A Boating on Lake Kittling Weekly Link Round-Up

This round-up posts at midnight, and by 4 PM, I'll be undergoing the "sanding" of my second eyeball. Now that I know what it entails, I'm really looking forward to getting it over and done with so I can have the cataract surgeries. I want to see, darn it!  The prescription glasses I'm wearing are too weak, and although the healing "haze" is gone from the first superficial keratectomy, my vision in that eye feels slightly out of kilter-- probably because scraping all those bad cells off the cornea is akin to washing a window. My prescription is used to having dirty windows. (Did that make sense? Oh well, I'll leave it out there just in case it does.)

First, October brought Phoenix the remnants of hurricane/tropical storm Rosa. Then last weekend, it brought us the remnants of Sergio. We're only two weeks in and October has already become the wettest month in Phoenix's recorded history, and it's the fourth wettest month overall.

Several lanes of I-10 were flooded, causing traffic jams, and the Arizona State Fair closed down for the day on Saturday. I don't remember the fair ever closing down before, at least not due to weather-related issues.

As you can see in the photo to the left, I got to stay home and read. Well... when I wasn't watching it rain. The entire grounds of the Kittling estate were flooded, and the mail carrier undoubtedly wondered why I didn't have a raft and pole hitched to the gate so he could stay dry while delivering the mail.

I did begin to worry because the water level of the "lake" gradually grew flush with the top of the decking surrounding the pool. But somehow, some way, the rain didn't fall fast enough or hard enough to fill up the cement pond with mud and debris. You can't get much luckier than that.

Now that the water level has gone down, I'll mosey on out to the corral to see how the links are doing. Head 'em up! Mooooooooooove 'em out!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Behold, a massive knit map of the cosmos. (No, I'm not going to stitch my own copy!)
• How social media is changing the thriller. 
• Bookstores are finding creative ways to survive and thrive in the age of Amazon.
• Why Little Women endures 150 years later.
• A real planet has been discovered where the Vulcan homeworld in Star Trek is set.
• Did Nabokov really hate crime fiction?
• How to turn your child into a crime fiction fan.
• The Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant myth on fact and fiction.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Caludon Castle may be where Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was first performed.
• The Maya captured, traded and sacrificed jaguars and other large mammals. (And we certainly can't point fingers at the Maya and call them savages, can we?) 
• Do these ruins prove the Biblical story of Exodus?
• Ancient comics line this Roman-Era tomb in Jordan.
• An ancient Egyptian "magic spell" has been deciphered.
• This 3,500-year-old relic is the world's oldest bronze hand.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Chimps and toddlers use the same gestures to get attention.
• A new study suggests young grassland songbirds postpone fledging in order to mooch off mom and dad as long as they can.
• Scientists can predict when birds will migrate up to a week in advance.
• A group of belugas may have adopted a young narwhal.
• Why is the snowy owl disappearing? (Now snowy owls always make me think of Harry Potter.)
• How DNA testing could bring down the ivory trade's biggest criminals. (Go, CSI, go!)

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Freddie Oversteegen, a Dutch Resistance fighter who killed Nazis through seduction, is dead at the age of 92.
• Jean Briggs Watters, who cracked German codes in World War II, died at the age of 92 and was buried in Omaha, Nebraska with full British military honors. 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• This enormous warehouse of used books in Arizona will be your new favorite destination (outside of The Poisoned Pen, that is).
• You've never experienced anything like this quirky bookstore in small-town Quartzite, Arizona.

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Ten of Merriam-Webster's favorite British words.
• Top ten real-life monsters in fiction. 
• New words in the 2018 SCRABBLE Dictionary.
• The fictional foods we wish were real.
• Seven books that give readers an inside look at the book business.
• Eleven books for Stephen King fans coming this fall.
• Seven historical mysteries that will transport you to the past.

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!