Thoughts of Spring Weekly Link Round-Up

Sometimes I remind myself of an old farmer-- looking up at the sky, gauging the wind, checking the clouds. It's a habit that I don't think I'll ever break. I don't know why I have it because I've never been a farmer or lived on a farm.

If I can trace it back to anything, I guess it would be those long bike rides I took out in the country. I put a lot of miles on that bicycle of mine, and I did a lot of exploring, but I knew two things: (1) I never wanted to get lost because the consequences would be dire, and (2) I never wanted to get caught out in any sort of weather. So I learned how not to get lost in the woods and to keep an eye on the sky.

The Phoenix area has been getting some rain this winter, and every drop of it is welcome. I can already feel a difference in the sun, and I can already tell that the days are getting longer. This is making me think of spring and flowers. One of my favorite things to do is check out all the different types of cacti in bloom at the Desert Botanical Garden in spring. It would be hard to find more intense colors anywhere. I thought I'd share one of the photos I took one May. If I remember correctly, the type of cactus is called "Blazing Torch." Spring is on its way. I am happy.

But those links out in the corral aren't sounding very happy.... Head 'em up! Mooooove 'em out!
 

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• James Patterson is donating £10,000 to flood-hit UK bookshops.
• New York Public Transit is getting Wi-Fi and USB charging ports in 2016.
• The BBC will be broadcasting Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency television series. 
• Amazon Prime members in the U.S. can get a free three-month subscription to Audible. 
• Can't say as I'm crazy about this headboard. The books-as-design trend may have reached a new low. 
• How the Oxford English Dictionary went from a murderer's pet project to internet lexicon.  
• How museums are helping people with memory loss. 
• JFK's life is in James Franco's hands in the 11.22.63 trailer. 
• Why isn't "American" a language? 
• Penguin merges one of my favorite imprints-- Berkley-- into Putnam/Dutton. 
• Here's a petition to name the new element 117 Octarine, in honor of Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
• What many authors are doing while their wages decrease. 
• eBook library checkouts increased in 2015.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Another one? A flea market find may be a rare Billy the Kid photo.
• The stuff of nightmares: the fossil of a massive crocodile has been found on the edge of the Sahara Desert. 
• Archaeologists have hailed the finding of a 3,000-year-old "Bronze Age Pompeii" om England. 
• A prosthetic leg with a hoofed foot has been discovered in a Chinese tomb, and a 1,500-year-old wooden foot was found in Austria.
• The ongoing undersea search for the missing Malaysian airliner has found a second shipwreck. 
• Queen Elizabeth I held England's first official lottery 450 years ago.
• A frozen woolly mammoth has changed human history. 
• A massive dinosaur skeleton will spill out of a hall at a famed New York museum.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• A little story about squirrel obsessives through the ages. 
• 15 animals caught smelling flowers. 
• In September Denis and I drove around Loch Eriboll. In January a humpback whale had to be rescued there.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• The somewhat gory story behind the Well of the Seven Heads in Scotland. 
• 24 of the most insane things ever seen on Google Earth images. (There's a couple of bridges that make me queasy....) 
• National Geographic's top 20 photos of 2015.
• One of the best places to see the wonders of the landscape and wildlife of Arizona is Arizona Highways' Photo of the Day archive.
• The greatest American train journey that time forgot.

►I ♥ Lists◄

• RIP-- 10 key performances of Alan Rickman.
• RIP-- David Bowie's favorite 100 books.
• Fascinating 1920s and 1930s book jackets from the New York Public Library. 
• The 100 top-grossing movies of all time may surprise you. (I've seen 64 if any of you are interested.)
• The hot and cold book categories of 2015.
• 15 things you didn't know about The Twilight Zone.

That's all for now! Stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure!

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!