Morning Coffee (3/2/19)

What’s next after the Trump-Kim summit? An expert explains.

U.S. and Taliban Begin Highest-Level Talks Yet on Ending Afghan War

Border Patrol Fed Pork To Muslim Detainee For 6 Days

Is It Cruel and Unusual to Execute a Man With Dementia?

No, Mark Meadows. Having a black friend doesn’t mean you’re not racist.

UGH: United Methodist Church votes to maintain its opposition to same-sex marriage, gay clergy

Bernie Sanders' Sexism Problem

André Previn, Whose Music Knew No Boundaries, Dies at 89

Whoa: Fox Rocked by $179M 'Bones' Ruling: Lying, Cheating and "Reprehensible" Studio Fraud

BAN MEN: Charles Dickens Tried to Banish His Wife to an Asylum, Letters Show

Afternoon Tea (11/27/17)

Two Stars Slammed Into Each Other And Solved Half Of Astronomy’s Problems. What Comes Next?

This piece is FAR MORE DELIGHTFUL than it sounds: The Man Who Invented Christmas is a deeply silly (but surprisingly enjoyable) Dickens riff

The Archaeologists Saving Miami's History from the Sea

The Disappearing Cuisine of an Ancient Religion

The Long Ethical Arc of Displaying Human Remains

Afternoon Tea (9/13/17)

I loved this interview with Celeste Ng - I just got her new book Little Fires Everywhere from Book of the Month and I'm so excited. (If you click that link you can use my referral to get books for $9.99 AND a free tote bag and it's totally worth it.)

This was a DELIGHT: How the Jeopardy! Writers Room Comes Up With All of Those Questions

Innnnteresting: 2017 is the worst fall TV season in recent memory

Inside Higher Ed is sneakily the most hilarious: Homeschooled Student's Transcript Might Be for a Cat

How guest Hans Christian Andersen destroyed his friendship with Dickens

Morning Coffee (9/8/17)

It's Friday, so let's have some lighter links! Back to the miseries of the world tomorrow, I promise.

Prince George started school! SO CUTE.

The Man Who Invented Christmas, with Dan Stevens as Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Scrooge, looks more insane than I'd dreamed and now I'm pretty excited for it!

Ooh, trailer for the new Magic School Bus show! Yes, that's Lin-Manuel Miranda singing, because the man apparently doesn't need sleep.

Perhaps your Friday would be improved by ogling Matt Bomer's Todd Snyder ads. It's A LOT.

I want to go there: China’s Seaside Library Mimics the Rhythms of the Ocean

Whoa: World’s tallest sandcastle rises in Germany

Look at these amazing hotel bathrooms.

12 Cozy Blankets You'll Wanna Snuggle Under All Year Long

These Disney Villain Lip Smackers Will Make You Very Excited For Halloween

Awww: Sophie Turner Basically Just Adopted Her Own Direwolf

Morning Coffee (1/22/17)

This was quite the first day: "President Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd."

Related: Headlines Matter When Your President Lies All the Time

More than two million people are in the streets resisting Trump

Anita Hill: Trump’s election is disappointing for feminism. But it’s not the final word.

Just... Trump’s inaugural cake was commissioned to look exactly like Obama’s, baker says

Targeting the arts is the laziest, stupidest way to pretend to cut the budget

The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun

Palestine: The End of the Bedouins?

Ooh: Paul McCartney Sues Sony to Regain Rights to Beatles Songs

A 17th-Century Child Mummy Just Rewrote the History of Smallpox

The World's 12 Most Amazing Rail Journeys

I need to read more Dickens.

Morning Coffee (12/24/16)

(I'm traveling, so this post was written in advance and does not take into account whatever additional horrors have recently been unleashed upon the world.)

Happy Christmas Eve! All holiday-themed links today.

This is absolutely the best holiday ad of the year.

In New Hampshire, Decorating Christmas Trees in the Woods is a Thing People Do

Sweden Has Won the Annual Santa Olympics

Amazing: A Dickensian Divide, but United in Holiday Cheer

It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the best movies America has ever made about itself

Step-by-step guide to making a dumpster fire ornament for 2016

How Fast Is Santa?

5 Lesbian and Gay Holiday Romances to Read This Season

The Nazis Fought the Original War on Christmas

The 1,800-year evolution of Santa Claus, from skinny medieval saint to WWII propaganda icon

Was this the first public Christmas tree?

Untangling the History of Christmas Lights

Morning Coffee (11/18/16)

Let's take a break for some happy Friday links.

National Book Award winners! I want to read all of them.

I'm glad the BBC understands that what the world needs now is more Mary Berry.

Oh, this could be fun: Broadway's 'She Loves Me' to Screen in Movie Theaters (I went when they did something similar with Company and it was great.)

!!! Dan Stevens & Christopher Plummer To Star In Charles Dickens Tale ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’

This is an amazing headline: Cats colonized most of the planet by boat

A great escapist read if you like this kind of thing: Sex, Drugs, and Bestsellers: The Legend of the Literary Brat Pack

I haven't had a change to start watching The Crown yet but here's some good background info.

Let's go curl up with some tea and blankets and read the books that shaped President Obama.

I bet you need to see a polar bear petting a dog.

MATH KNITTING

Morning Coffee (6/27/16)

Me elsewhere: The week's TV news!

A Detailed Guide to How the “Dump Trump” Movement Could Actually Dump Trump at the Convention

The Onion, SUPPOSEDLY: Trump’s Potential VP Picks

Nihilist Ted, Back to the Back Bench

Social Media Superfandom and the Murder of Christina Grimmie

US incarceration is 5 to 10 times higher than that of other NATO countries

Whoa: Orthodox Churches’ Council, Centuries in Making, Falters as Russia Exits

As someone who has been in the position of trying to figure out how to get immediate help for someone across the country, I was happy to see this: Facebook Offers Tools for Those Who Fear a Friend May Be Suicidal

I'm pretty much Team Paramount here.

Hah: Don’t Date a Guy Who Tells You He Works on Broad City

Every Meal In Great Expectations, Ranked In Order Of How Upsetting It Is

Book Review: Tell the Wind and Fire

Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan
Clarion Books, 2016

Sarah Rees Brennan is one of my favorite authors, and I also love Dickens in general and A Tale of Two Cities in particular, so when I heard that she was doing a modern Tale of Two Cities with magic, I was thrilled. And Tell the Wind and Fire did not disappoint. It's a thoughtful page-turner, full of Rees Brennan's trademark humor and meditations on family and friendship and revolution and love and choice.

Tell the Wind and Fire is about a city divided between Light and Dark magic, and a girl caught in the middle when the people of the Dark start to fight back against the dominance of the Light and their terrible treatment at the hands of the powerful. "Like Mockingjay but good" is kind of a flip description - and I wouldn't call Mockingjay bad, exactly - but there's truth to it: Tell the Wind and Fire's Lucie is, like Katniss, made into the symbol of a revolution mostly by happenstance and others' actions, but Lucie comes across as much more thoughtful about her situation, and she is legitimately torn and ends up making her own decisions about her future, which makes the novel as a whole much more complex and compelling. And like many Rees Brennan heroines, Lucie is practical in a way I really enjoy - no unthinking "all that matters is love" here.

I like my magic systems to have clearly defined rules, to work in a way that makes it clear that the author knows exactly what's going on even if the reader doesn't have (or need) every detail, and this book certainly fulfills that. And even better, the magic is thoroughly integrated into a political system and a society and culture. Rees Brennan's world-building is great, and really helps this novel feel like its own unique thing even while cleverly using the Tale of Two Cities framework. The world of this novel feels so real that I found myself wanting to read a "nonfiction" history of it, and the political conflicts felt extremely relevant to our world today.

The central love triangle was actually one of the least compelling things for me here - which, not coincidentally, is how I feel about Tale of Two Cities as well. Of course, whether this is problematic depends on your own reading priorities. I didn't really care whether the love triangle grabbed me either way, but I did want to feel Lucie's feelings for boyfriend Ethan slightly more, especially since his doppelganger Carwyn had the "mysterious bad boy" advantage. That said, Ethan was way more interesting than he could have been, and I totally mean that as a compliment - his Dickensian analog Charles Darnay barely made any impression on me at all.

Speaking of Dickens: adaptations always bring up the question of whether the reader must be familiar with the source material to understand and enjoy the new work, and here I'd say absolutely not. Dickens fans will appreciate Rees Brennan's clever use of characters and themes, and there are certainly some fun references, but I'd wholeheartedly recommend Tell the Wind and Fire to any reader looking for complex, funny, heartbreaking fantasy with strong characters and thought-provoking themes. (But then you should go read A Tale of Two Cities too, because it's great, I promise.)

Morning Coffee (12/31/14)

Happy New Year's Eve! You should check out the Google Doodle, of course.

John Green has a great video up about systemic racism.

More evidence Mayan civilization collapsed because of drought

Aaah, Wolf Hall trailer!

11 Muppets You Wouldn’t Invite To A New Year’s Eve Party

How late the world stays up on New Year’s, in one map

The science and magic of mulled wine

Here's some interesting stuff about Kindle Unlimited.

Charles Dickens’ Internet Search History

Morning Coffee (4/25/14)

Happy Friday!

The final episodes of The Killing will premiere on Netflix on August 1st!

Happiness Study Says Library Trips Are As Good As A Pay Raise (They needed a study?)

The CBC has spoken: Anne Shirley is Canada's most iconic character

The baseball fandom statistics here and here are fascinating.

In Defense of Explaining Things

I can't quite figure out what to think about cat cafes.

This memo about potential Gone with the Wind screenwriters is great.

What's the Difference Between English, Irish, and Scottish Breakfast Teas? Interesting!

How To Tell If You Are In A Charles Dickens Novel

How Much of a Perfectionist Are You? (Very, very much.)

Morning Coffee (9/11/13)

The Man Booker Shortlist is out.

X-Files fans: my friend Marisa at Give Me My Remote is doing a great series for the 20th anniversary in which she talks to TV writers about how the show influenced them. The first is with Hart Hanson of Bones.

Headline of the day: Angry moose vandalizes Norwegian school.

The Pope Gets on the Line, and Everyone Is Talking

Ooh, they're restoring Dickens's house.

Here's a great picture of what was happening under Julia Child's kitchen counter.

In case you also hadn't seen it yet, here is Tom Hiddleston gleefully tormenting Cookie Monster, and it's really worth the watch.

81 of Fall TV's Biggest Stars

Morning Coffee (8/23/13)

IT'S FINALLY FRIDAY. Yay.

If you somehow hadn't heard yet, Ben Affleck is going to be Batman and everyone's really confused.

Here is Nathan Fillion covered in kittens. Because it's Friday and I try to include happy things on Fridays.

40 Trashy Novels You Must Read Before You Die I have somehow only read four. Must remedy this. (Can you guess which four?)

Awesome Farmer Builds Water Slide for Pigs

Holy Land U.S.A. is actually in the city where I was born, and not that obscure, since anyone driving on 84 can see the GIANT CROSS from the highway.

New music from Butch Walker!

Just putting this here: 300 Kate Bushes gather in park to re-enact Wuthering Heights, break record

Here is a Twitter version of Dickens, because . . . I don't know, whatever. It's Friday.

Morning Coffee (4/22/13)

Jesus, this week.

Apparently Google is actually trying to build the Star Trek computer.

Absolutely fascinating: When Dickens met Dostoevsky (or, you know, didn't)

Eden Foods doesn't want to pay for employees' contraception as required by law, so you might want to buy different soy milk.

Rock albums as book covers

Interesting read: Meet the Gaybros

Ooh, read about the new Mary Rose museum.

Mary Robinette Kowal sneaks the Doctor into all her historical fantasy novels.

Tell the Wind and Fire!

Sometimes, news comes out that seems like it was written JUST FOR ME. Like that day last week when a bunch of networks all ordered historical dramas. But this is real, I swear! My friend and one of my favorite authors, Sarah Rees Brennan, is writing a modern retelling of A Tale of Two Cities with magic and doppelgangers and, if I know Sarah at all, more agency given to the female characters. I LOVE A Tale of Two Cities. And magic. And doppelgangers. And Sarah's writing. We have to wait for 2014 for this, but hey, that gives everyone time to read/reread the original! I AM SO EXCITED.