A Hello, 2025! Weekly Link Round-Up

 

I'm writing this on New Year's Day, and I'm enjoying the peace and quiet after last night when it seemed like the entire neighborhood was trying to blow itself into 2026. Denis and I are both doing well. My leg continues to improve, and Denis's stomach problems have abated. After all those end-of-the-year medical appointments, I'm happy to say that I had my first "all's clear!" mammogram results in three years. (And here I was, expecting to be told that I had to go in to have another chunk of boob excised for tests.)

Many of us are eyeing this new year with trepidation, but at least Denis and I know that March is going to be a good month because our niece Karen will be visiting us from the UK. Yippee!

I'm going to leave you with two movie recommendations before I head off into the links. Before I forget, I'm not including book banning links; I just don't have the heart for adding such a depressing batch of links. We all know what's going on. Try to do what you can to protect libraries, librarians, and the right to read.

Oops! Movie recommendations! Denis and I really enjoyed Jerry and Marge Go Large, a film based on a true story about a man who figured out a flaw in the lottery system and used it to revive their small town. (Paramount+) We enjoyed another true story even more: Tyler Perry's The Six Triple Eight about 855 Black women in World War II who were tasked with fixing the three-year backlog of undelivered mail. (Netflix) Very inspiring!

Enjoy the links!

►Books and Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• The curse of the stolen amethyst.
• The real story behind Netflix's The Six Triple Eight, a new Tyler Perry film about the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.
• How an experiment to amplify light in hospital operating rooms led to the accidental invention of the snow globe.
• A 462-year-old Beaufort County (South Carolina) town opened its first public library. Take a look inside a new world.
• How Fyodor Dostoevsky became a social media sensation.
• Book clubs, book bars, and BookTok: examining why everyone suddenly wants to be perceived as well-read.
• As children's book bans soar, sales are down and librarians are afraid-- even in California.
• Title of a romance novel or the name of a nail polish?

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• 2,000-year-old RSVP A birthday invitation from the Roman frontier that has the earliest known Latin written by a woman.
• Ancient DNA offers crucial hints to the origin of syphilis, a decades-long mystery that has divided scientists.
• An 1,800-year-old gold ring with "Venus the Victorious" carving has been discovered in France.
• Archaeologists are finding dugout canoes in the American Midwest as old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
• Divers discovered a 2,500-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Sicily.
• A new magnetic survey has revealed an ancient Assyrian capital that's been abandoned for 2,700 years.
• A centuries-old floor patched with sliced bones was discovered in the Netherlands.
• In 1577, an English explorer set out to circumnavigate the world. Here's what his groundbreaking journey accomplished.

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• A new study has found that hungry sea otters are taking a bite out of California's invasive crab problem.
• The bald eagle just became America's national bird. What took so long?
• Check out 14 hilarious winners from the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards contest.
• Henry the giant crocodile, who has sired 10,000 babies, recently celebrated his 124th birthday.
• Two orphaned Siberian tigers reunited as mates after a 120-mile trek through the Russian wilderness.
• Geneticists have solved the mystery of why some cats are orange-- and why they tend to be males.
• A male humpback whale crossed 3 oceans for sex, inadvertently breaking a distance record for the species.
• Scientists released 5 Hawaiian crows on Maui, giving the imperiled birds a second chance-- on a new island.

►The Wanderer◄

• How setting has come to define great crime fiction-- in Scandinavia, Britain, and the desert of the American Southwest.
• See inside Notre-Dame Cathedral in these breathtaking images of its newly unveiled interior. Here's a sneak peek of Notre-Dame's new stained glass designs. The mysterious "horseman" from the lead coffin unearthed in Notre-Dame has finally been identified.
• 19 places you won't believe exist.
• Nashville-- country music and murder.
• A historic Thomas Hardy building in the UK was damaged by fire.
• Lyon, France-- a world capital of gastronomy and crime books.
• Crews have removed miles of abandoned, lead-coated telephone cables from the bottom of Lake Tahoe.
• Jura: George Orwell's Scottish hideaway.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Jimmy Carter transformed more than the presidency. His lasting legacy.
• Fannie Lou Hamer and the fight for voting rights.
• How Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and Leigh Brackett defined a strand of midcentury American literature.
• These 5 trailblazing American women will be featured on quarters in 2025.
• Who was Frances Perkins? Meet the trailblazing workers' rights advocate whose homestead just became a national monument.
• Ike's Girls: America's first women's expeditionary force.
• A new project tells the stories of the women of Route 66.
• Art detective Arthur Brand is like Indiana Jones but with a more elegant wardrobe.

►I ♥ Lists◄

• The award-winning novels of 2024.
• Crochet flower bookmarks designed to look like they're blooming from the page you're reading.
• The best mystery and thriller movies of the 1960s.
• The 21st century's best works of Native American history.
• 18 riveting reads for mystery fans and history buffs alike.
• Jodi Picoult, Kennedy Ryan, and more bestselling authors share their most-anticipated 2025 books.
• 11 rare old words for the heinous and villainous.
• Series and films celebrating Indigenous culture.

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!