The Never Ending Summer Weekly Link Round-Up

 

I hope your neck of the woods is managing to cool off because Mother Nature didn't get the memo here in Phoenix. This week has been record-breaking over and over and over again. Last Saturday we had a high of 117°F/47°C, and it's not forecast to cool down until November. (Now that's something to be thankful for!)

I'm still waiting for the insurance company to make up its mind about the venous ablation procedure on my leg. I'm looking forward to receiving my mail-in ballot so I can vote, and once it has cooled down, I'll be hopping on my scooter and heading over to the pharmacy at Target to get my Covid/flu/anything-else-they-can-throw-at-me vaccinations.

Here's another offering from my virtual closet, just in time for Halloween. What do you think?

Enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• The most popular song the year you were born.
• How the detectives of Scotland Yard solved their first big case.
• Can you identify these crime novels from their Library of Congress subject categories?
• TikTok meets Tolkien: How the Folio Society attracted Gen Z readers.
• On the cross-cultural evolution of the notebook.
• A guide to road-trip listening.
• Books aren't mental movies: you're missing the best part of reading.
• How Native Americans put limits on European colonial domination.
• A Kay Scarpetta series starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis gets the green light at Amazon.
  

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• Books have no gender: on being a small town librarian while raising a trans child.
• Modern day McCarthyists: the fight against book bans in Llano County, Texas.
• Children's authors on the real-world cost of book banning.
• Pasco (Florida) libraries suppress more than 100 children's books with LGBTQ+ themes.
• Cobb County (Georgia) school book bans are leaving teachers worried.
• Adults only? The Atmore (Alabama) library will ban checkouts by juveniles without parent or consent form.
• The Library Alliance of North Idaho plans to discuss the proposed restriction of adult content for minors.
• Book bans cost Utah taxpayers thousands of dollars. Here's how much two school districts spent.
• Banned books and drag shows are topics of concern at the Grafton (West Virginia) City Council meeting.
• The Samuels Public Library has been honored as the Virginia Library of the Year.
• The Francis Howell (Missouri) school board may allow hate speech and false information in school materials.
• Under Tennessee's stricter school library law, some books quietly disappear.
• The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week.
• When Between the World and Me faced a school book ban, Ta-Nehisi Coates decided to report it out.
• Representatives Raskin and Schatz have introduced a Banned Books Week resolution in Congress.
• How book-banning campaigns have changed the lives and education of librarians.
  

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Inside Roman emperors' outrageously lavish dinner parties.
• Archaeologists uncovered an ancient warship's bronze battering ram, sunk during an epic battle between Rome and Carthage.
• A colossal stone monument built 1,000 years before Stonehenge shows Neolithic engineers understood science.
• This massive Egyptian observatory is unlocking celestial secrets of an ancient culture.
• 10 famous archaeological hoaxes.
• Archaeologists found 3,800-year-old ruins that unveil a forgotten water cult.
• Archaeologists discovered a privacy barrier possibly used by William Shakespeare in the UK's St. George's Guildhall.
• A Hebrew Bible from medieval Spain could sell for $7 million.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• These fish transformed their dorsal fins into taste buds.
• Meet the lammergeier, a bone-eating vulture that dyes itself the color of blood.
• These tiny bluestreak cleaner wrasse will assess themselves in a mirror before taking on a foe.
• See rare footage of a young wombat caught on a wildlife camera in Australia.
• 20 fruits and vegetables dogs can and can't eat.
• Stunning footage of butterfly wings shot with electron microscopes at nanoscopic magnification.
• Tiny trackers are revealing the secret lives of tens of thousands of birds.
• See 15 amazing photos of beautiful birds.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• A DNA study suggests that Easter Island's population never collapsed, but it did have contact with Native Americans.
• HMS Challenger and the history of science at sea.
• Frank Lloyd Wright designed his first Prairie-Style house when he was 26. Now it's for sale.
• Comparing the pronunciation and spelling of various British and American words.
• This remote region in Spain could pay you up to $16,000 to move there.
• Every country's favorite ice cream flavor, mapped.
• This is life in America's water-inequality capital. It might be about to change.
• 15 remarkable photos that will make you fall in love with Italy.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Female Civil War soldier Sarah Emma Edmonds participated in the bloodiest battle in American history and spied on the South-- or did she?
• The rise and fall of Carl J. Lomen, Alaska's "Reindeer King."
• The not-so-nice origins of "bookworm."
• Hilary Mantel was author Katie Ward's mentor. Here are seven things Mantel taught her about writing-- and life.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Great Wyrley Outrages.
• Harriet Martineau, the forgotten female novelist who foresaw ecology, environmentalism, and realist fiction.
• The librarian spies of World War II.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• BookBub's best books of fall 2024.
• 16 new historical mysteries.
• Love Erik Larson? Pick up these non-fiction books.
• The best epistolary books of all time.
• BookTok's 11 most talked about books of the year (so far).
• 25 years later: A look back at the 10 best thrillers from 1999.
• The best mystery books of the past ten years for armchair sleuths.
• 30+ TV show book adaptations arriving this year, so far.

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!