The End Is Near Weekly Link Round-Up

I hope all of you are having the holidays of your dreams. This past week has certainly been an eye-opener for me and makes me look ahead to the new year with a degree of speculation. But isn't that what the new year is for-- to speculate, to dream, to plan? Here's looking ahead and wishing you all the best possible 2014!

Bookish News & Other Interesting Stuff

• You never know what you'll find in a library. Someone in Ohio found a first edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol!
• Why we need Grandpas and Grandmas.
• I enjoyed this cartoonist's visions of one man, one cat.
• Take a simple quiz to form your personal dialect map. As I was breezing through, I realized that I was answering the questions as though I were still living in central Illinois. I started over, answering each question in the present day, and the result was that I now talk like a Phoenician. Well... most of the time!
• The triumph of the English major.
• More information is coming to light about the pillaging of the Girolamini Library in Naples, Italy.
• This crazy guy in the snow is quite the artist!
• Six North American libraries have exceeded a million digital checkouts this year!
• The 86-year-old Strand Bookstore has proved that bookstores are not dead!
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's original manuscript.
• News I don't like to hear: book bannings are on the rise.
• A conclusion that I'd already arrived at: eBooks vs. print? Actually, it's a non-issue.
• If it weren't for those darned signaling devices, I'd seriously consider taking the Jeopardy! Adult Online Test that's coming up soon.
• Will tracking readers lead to better books? 
• I can't get enough of the story of Tim's Vermeer.

I  ♥  Lists

• 53 things you may not know about Arizona.
• Book lovers stereotypes that hold more than a grain of truth... and that can be a good thing.
• You may have already seen the map of the most famous book set in every state, but have you also seen the map of the most popular television show set in every state?

Book Candy

• The library designed like a bookstore.
• Some amazing photographs are winners in 2013's National Geographic Photo Contest.

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next weekend when I'll have a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure!