A Weird and Wild Weekly Link Round-Up

This week has been one for the record books. Normally the weather around here is predictable: it's either hot or it's gorgeous (and the reason why so many folks flock down here in the winter). Well... Wednesday was an entirely different kettle of weather prognostication.

Look, Ma, we've been graupelled!

It's not often that you can look out the window here in Phoenix, Arizona to see this. White stuff. Covering the ground. I've lived here since 1976, and I've only seen snow flurries in Phoenix on three different occasions. I've never ever seen the ground covered.

Not only that, but I learned a new word. Having grown up in snow country, I knew that the stuff covering our desert landscaping wasn't your normal hail, and it certainly wasn't your normal snow. Leave it to meteorologists to come up with a term that means "soft hail", and that word is "graupel." Now Denis and I can say we've been graupelled because-- like all the rest of our neighbors who happened to be home-- we were out in it taking pictures.

Lookin' out our front door...

I don't know if it was a result of being graupelled, but Denis and I came down with some sort of bug Friday, which is why this link round-up is late. As I blinked myself awake for a few seconds during the wee hours of this morning, I heard both of our stomachs loudly complaining, and-- blame it on illness-- the complaints sounded much like two humpback whales singing to each other in the depths of the open sea! Neither one of us is feeling well, but I was tired of lying in bed feeling puny, so here I sit... and here I go to round up those links!

Bookish News & Other Interesting Stuff

• Amid claims that the internet has revived interest in the short story, Salon.com says it isn't so.
• An open letter to the shoplifter caught stealing my book.
• From LA to rural Scotland: the odyssey of a bookworm.
• It may not be available until May, but you can still take a look at the cover of Dan Brown's newest book, Inferno. The cover reveal alone made the book  jump to #5 on Amazon's bestseller list.
• Blogger Matt Kahn has an ambitious project that you can follow on Kahn's Corner: to read and review Publishers Weekly's #1 bestselling books for each of the last 100 years.
• eBookPlus plans to embed advertising to create free-but-legal eBooks.
• It looks as though William McGonagall is going to have the last word: one of his poems is expected to fetch £3,000 at auction. Not bad for the "world's worst poet."
• Amazon provides updated information on their eBook borrowing program which is available to Prime members.
• For those of you who thought that it never snows in Arizona, here's a photo gallery for you.
• A treasure-filled warrior's grave has been found in Russia.

I   ♥  Lists

• Famous movies you didn't know were adapted from books. (I have to admit that as I scanned through the list I could see that it wasn't made for bookaholics!)
• 10 books that rewrite history.
• The bestselling books in ten countries around the world.
• 25 writers on the importance of libraries.
• 31 things we learned from Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Book Candy

• A flexible wood bookshelf that bends to accommodate its contents. 
• A fabulous reading room with a view. (There's more than one photo, so don't miss the slideshow!)

That's it for this week. I hope I found an item or two that tickled your fancy. I'm now going to take my queasies elsewhere to try to get comfortable to read, but don't forget to stop by next weekend when I'll have a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure!