A Gnome Place Like Home Weekly Link Round-Up

 

This has been a time of emotional ups and downs, and I'm expecting it to continue as my birthday/anniversary approaches. I know. Baby steps. 

For those of you who may be wondering, I won the Bee War, and my hummingbirds can safely guzzle nectar at all the feeders. (I did name one of the males "Gus" because he really likes to try to drain a feeder dry at one go.)

Hopefully, this weekend I will be able to get all my Christmas decorations put away and my "new look" for the kitchen/family room in place. One thing in particular will be a struggle: getting the Christmas rug up, folded, and put away, and the new one in place. It's not the easiest thing in the world doing this seated on a mobility scooter, but I am stubborn! It took me an hour of fussing and faffing to get the Christmas one in place. Now that I have some experience with the task, it shouldn't take so long.

Phoenix has been getting more rain. The spring wildflowers should be out-of-this-world. It's been so wet (for here in the desert) that I have a small patch of something that looks suspiciously like moss growing on the driveway. I don't think that's ever happened before!

I decided to share the card I received recently. How the giver knew that I love gnomes, I'll never know!

Virtual hugs to you all. Enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Rafqa Touma found herself in a binge-slump reading cycle from following recommendations on social media. Could booksellers in actual bookshops help?
• 100 years of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
• A debate has risen over interactive AI features in eBooks and audiobooks.
• Trump books aren't selling anymore. (Could it possibly be that we now know all we want to know?)
• Last call for mass market paperbacks.
• What's causing the non-fiction slump?
• The Oxford Word of the Year is rage bait.
• See the "Mona Lisa of Illuminated Manuscripts," a 600-year-old Bible covered in intricate illustrations.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A centuries-old "trophy head" from Peru reveals the individual survived to adulthood despite a disabling birth defect. 
• Archaeologists discovered a mysterious 7,000-year-old stone wall beneath the waves off the coast of France.
• When the Bayeaux Tapestry makes its historic return to England, the British government will insure it for more than $1 billion.
• 1,100-year-old burials of elite warriors and their ornate weapons have been discovered in Hungary.
• Hundreds of mysterious Victorian-Era shoes are washing up on a beach in Wales. Nobody knows where they came from.
• Egypt has revealed the restored colossal statues of a pharaoh in Luxor.
• A mysterious Viking Age woman was found buried with scallop shells covering her mouth.
• The discovery of microscopic parasites has found that diarrhea and stomachaches plagued Roman soldiers stationed at Hadrian's Wall.

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• National Geographic's best wildlife photos of 2025.
• Why alpha females reign supreme in the meerkat world.
• When male deer mark trees, those spots may glow like neon lights at dusk and dawn, though humans usually can't see them.
• How Los Angeles and Chicago came to appreciate their coyote neighbors.
• After living alongside humans for millennia, these Italian brown bears have evolved to become less aggressive.
• Honey-making stingless bees in the Peruvian Amazon become the first insects to gain legal rights.
• Did lyrebirds steal these songs from humans? (Articles like this always remind me of the mockingbird we had here that could sing "La Cucaracha" because of the ice cream truck that frequented the neighborhood.)
• Drone images suggest that bird flu has wiped out nearly half of the females in the world's largest elephant seal population.

►The Wanderer◄

• Claude Monet painted this palace overlooking Venice's Grand Canal. Now, the legendary mansion is officially for sale.
• How a sudden winter storm in 1617 sparked the deadliest witchcraft trials in Norwegian history.
• The Louvre has installed metal security bars on the window used during the $102 million jewel heist.
• Trees in Panama's tropical forests are growing longer roots in the face of drought.
• Finding Australia's most beautiful bookstore.
• The oldest restaurant in the world just turned 300 years old.
• Denmark's postal service is about to stop delivering physical letters after 400 years.
• Bermuda: the long and the shorts of it.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may be embedded in his art, and scientists think they've managed to extract some.
• What five objects can tell us about the life of Filipino Americans in the early 20th century.
• Barbara Rose Johns protested school segregation as a teenager. Now she's being honored with a statue at the U.S. Capitol.
• Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote this letter hours before she was executed. Her words are going on display for the first time in years.
• Hans Koenigsmann spent twenty years at SpaceX. Now he's making history with its biggest competitor.
• Artist Anish Kapoor is the only person banned from using the world's pinkest pink.
• Carolyn Mazloomi: making quilts and preserving Black history.
• Did Shakespeare write Hamlet while he was stoned?

►I ♥ Lists◄

• 11 unusual Victorian New Year's traditions.
• BookBub's most anticipated books of 2026.
• The best classic mysteries of all time.
• CrimeReads' best psychological thrillers of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best legal thrillers of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best espionage fiction of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best debut crime novels of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best historical fiction of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best international crime novels of 2025.
• CrimeReads' best traditional mysteries of 2025.

That's all for this week! No matter how busy you may be, don't forget that quality Me Time curled up with a good book!