The Life Comes in Bunches Weekly Link Round-Up

 

Nothing much is going on around here. I'm in the middle of reading Ann Cleeves' latest Vera Stanhope mystery, and I have to admit that a good part of my mind is with her, so you can tell that Cleeves has written another good one.

As it often does, my mind has looked at the August calendar and realized that so many family events (for all of us) seem to bunch up. The biggest "bunches" for my family are in January (birthdays) and August (birthdays and deaths). So this month sees me thinking of the deaths of my grandfather and mother and the birthdays of my grandmother and father. So many memories, and I'm sure many of you have experienced the same thing.

Since my mind is on both family and Vera, I'll cut this short and share another addition to my virtual t-shirt collection.

 

 

I hope you're all staying cool and healthy, and that you have plenty of good books to read. Enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• On the making of that New York Times Best Books of the Century list.
• Speaking of that list, here's the Top Ten as well as a link to the complete list.
• Why don't straight men read novels?
• An adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club heads to Netflix.
• From corsets to singlets, the Olympics have driven the evolution of women's sportswear.
• Unmasking the 'Ndrangheta, the most powerful crime syndicate you've never heard of.
• The real story behind Netflix's The Decameron. (Which reminds me of the road trip my mother and I went on. She did the driving, I did the entertainment, which consisted of reading aloud-- long before audiobooks. When I got to some very racy bits of The Decameron, I was too embarrassed to keep reading!)
• LitUp greenlights fiction debuts from underrepresented authors.
• Attention fellow William Shaw fans: Hemlock Press has purchased two new books from him-- the start of a new series!
  

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• How book bans affect Indigenous literature.
• A new lawsuit seeks to stop the enforcement of the Idaho library materials bill.
• The Knox County (Tennessee) school board fails proposals banning "explicit" books from libraries.
• A professor says that book challenges in Catawba County (Florida) could lead to economic uncertainty.
• Florida saw a 148% increase in book bans since 2021. How many were in Escambia County?
• Mission (Texas) Consolidated Independent School District says it won't actually remove 676 challenged books.
• How Houston-area students are taking on conservative school boards.
• Alpena County (Michigan) residents speak out against commissioners.
• Utah bans 13 books from public schools statewide.
• An African American studies class is too "divisive" for one Maryland school district.
• A Wilson County (Tennessee) high school closes its library and reevaluates its content due to a controversial law.
• A Florida school district banned Ban This Book. The author says that's "erasure of the highest order" and wants it reinstated.
  

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• The missing pieces of a 6th-century Byzantine bucket were finally found at Sutton Hoo.
• An excavation in Wales paints a picture of home life 3,500 years ago.
• A 5,000-year-old ceremonial temple was discovered beneath a sand dune in Peru.
• Archaeologists stumbled upon a marble statue of a Greek god in an ancient sewer.
• Napoleon's elaborately decorated pistols sold for $1.8 million at auction.
• Roman emperor Caligula's 2,000-year-old garden has been unearthed near the Vatican.
• Found: Records of Pompeii's survivors.
• Archaeologists may have found the home built by one of New England's first Black property owners.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• Do animals deserve political rights and representation?
• The crusade to protect the jaguar in Panama.
• Chimpanzees take turns in fast-paced conversations, just like humans do.
• Thirteen sharks test positive for cocaine off the coast of Brazil.
• A study suggests that the smell of human stress leads dogs to make more pessimistic decisions. More from Scientific American.
• Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth. Yikes!
• How do animals change their social habits as they age?
• Two black Labradors named Eric and Florence act as greeters at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire, England.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• Mysteries set in Denver, Colorado.
• The enduring drive-in theater. (My favorite way to see movies until I moved to Phoenix. Who could ever forget Buck Nite?)
• Inside the fight to save the Indiana Dunes, one of America's most vulnerable national parks.
• The "world's loneliest plant" could soon find a mate with a little help from A.I.
• A website that lets viewers visit parks around the world for one minute at a time. 
• See 15 picturesque views of Paris.
• Scientists made a troubling discovery while studying the effects of record snowfall in a drought-affected region.
• Ibiza: crime, mystery, and hedonism on the "white island."

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Charles Dawes, the vice president who wrote a hit song.
• Cher has set a November release date for the first installment of her two-part memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One.
• Rosalind Franklin's methods of discovery.
• At 106 years old, neuroscientist Brenda Milner is still unlocking the mysteries of the brain.
• How determined FDA scientist Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey saved American children from a birth defect catastrophe.
• JoAnn Hardin Morgan, the only woman in the room at Apollo 11's historic moon launch.
• The badass female gladiators of ancient Rome.
• Why were there so many skeletons hidden in Benjamin Franklin's basement?

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• 16 non-fiction books to read at the beach.
• The Gold Standard: How these iconic Olympic athletes inspired and united us.
• Ten hilarious and heartfelt books.
• 17 books set on and around Cape Cod.
• The latest words added to the Cambridge Dictionary.
• 8 of the best perimenopause books.
• Six innovative ways humans have kept cool throughout history.
• The best new locked-room thrillers.

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.

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