A Hopefully in the Homestretch Weekly Link Round-Up

 

I've had a relatively quiet few days after all the hustle and bustle of last week. It's given me time to make up a final list of things I want to get done before Denis comes home. He's been working hard in his physical therapy sessions, and all his therapists and doctors are very happy with his progress. If all goes according to plan, he'll be home in a couple of weeks. Am I excited?

 

Nah.

 

The only thing I hadn't planned on adding to my to do list was scheduling a service call for the air conditioner which has decided to lackadaisically blow warm air instead of energetically blowing the cold stuff. Ah well. I'd much rather this happen with Denis out of the house. I react to heat much better than he does, and I know more than a few tricks on how to keep cool.

 

I'd like to say thank you to those of you who are sending me snail and e-mail. It's nice to have a few connections to the outside world even though I seem to have turned into a horrible correspondent. (Right, Mike?) And... "Secret Santa"? You may not know it, but you've just had the virtual stuffin' hugged out of you. I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I hope I keep on doing it. 

 

On that note, I'll leave you with a photo I took a couple of summers ago when a female hooded oriole came by to cool off at the waterfall. 

 

 

 

Happy Summer, and enjoy the links!

 

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Build or buy these book nooks to brighten up your bookshelves.
• The competitive book sorters who spread knowledge around New York.
• Literary voices respond to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
• How does Goodreads make money?
• How pretzels became one of the most popular snacks in the world.
• Elly Griffiths on lockdown, locked room mysteries, and pandemic fiction.
• Cheryl Head on using crime fiction to tell the story of her grandfather's murder.
• How fiction helps bring history's extraordinary yet forgotten women to life.

 ►Book Bans & Censorship◄

• Three women appeal the decision to keep a controversial book on Dirigo High School's (Maine)  library shelves.
• The Pitt County (North Carolina) school board considers changes in the ways book selections and objections are handled.  
• The Payson (Arizona) Council debates censorship. 

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A lost fossil treasure trove has been rediscovered after seventy years.
• The world's deepest shipwreck has been discovered four miles underwater in the Philippines.
• A rare 2,000-year-old Roman temple is unearthed in the Netherlands.
• A brief compendium of medical quackery. 
• Archaeologists have begun the first-ever excavation of a tomb linked to King Arthur.
• A submerged 7,000-year-old discovery shows the great potential of underwater archaeology.
• Medieval art's enduring hold on pop culture.
• See the hidden 500-year-old frescoes discovered at the Prince's Palace in Monaco.
  

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• Watch an affectionate dog interrupt a women's soccer match for some belly rubs.
• Wildlife vets trek through mud and mist to care for Rwanda's gorillas. 
• A study has found that dogs descend from two populations of ancient grey wolves. 
• A noisy city affects birdsong. 
• Chris Barns is the "mother" to sixty baby kangaroos. 
• Octopuses may be so terrifyingly smart because they share humans' genes for intelligence. 
• A kangaroo ran free in Louisiana when a parrot figured out how to unlock his enclosure door. 
• Fred, a Labrador retriever in the U.K., has adopted his third group of orphaned ducklings.
  

 

►The Wanderer◄

• Dubai has opened a new book-shaped library.
• The Norwegian library with unreadable books.
• Eight bridges to nowhere.
• Have you ever heard of the southbound Underground Railroad to Mexico?
• How a village united to save Cinque Terre's ancient terraces.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• There's a monument to Dr. June McCarroll in Indio, California.
• Trail-blazing surgeon Harold Gillies' quest to reconstruct World War I soldiers' disfigured faces.
• Bradford Freeman, the last surviving member of World War II's "Band of Brothers", has died at the age of 97. 
• Meet Reagan Wytsalucy, the woman restoring Native American peaches to the Southwest.  
• Florestine Perrault Collins, challenging race and gender roles, one photo at a time.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Six books that embrace the 1970s.
• Mysterious lighthouses: the perfect setting for fiction.
• More books set in libraries. 
• Ten words the British royal family won't say. 
• Thirty-two books about cults. 
• Twelve queer short story collections. 
• Fourteen books in translation from western Africa. 
• Retellings of Indian epics. 
• A power ranking of the sexiest book covers. 
• The best beach books of Summer 2022. 

 

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.

 

Stay cool. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up (or stretch out) with a good book!