A Craving for Fried Chicken Weekly Link Round-Up

After being accidentally locked in a small commercial chicken house when I was eight years old, I have very decided opinions about these birds: the only good chicken is a dead chicken. I know that's not rational, but when you're eight and a bit scared and trying to find your way out of a gloomy place by walking down a narrow walkway between wire cages filled with smelly beaks that are all trying their best to peck you as hard as they can... well, rationality flies right out the window. Or it would if any of the windows in that place had been open.

I've been remembering my incarceration in that chicken house lately since the neighbors have seen fit to supplement their larder by bringing in a flock of chickens and one extremely loud rooster. 

There are a lot of noises that drive other people insane that don't bother me a bit. A phone can ring for time and all eternity if I don't want to answer it. I find it simple to ignore the noise. But I simply cannot tune out a rooster crowing. The first three days that rooster was in residence, I thought I'd lose my tiny mind. It would not shut up, and the volume control was set on a permanent twelve.

Foghorn has since calmed down, but he still makes his presence known throughout the day. I can't help but think of my pool reading time coming up this summer... and plan guerilla raids which would feature a missing rooster. In talking this over with friends on Facebook, we all learned an interesting fact. In small town America, I could complain about the noise and the chickens would disappear, but there's no such law in large cities like Salt Lake City and Phoenix. You'd think it would be the other way around, wouldn't you?

In the mean time, I'm going to head on out to the link corral, hoping that Foghorn keeps his beak shut. Fried chicken surely would taste nice right about now....

Head 'em up! Moooooooooooove 'em out!

 

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• A new Mark Twain fairy tale has been unearthed. 
• Much of the cuisine we now know, and think of as ours, came to us by war. 
• In the time you spend on social media each year, you could read 200 books. (I already read 200 books per year, so does this mean I'd read 400 if I stopped blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, Pinteresting, and Google+-ing???)
• The racy side of Jane Austen. 
• New data suggests that boys are reading more than ever.
• Library cats leave some sneezing, others feline fine. 
• According to Ian Rankin, there's nothing crime fiction can't do. 
• How Sherlock Holmes got his name. 
• Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying. 
• How Mormon polygamy in the nineteenth century fueled women's activism. 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Reconstruction from an ancient skull reveals what humans looked like 9,500 years ago. 
• Letters from the 1700s written by England's "Mad King" George have been published online.
• Archaeologists may have unearthed King Solomon's legendary mines. 
• A long-lost Dark Age kingdom has been discovered in southern Scotland. 
• 2,000 years later, scientists finally know what's in these charred Roman scrolls. 
• Evidence that an ancient Pueblo site was built out of "golden rectangles." 
• Archaeologists have found twenty-five skeletons in a medieval Cambridge friary. 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• A dog is being called a hero for keeping its owner warm after slipping in snow.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• A new expedition intends to find out if an earthquake made Mount Everest shorter.
• The independent bookstores every book lover should visit in the U.S. 
• The five best bookstores in Mexico City. 
• A visit to Bridge Books in Johannesburg, South Africa, courtesy of Michael Sears (half of the writing team known as Michael Stanley).

►I ♥ Lists & Quizzes◄

• Eleven memoirs by 20th-century American radicals. 
• The top ten crime novels set in London. 
• Nine experts on the books that inspired them. 
• Can you pick the authors whose work(s) contain these "D" characters? 
• The top ten megacities in fiction. 
• Ten quotes on the value of the arts. 

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing freshly selected links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!