropolitan, rather than the parish (county) level.

God actually blessed us with a new Nikole Hannah-Jones piece and a new Ta-Nehisi Coates piece in the same week. Here’s Coates on Trump and white supremacy.

Why Louie CK needs to address ongoing allegations of harassment. Most notably:

One of the most persistent and damaging cultural myths about sexual assault is that the people who commit it are uniquely evil—that they are not the same as the people you are friends with, or related to, or dating, or a fan of, the people that you trust or that you like.

Rembert Browne is typically brilliant on the subject of Colin Kaepernick and what white America expects of black folks it loves.

Sorry this was short, and I wish you a very happy weekend! My Saints will be playing the Partytots, so I anticipate a grim ending to mine. May your teams all win.

The post Too Busy Reading about Pirates: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

NK Jemisin

Nicole Chung

Mira Jacob

Masha Gessen

Vann R. Newkirk II

Rebecca Traister

Rembert Browne

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham

A whole bunch of writers of many genres

Stay safe, guys.

The post Post-Election Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

The element of the fantastical in The Boxcar Children is their coherence to a Protestant work ethic.

I am THE MOST susceptible to this kind of sadness. Just read enough of this article to accept the word “cluey” into our vocabulary (i.e., the story about the board game Clue), AND THEN STOP, because it is genuinely unbearable to read the rest of these stories, and that’s not hyperbole, I really mean it, for God’s sake don’t be like me and read the whole cluey-ass thing.

“Two powerful men being friends is an inevitability. Two powerful women being friends is a conspiracy”: On how the concept of cliques is used to express suspicion of close female friendship.

Plagiarism in the age of self-publishing.

Thoughts on diversity and publishing from Nikesh Shukla, including some glorious side-eye for stories about middle-aged white male writers having affairs with their lovely young female students.

“The shift in language that trades the word ‘integration’ for ‘diversity’ is critical. Here in [New York City], as in many, diversity functions as a boutique offering for the children of the privileged but does little to ensure quality education for poor black and Latino children.” Nikole Hannah-Jones on the decision to send her daughter to public school in New York City.

Interrogation techniques that aren’t torture.

Down with periods! Up with line breaks!

The post Sad and Angry Week: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.