It's Gonna Be Busy! Weekly Link Round-Up

 

It's going to be a busy week here at Casa Kittling, so I'm going to write my intro to the links here on a sunny Sunday afternoon before I stretch out with my book (Jane Harper's Exiles).

Between a grocery delivery, laundry, pool maintenance, housecleaning, and other chores, there will be plenty of activity here on the old homestead, but Denis and I will also be keeping Phoenix Paratransit busy.

 

How Denis and I get around town.

Denis has a medical procedure scheduled, and it's one of those types of appointments where the doctors insist that he has a keeper, so I'll be going with him. I plan to have a book and my needlepoint with me to help the time pass quickly... or as quickly as it ever does in a medical setting.

But the best part of keeping that paratransit van busy is going to the Desert Botanical Garden on my birthday/our 21st anniversary. I definitely have to make sure my camera batteries are charged for that! Later in the evening, we'll have dinner courtesy of The Cheesecake Factory.

Boy howdy, are we ever looking forward to this! I love my house, but it's good to get out to Want To Places (as opposed to Have To Places).

Thank you, as always, for the cards and letters. I certainly hope all is well with you and yours. Enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• You can listen to audiobooks narrated by artificial intelligence.
• How four librarians make their libraries welcoming places and safe spaces.
• The origins of "y'all" may not be in the American South.
• Men are the most likely victims of homicide. Why do crime writers kill so many women?
• TikTok figured out an easy way to recommend books. The results were dubious.
• Mike Pence's PAC spent $91,000 on his book. It became a bestseller.
• Linguists name "-ussy" the word of the year.
• Leaders say that the mayor's proposed cuts to libraries will hurt New Yorkers.

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• How conservative and liberal book bans differ amid the rise in literary restrictions.
• The conservatives who attacked school boards in 2022 are now going after libraries.
• Three future targets for book censors.
• One year later, and the books just keep disappearing in Granbury, Texas.
• Riverside (Illinois) trustees throw their support behind library officials.  
• The Central Bucks (Pennsylvania) school board adopts a controversial policy prohibiting "advocacy".
• The Hermon (Maine) school district votes down a parent book rating system.
• Stamford (Connecticut) and its library take a stand to protect the right to read.
• Indiana lawmakers revive a bill at the center of a book-banning dispute for the 2023 legislative session. 
• The Kearney (Nebraska) school board moves to change its book review policy amid hate messages.
• The Brooklyn Public Library and PEN America are teaming up to train high school students to defend against book bans and to promote the freedom to read. 
• Are book bans discrimination? The Biden administration will be testing a new legal theory.

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Mesoamericans have been using a 260-day ceremonial calendar for millennia.
• Builders have uncovered a Jewish World War II trove in a yard in Poland.
• Look at the face of the "Jericho Skull", buried 9,000 years ago with shells for eyes.
• 800-year-old royal temple ruins have been unearthed in Beijing. Take a look at the items that were found.
• Take a look at the items found inside a 3,000-year-old wishing well uncovered in Germany.
• A 4,000-year-old site-- with ritual purpose-- has been unearthed in rural England.
• A cache of silver coins found in an Israeli cave could be a discovery of biblical proportions.
• Leftovers from a 2,000-year-old feast-- and a "crockpot"-- have been unearthed at a UK farmstead.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• 50,000-year-old tools thought to have been made by the first Americans were actually crafted by monkeys to break open nuts.
• This Yellowstone elk had the perfect response to taunts from a tourist.
• "We don't want to proceed to the route!" See a giant python cross the road in Florida. 
• Officials say that these "bison" on the loose in Indiana are something much more rare.
• Hundreds of sharks caught up in a feeding frenzy were seen from a plane off the coast of southern Australia.
• A "catcoon" invaded a store and stayed for three weeks. Then Florida deputies took action. More from a local news station.
  
• An extremely rare gray whale birth was captured on camera, possibly for the first time.
• These dogs in Alaska ride on a bus like humans.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• I'd like to visit the Cherry Point Farm and Market Lavender Labyrinth in Michigan.
• Exploring the innovative community libraries of Korea.
• A never-before-seen volcanic magma chamber has been discovered deep under the Mediterranean Sea near Santorini.
• Why does lightning zigzag?
• The next time I'm traveling Route 66 here in Arizona, I want to pay a visit to Fish Bowl Spring.
• The first US bank for women was opened by a fraudster in 1879. It took forty years for a reputable women's bank to be founded in Tennessee.
  

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• How Marian Anderson took the world by storm.
• A rare look at DNA from a colonial cemetery reveals that enslaved people were kidnapped from all across Africa.
• Jane Harper makes a plan for her novels... then several hundred mugs of tea.
• Swedish author Christoffer Carlsson reflects on the forking paths that brought him unexpectedly to a life in books.
• Iris Yamashita on writing a murder mystery about an isolated Alaskan town.
• Dressmaking liberated American women... then came the men.
• The Mughal women who wouldn't stay in the harem.
• How organized crime saved kidnapping victim Nell Donnelly.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• The best celebrity memoirs of all time.
• 15 highly anticipated book-to-screen adaptations coming in 2023.
• 17 books featuring older protagonists.
• 6 action-packed thrillers you won't want to put down.
• 35 of the best bookstores in the USA. (Wouldn't you love to do a bookstore road trip?)
• Ten crime books by writers of color that should not be missed.
• The rules for writing crime fiction (and which of your favorite authors break them).
• The rigid etiquette rules of Elizabethan England.
• Meet the new words added to the Official Scrabble Dictionary.

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.

And don't forget to include some quality Me Time with a good book!