A Leaps and Bounds Weekly Link Round-Up

 

We're all well here at Casa Kittling. Denis is using the elliptical machine daily, is feeling better, and is slowly venturing to do a thing or two around the house. He no longer has to rely on his walker when moving from one room to another (although he's being careful and not abandoning it yet). His hatred of the Iron Maiden of Back Braces grows daily; I think he wants to throw it out in the yard, pour gasoline on it, and set it on fire because it restricts his movements so much. As muttering of abandoning it grew, I asked him when his next appointment with his spine doctor was. It's in two weeks, and I advised him to keep wearing it until he received Official Permission to stop. Although he didn't want to, he agreed with my reasons. Me? I know what's going on. He's feeling better, and he wants to start behaving as though he's back to his old self. What he has to realize is that his old self is gone, and he's going to have to work on making this new self as good as it can be.

 

Before I turn you loose on the links, I'll share a couple of goodies. First, back in June, I showed you a photo of a gift a bird left close to one of our solar fountains. Well, that gift loves it here. One morning, I noticed a little red "zit" on top of it and, within a couple of days, that zit grew into a new pad on our prickly pear! How cool is that?

 

It's got another little bud on it, so I'm expecting another pad to pop up any time now. Birds have left me some of the best plants as gifts, and although I'm slightly worried about this prickly pear's close proximity to the sidewalk, I'm happy that it likes its new home.

 

The second thing I'll share with you is a video clip of JR the raccoon. He spent a considerable amount of time Sunday night exploring the back garden and moving things around to suit himself. I have to admit to a fondness for raccoons, probably because my mother had two (Ricky and Mike) as pets when she was a teenager.

 

 

Enjoy the links!

 

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Jana Casale on browsing bookstores before and after debuting as an author.
• The very proper reason the British Library has a Vulgar Dictionary. (I have a paperback copy of The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. You can learn a lot from slang. For example, after reading the dictionary, I've never called another woman an old bat!)
• How graphic novels are made. 
• What we gain from a good bookstore. 
• How the US Postal Service reads unreadable mail. 
• Do spoilers really ruin a story? Or can they make you enjoy it more? 
• Carina Pereira: Publishers, as a bookseller, I beg of you: Number your series! (Yes, please!)
• The hoax that inspired Mary Shelley. 
• How writing about reading became an inspiring literary genre of its own. 
• Why does a long day of thinking tire you out?
• Authors on the Salman Rushdie attack: "A society cannot survive without free speech." 
• These 18th-century shoes underscore the contradictions of the Age of Enlightenment.
  

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• Get Ready. Stay Ready. A community action toolkit for parents and caregivers.
• Legislative backlash in Idaho prompts state library changes.
• A Utah school district's reversal on its decision to remove 52 books from school libraries is an important step in recognizing students' rights.
• As the school year begins, calls for book bans begin to accelerate in Ohio.
• Boone (Kentucky) fiscal court has approved new oversights on library boards. In other words, politicians get to choose which library board members get hired instead of the State Library and Archives.
• What is soft censorship? 
• A Texas school board has banned the word "transgender" from the district.
• Conservative activists want to ban 400 books from a library, but the books aren't even on the shelves.

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Archaeologists are claiming that the rubber balls used in a famous Maya game contained the ashes of cremated rulers.
• A rare 400-year-old shipwreck found in a German river is a perfectly preserved time capsule. 
• Cufflinks found in colonial Michilimackinac date back to 1781. 
• Centuries-old warnings emerge from riverbeds as Europe suffers a historic drought. More from Yahoo News. And even more from Yahoo News.
  
• Using fake psychics, a Brazilian woman allegedly stole $142 million in art. 
• Why were these mysterious stone orbs stashed all over Neolithic Britain? 
• "Magical" rock crystals have been found at a Stone Age ceremonial site in England. 
• Did archaeologists find Saint Peter's birthplace? 

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• The type and frequency of animals coming down with COVID is trying to tell us something about the future of the pandemic.
• The return of "The Boss": El Jefe, a jaguar that roamed Arizona, has been found alive in Mexico. Good news!
  
• "Yoda" primates sing duets like opera stars.
• How bird collecting evolved into bird-watching.
• Meet Florida's most adorable rodent and the superfans determined to save it.
• Meet Laddie Boy: the first celebrity presidential pet.
• No, these squirrels aren't dead; they're "splooting" in hot weather. Here's what it means. (I've seen plenty of critters doing this and knew what it meant. I just didn't realize there was a name for it!)
• Sea sponges sneeze sediment-filled snot-- and that's a good thing.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• Exploring the city side of the light-hearted mystery.
• How Victorian explorers and pining lovers used coded newspaper ads to communicate.
• Are literary festivals doomed? Why book events need to change. 
• The fifteen most Instagrammed bookstores in the world. 
• Books set in South America. 
• Experience Hilton Head Island's dazzling arts, culture, and history. 
• Wi-Fi comes to Mount Kilimanjaro. 
• Birds wandering far from home can be a boon for local tourism. 
• The death of Pennsylvania's forgotten funeral pie. 
• The paste eater's grave in Goldfield, Nevada. 

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Remembering the "knocker-ups" hired to wake workers with pea shooters.
• Ragnar Jónasson on S.S. Van Dine, the man behind one of America's most celebrated detectives.
• The stealth swimmers whose World War II scouting laid the groundwork for the Navy SEALs.
• Why Demetrius the Besieger was one of history's most outrageous kings.
• Ettore Boiardi, the real chef behind the Chef Boyardee brand.
• Jeff Abbott on restarting a beloved series.
• You may have borrowed these terms from Black feminism.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Ten books with unusual narrators.
• Eight fantastic classics audiobooks. 
• Ten of the best books set in Hawaii. 
• Come aboard these mysteries set on trains. 
• Thirteen old and unusual ways to say you're burned out. 
• Depictions of older women in literature. 
• Bookish tissue box covers. 
• Seven tips for choosing the perfect names for your characters. 

 

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 with a good book!