A Thinking About Holes Weekly Link Round-Up

I caught myself thinking about holes today. It wasn't planned; it just happened. I think it was because I was looking through my photos to see what I could include in this post.

Yes, I look at holes when I'm out and about. Especially holes in a saguaro cactus, like you see here, because they're usually nesting places for all sorts of critters. You never know what could be peeking out at you when you zoom in the camera lens. But sometimes those holes can spark the imagination. Am I the only one, or can you see the two small eyes staring up at the heavens and its huge mouth gaping open in horror? Is an alien spaceship landing?

I remember taking a city-girl friend out for a bit of a hike in the McDowell Mountain Preserve, a beautiful desert landscape. She stopped at each hole she saw, swearing up and down there was a snake in each one. I began to think we weren't going to get more than 100 feet from the parking lot. We did manage to get out quite a distance, and then she swore up and down that we were lost and would never make it back to the parking lot. Tip: Never bet against me when I say something like, "I'll bet you five dollars I can take you right back to the car." My ancestors didn't follow Dan'l Boone around for nothin'.

And then there's someone like Mary Kingsley, the intrepid Victorian explorer who traveled to West Africa a few times in the 1890s and got into trouble for telling Christian missionaries to leave the natives and their religion and customs alone. In her memoirs, she mentions falling into more than one hole on her explorations, and she did it with such a sense of humor that just the memory of reading her words makes me laugh to this day.

Yep, there's a lot to be said for holes... and I still wish you could have a sackful of holes like they did in the cartoons of my childhood so you could pull one out, slap it on a wall, and make a quick getaway. Speaking of cartoon holes, I hope those links out in the corral never get their hooves on any-- putting these posts together would be much more problematic!

Head 'em up! Mooooooove 'em out!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• The public domain just got an injection of classic mysteries.
• Worried books may be dying out? Sourcebooks in Naperville, Illinois has some good news.
• Amazon-owned Ring has reportedly been spying on customer camera feeds.
• We finally know how long a day on Saturn is. 
• The accidental invention of bubble wrap.
• The evolution of Harry Bosch.
• Eighteen translators on translating humor.
• Furloughed employees have been filling workless days with books-- lots of them.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• The New York Academy of Medicine's Rare Book Room: plague and pestilence.
• Rembrandt used an unexpected ingredient to create his signature technique.
• Why were two Victorian chess pieces hidden in a barn?
• The socks-and-sandals look goes back to ancient times.
• Legend says this rock in Stirling, Scotland was once a chopping block for public executions. 
• This medieval book coffer shows the appetite for mobile reading is nothing new. 
• The mummy Ankhefenmut.
• The decade-long restoration of Tutankhamun's tomb has finally concluded.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Grudge-holding crows pass on their anger to family and friends.
• You can visit this Australian island, but only if you pledge to skip the wombat selfie.
• Humans and dogs may have hunted together in prehistoric Jordan.
• "Deep Blue," thought to be the world's biggest great white shark, has been seen off the coast of Hawaii.
• How do you save an endangered species in a war zone?
• Flowers sweeten up when they sense bees buzzing.
• Do animals hate the bitter cold of winter?
• The last wild caribou of the Lower 48 has been placed in captivity.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• The crime fiction of New Orleans.
• A sweet-toothed bear searching for snacks has been a symbol of Madrid for centuries.
• You'll fall in love with this quiet Arizona town that has more books than people.
• Six centuries later and still ticking in Prague: the world's oldest astronomical clock in use.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the couple who invented Nordic noir with the Martin Beck series of mysteries.
• The new class of Australian crime writers.

►I ♥ Lists & Quizzes◄

• A 17-word look into the anatomy of a book.
• If you want to be a more effective writer, stop using utilize and these other twelve words.
• Can you guess which classic piece of literature these modern movies and shows are based on?
• Test your knowledge of words for lies, liars, and those being lied to.
• If you can correctly pronounce every word in this 1920s poem, you're among the English-speaking elite.
• The rivals of Sherlock Holmes.
• Which author's handwriting most resembles your own? 
• Merriam-Webster's homophone quiz.

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!