I read bell hooks’s work in a gender studies my senior year of college, and I have desperately admired her ever since. I’m heartbroken about her death this week. Here’s a round-up of social media tributes to her. (link)

SHARKS. (link)

The new documentary about the Janet Jackson / Justin Timberlake thing will infuriate you. Relatedly, between this and the Brittany Spears thing, do we feel that the New York Times Presents team has a grudge against Justin Timberlake and are now hunting him most-dangerous-game style? Love that journey for him. (link)

You don’t have to finish books you’re not enjoying (but you can if you want). (link)

Everybody alllllllways stays saying they’re right about to find proof of the grandeur of King Solomon’s kingdom, and they never, ever are about to find it. But still this archaeology is cool. But omg, everyone calm down about Solomon. (link)

“The last essay I’ll need to write about David Foster Wallace.” (link)

IT’S NOT JUST YOU: Movie dialogue has been getting less comprehensible, and it’s due to a lot of factors relating to sound design, and also it is not the fault of the sound design people. (link)

Funny cat pictures as trojan horses for misinformation campaigns. Whew. (link)

THEY’RE ALL MORMON. All of them. Every single one. (link)

The American prison system is cracking down on books, because honestly why not. Why not make everyone’s lives as fully bad as possible? (I hate it here.) (link)

Ijeoma Oluo offers some guidelines for thinking about when a story you want to tell belongs to you. (link)

The Netflix Christmas movie cinematic universe is an absolutely wild place to be. (link)

“Professors on campus learned the university could cite no research to support its arguments that Munger Hall’s windowless bedrooms are more than glorified torture chambers.” I love the Dormzilla story so much; it’s so fucking deranged. (link)

Why are university press books so expensive? Hint: It’s not because academic publishers have a boner for keeping costs high. (link)

“What happened next felt like a windfall, an affirmation of my work.” Research makes your fiction richer and better, period. (link)

This piece about Latasha Harlins, the Black child whose murder sparked the 1992 riots in L.A., made me cry. (link)

“I implore you to remember that they are people, not mysteries for you to solve.” Couch Guy on virality and the sleuths of TikTok. (link)

“There’s an entire talk about this wave of Shrek culture at the symposium by a baffled Englishman who has carefully documented the fan fiction of extreme sexual violence, erotic fiction, and in my case, selling nudes covered in green body paint at the tail end of 2015.” The incomparable Jamie Loftus discusses the fan cultures of Shrek online. (link)

This woman went to a restaurant that appears never to have heard of dinner. The chef responded with a three-page declaration that’s somehow even better than you hoped it would be. (link)

Stephen King really REALLY hates fat people. (link)

The discipline of philosophy hates fat people too, but noted feminist philosopher Kate Manne is trying to divest from her internalized anti-fatness. (link)

“The terms for what becomes a culture war story are not decided by the public. Instead, they are decided in newsrooms that don’t mirror reality but certainly help shape it.” (link)

Why is there a typeface called Jim Crow? (link)

“A curious side effect of eliding the explicit queer romance in both the donghua and the live action is that rather than straight-washing the story, it just makes every character and every relationship read as approximately 400% more gay. Why is that? I do not know. Research is ongoing.” This is a post about storytelling in The Untamed, a show that I adore. (link)

Some anticipated books lists for you to enjoy while we all twiddle our thumbs waiting for The Millions to do its thing: The Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022 (link). Queer Adult SFF Books of 2022 (link to Twitter thread). Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022 (link). The Year of YA Authors Publishing Adult Fiction (link to Twitter thread).

Please feel free to link me to other Anticipated Books of 2022 lists, for I cannot get enough of them! I am sorry because I know there are too many lists possibly but omg I love lists.

The post Didn’t Post Any Links in December: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

Jerry Falwell Jr. runs Liberty University like a dictator.

I am SO obsessed with weird shit around writers’ estates and who controls the rights to a writer’s work and all that shit; I read this article about Harvard’s stranglehold on Dickinson scholarship and had to smoke a cigarette after because it was so good for me.

OH WAIT there’s MORE ESTATE DRAMA, this time about John Steinbeck. I live for this. I LIVE for it.

Over on Ask a Manager, a trans woman in tech talks about how her work experiences differed before and after her transition. As you’d expect, it’s infuriating and fascinating.

This list of “the hardest props I’ve ever made,” where prop masters talk about movie prop challenges they faced and overcame, is actually more like “the hardest props I’ve ever tracked down” — but it’s still very cool and interesting to read.

I have wanted to kick Malcolm Gladwell in the shins for YEARS for his sloppy citation practices, so I am glad The Atlantic has noticed that most/all of what he says is based on nonsense.

Here’s Keidra Chaney on how to be a fan without being coopted into serving corporate interests.

This jewel thief grandma is my hero.

Wow: A Virginia man is suing a reporter and a UVA professor for defamation because they talked about his family’s slaveowning past.

For years we’ve bought into the claim that our brains are already in motion on Doing an Action before we consciously decide to Do the Action. (I have never felt this conflicts with free will, but whatever.) Apparently, it may have fallen victim to the classic science mistake of inadequately distinguishing signal from noise.

The problem with brands that market themselves as progressive is that we’re all still spinning round and round the capitalist whirlpool. ThirdLove is a shitty place to work.

It is the 25th anniversary of Friends, and Rachel Handler made Rachel’s fucked up trifle and forced her family to eat it.

Here is the cutest, most heartwarming Little Free Library in the world.

Leah Price considers the much-vaunted “death of the book” over the ages. The happy news is that the book has never died yet, so its prospects are solid.

A penguin came to Random Penguin.

Tell me some links you’ve encountered around ye olde web this past fortnight! And have a wonderful weekend!

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