The Taking Next Week Off Weekly Link Round-Up

 

I've been hit hard by a flu bug, and it's sapped all my energy and enthusiasm. I haven't logged on to my computer, I haven't responded to comments  or approved comments on older posts. What I have done is sleep. A lot. 

How bad had it gotten? You know something is wrong when I don't even want to read the new Walt Longmire book that's sitting on my bedside table. Can you believe it? Walt?!?

I am on the slow mend, but I have decided that I'm not going to post anything next week, and I refuse to feel bad about it. I think the last time that happened was a few years ago when I was hospitalized. (If there's one good result from Covid, it's the fact that now you can get almost anyone to come to you.)

 

So be good to yourselves while I rest and read. If all goes well, I'll be back on October 9.

 

Enjoy the links!

 

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Author events in the post-pandemic era.
• Goodreads is terrible for books. Why can't we all quit it?
• The not so fun side of being a book's first reader.
• Dementia in crime fiction.
• Brandon Taylor wants to bring gatekeeping back to book criticism.
• How authors are being influenced by their fans.
• The beauty of physical encounters with rare books.
• Where did the QWERTY keyboard come from?

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• An award-winning indie publisher hosts an auction to stay open amid book bans targeting POC, LGBTQ+ youth lit.
• The Marietta (Georgia) School Board issues a directive to remove "sexually explicit" content from the district.
• A judge temporarily blocked a ballot proposition to dissolve a rural library in southeastern Washington.
• The Prattville (Alabama) library raises the age for unsupervised kids amid an LGBTQ book debate.
• Dozens gather to back the Prattville library as the dispute over LGBTQ books turns into a fight for independence.
• Carver (Minnesota) library board declines to remove Gender Queer from library shelves.
• ImagineIF Libraries will forego Banned Books Week celebrations under board guidance.
• Residents petition for the removal of manga books from Garfield County (Colorado) libraries.
• Lake Cormorant (Mississippi) mother raises concerns about school reading assignment. (I wonder how many students have begun using the hot button book ban topic as a way to get out of homework?)
• Missouri prison officials restrict inmate access to books from friends or family.
• Create a book resume to help respond to a challenge.
• A student petition to protect school library materials nears 1,500 signatures.
• Banned books in Georgia face protests from Cobb County students and community members.
• Middle schoolers can't borrow Fahrenheit 451 or any YA books without parental permission in the Dripping Springs (Texas) Independent School District.
• If Arizona schools superintendent Tom Horne told Moms for Liberty the truth, he'll resign.
• In a blistering opinion, a judge officially blocks the Texas book rating law.
• A new Simon & Schuster program, Books Belong, takes aim at book bans.
• Judy Blume, Mark Ruffalo, and Ariana Grande are among celebrities who denounce book bans in an open letter. 
• Schools saw a 33% increase in book bans last year; the average publication date of most banned books is 2005.
• Guildford (Connecticut) parents turn out in strong support of challenged school books.
  
• Levar Burton will lead Banned Books Week as its honorary chair.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• The Italian bells that survived Nazis, fires, and even the medieval ages.
• A 1,000-year-old mummy with a full head of hair has been discovered in Peru.
• Construction workers plowed a shortcut through the Great Wall of China.
• "Magical artifacts" found along a centuries-old pilgrimage route to Mecca may have protected against the evil eye.
• Archaeologists discover more than 100 ancient drawings in a Spanish cave.
• A stolen van Gogh painting worth millions was returned in an Ikea bag.
• Found in an attic, Princess Diana's iconic "Black Sheep" sweater sells for $1.1 million.
• 14th-century shipboard cannon that fired "stone shots" may be Europe's oldest on record.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• Ten wildlife photographers zoom in on their favorite birds.
• How roads have transformed the natural world.
• Ten times humans messed with nature and it backfired. 
• Ten breathtaking images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.
• Scientists finally figured out what's making German wild boars radioactive, and it's not just Chernobyl.
• What's killing Minnesota's moose?
• Puffins are making a comeback in Maine.
• Inside the effort to prevent conflict between humans and elephants in Africa.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• Explore the great outdoors with photography from U.S. National Parks.
• Land politics can be murder.
• Ice cream parlors and white slavery. (Did you do a double take, too?)
• Where can you find the oldest cat door on earth?
• Predjama Castle, Slovenia.
• Humans have exceeded six of the nine boundaries keeping Earth habitable.
• Port au Prince: crime fiction as a window into a nation's soul.
• How America's natural beauty called generations of women to action.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• How Pete Chapman helped publish his husband Christopher Fowler's posthumous book.
• Edith Grossman, acclaimed translator, has died at the age of 87.
• The remarkable story of the horsewomen warriors of Afghanistan.
• Eden Phillpotts, his crime fiction, and his strange relationship with his daughter Adelaide.
• Following British explorer Isabella Bird's footsteps through the Rockies, 150 years later.
• Meet Warren Wagner, the Smithsonian scientist untangling the branches of Hawaii's evolutionary tree.
• Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place, and the birth of the modern serial killer novel.
• Inside Richard Osman's mystery empire.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Fifteen funny murder mysteries.
• Six satirical mysteries that are exceptionally self-aware.
• Mysteries about haunted bookshops.
• Twenty marvelous modern poets.
• Travel back to Tudor England with these seventeen books.
• Eighteen readers recommend mysteries they think everyone should read.
• Five Brazilian women you should read.
• Mysteries and thrillers set in the wellness industry.

No matter how busy you may be, don't forget that quality Me Time curled up with a good book!