The Lights Aren't On But I'm Home Weekly Link Round-Up

Just as I started to write an email to a friend Wednesday afternoon, the power went off. That's an extremely rare occurrence in my part of Phoenix, and it's the first time it had done more than flicker since Denis immigrated here in 2001. It was out a good forty minutes, and it was eery how silent the house was.

Fortunately, I'd printed a few things before the blackout, so I spent the time looking at various maps of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the next trip Denis and I will be taking. Neither one of us has ever been there, and we're really looking forward to it.

Looking at maps and notes, I discovered that there's a yarn shop in the small shopping mall next to our hotel. (How did I manage that?) I'm adding things like the Museum of International Folk Art, the Folk Art Market, the Pecos National Historical Park, La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site, and the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary to my list. And... Las Vegas (where Longmire is filmed) is only about forty miles away. Something tells me that will make the list, too.

But enough of lists! I hear those links out in the corral. They're telling me they've been waiting long enough. Head 'em up! Mooove 'em out!

 

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Is it possible to escape into crime fiction amidst a wave of extra-judicial killing in Manilla? 
• A publisher of one's own: Virginia and Leonard Woolf and the Hogarth Press. 
• "The Scream" might have been inspired by a rare type of cloud.
• How eBooks lost their shine. Also, "screen fatigue" sees UK eBook sales plunge 17% as readers return to print.
• Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has been voted the best crime novel ever.
• 25% of youth lie about reading Lord of the Rings.
• Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Waters and others read Moby-Dick aloud in its entirety. Just call me Ishmael because I want to give it a listen!

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Archaeologists are excavating the site of what is thought to be an Iron Age home known as a wag in the Caithness, Scotland area.
• Archaeologists discovered a fully dressed 350-year-old body in France. 
• A study claims that humans were in America 100,000 years earlier than we thought. 
• The earliest known dental fillings have been discovered in a 13,000-year-old skeleton. 
• An ancient tablet has been unearthed at an historic Roman excavation site in Israel.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Nature throws humanity a softball, providing bugs that digest plastic. Here's another article about it from The Economist.
• "Dumb animals," eh? Female dragonflies fake death to avoid males harassing them for sex.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Take a look inside a real-life Miss Havisham mansion for sale. 
• Home alone with the ghost of Emily Dickinson.
• A kitsch-filled writer's room for John Waters. 
• Why is there a monument to Abraham Lincoln in Edinburgh?

►Fascinating Folk◄

• The life of stagecoach agent, Wells Fargo operative, and deputy U.S. marshal Joseph W. Evans.  

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Nine secrets of ghostwriters. 
• Fantastic foreign film posters for Shakespeare-inspired movies. 
• The twelve best private detectives in crime fiction.
• The top ten books about trees. 
• Or how about twelve unforgettable forests in literature?

That's all for this week! Don't forget to 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!