The Kick Myself in the Butt Weekly Link Round-Up

A word of warning before I go any further: Be very careful of any comment you might make about what happened to me this week. Touchy doesn't even begin to describe my mood, so nothing about sitting in the pool with my phone, okay?

The graphic sums it up. Through sheer thoughtlessness on my part, my iPhone (which I'd fallen in love with) was submerged in the pool for several seconds. No, I did not drop it in the drink. In an attempt to carry several things from one end of the house to the other, I slipped it down into the top of my bathing suit, knowing that it would never fall out of there. It didn't. I merely forgot to transfer it from swimsuit to book bag. The second I unloaded my bag beneath my umbrellas and did not find the phone, I knew what had happened. I salvaged it and immediately took it in the house where I removed the case I'd bought for it and put it in a deep bed of rice. As of this writing, it's still dead. A friend says it took hers three days to revive, so I'm waiting, but since I usually seem to learn the expensive way, I've been hearing Bones say, "It's dead, Jim" for two days now.

I bet most of you can figure out one place where I'll never ever ever put my new phone!  There's one good thing about growing older: I used to be able to kick myself in the butt. I can't do that anymore, so I'll just make my way out to the corral to kick a dirt clod or two. These links sure have been noisy.... time to Head 'em up! Mooooooooove 'em out!

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• A decade ago, the hashtag reshaped the internet. 
• A city in Australia has been naming streets after Game of Thrones characters. (I refuse to live on Joffrey Boulevarde or Cersei Circle!)
• What if famous protagonists from Russian literature had mobile banking? 
• Why J.K. Rowling's TV crime series strikes the right note. (Hope Strike makes it over here soon!)
• The birth of crime scene photography.
• The first serious novel about baseball.
• Can your best friends be books?
• Repeating radio signals coming from a distant galaxy have been detected by astronomers.
• Author Kwei Quartey talks about the art of the cliffhanger as applied to his newest book, Death by His Grace.
• Coming to terms with being a writer on social media.
• According to his instructions, the hard drive housing Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels has been destroyed by a steamroller.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Archaeologists have discovered an ancient trading network in Vietnam.
• Medieval London was the most violent place in England, and where else better to discover this than medieval graveyards? 
• An ancient Babylonian tablet may hold the earliest known examples of trigonometry.
• Lost letters written by Alan Turing have been found in a university filing cabinet.
• 2,000-year-old tombs from the Roman period have been found in Egypt.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Why horses and their ilk are the only one-toed animals still standing. 
• How a beautiful service dog named Pax made the lives of two humans immeasurably better. 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Eight must-see destinations in literary Paris. 
• These five witness trees were present at key moments in America's history. 
• A Houston area bookstore opened its doors to Texans battered by Hurricane Harvey. Which bookstore? The marvelous Murder by the Book. 
• Despite Harvey's wrath, this 1,000-year-old tree still stands tall.
• The true story of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won't give it back. 
• Costa Rica let a juice company dump their orange peels in the forest-- and it helped.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens, a diminutive woman-- and a spy who defined courage. Here's another article about her from the Smithsonian Magazine.
• Ten things you should know about Ray Bradbury.
• I'd love to travel to Indiana to meet microknitter Althea Crome. What's microknitting? Think polished surgical wire for knitting needles and silk thread for yarn-- and the items she makes are fantastic!
•  From Evelyn Waugh to Elizabeth I: actress Vivien Leigh's eclectic library is heading for the auction block.
• Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, also wrote a post-apocalyptic plague novel. 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Seventeen living writers currently immortalized on stamps. 
• Twenty books on the worst of all time list. 
• Eight books that will make you love tennis.
• The world's fifty largest publishers in 2017.
• Sidekicks people like better than the main character.
• The greatest goths in literary history.

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!