Morning Coffee (2/2/18)

Boy do we need a break for some happy links this Friday!

ICYMI, yesterday's Oscar post: I loved Phantom Thread.

A good post to start your Friday: Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet Dance in the Streets of Italy With Call Me by Your Name Fans

Elena Ferrante's first Guardian column is up! (I finally started reading My Brilliant Friend this week. In Italian, so it's gonna take me a while.)

Whee, my friends doing awesome things: Cassandra Clare Launches 'One-Shot' Publishing Collaborative

This is very interesting and the Brits among you may be able to make some of these events! Suffragette cities: events to mark the centenary of voting rights for women

Not surprising but still delightful: Royals: They're just like us: The Royal Family Have Their Own WhatsApp Group

In other royals news, this is fun but I'm sorry this lady had to delete her Instagram because of it: Kate Middleton's Hairdresser Instagrams What She Packs For A Royal Tour With The Duchess

Amazing: Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle Went to a Michelangelo Exhibit and Thought It Was Radical

It me, as the kids say: My Self-Care Is Just Me Sorting Myself Into Ravenclaw Over and Over Again

I just BOUGHT a bag of this description so I shouldn't even look at this: 15 Office-Friendly Bags That Are Big Enough to Hold Your Laptop (I actually considered the Kate Spade one listed there but I wanted something that zipped, so I wound up at the Coach outlet and am very happy with my choice.)

Nothing has ever been more For Me than THE MATH OF MEDIEVAL TIMES.

Afternoon Tea (5/4/17)

'Girls on Fire' author Robin Wasserman sees parallels between '90s and today in politics and women's empowerment

That Solo Travel Blogger? She Just Wants a Vacation (I would read a million novels about the secret lives of various kinds of social media celebrities.)

I'm not sure this is TRUE but I found it comforting, as I DO keep reading books I hate: Why You Should Read Books You Hate

The Murder of Colonel Dooly Of Georgia: A Revolutionary War Mystery

Pushing the envelope: Siam’s stunning stamps

Morning Coffee (1/17/17)

An important read about the challenges facing young veterans: The Fighter

Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books

Uh: “You don't have to think of The New York Times or CNN or any of these people as news organizations,” [Gingrich] explained.

Related: Donald Trump is a media organization

What Was the Nerd? The myth of the bullied white outcast loner is helping fuel a fascist resurgence

The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming

I'd never thought much about the international hair industry until I read this: Black Gold

Sigh: Pinterest lowers its goal for female engineer hires

On Writing Darkness and Violence in the Lives of Teenagers

This is wild: The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time

9 famous scientists and their PhD theses

Heh: Who Did More to Win World War II, Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks?

Morning Coffee (6/20/16)

Me elsewhere: TV news for the week!

Interesting and important: What Obama Actually Thinks About Radical Islam

Major companies decline to fund 2016 GOP convention

"'Brock’s arrest wasn’t surprising to anyone on the team,' one woman told the magazine."

The Democratic Primary Wasn’t Rigged

My friend Robin Wasserman wrote this and it's beautiful and you should also read her new book, Girls on Fire: What It’s Like To Write About Your Best Friend’s Death

UnReal Gets Real About Gender Politics in the Workplace

This is important and doesn't get talked about enough: The Families That Can't Afford Summer

I've never seen any Kardashian shows but this profile of Kim is fascinating anyway.

This piece on translation will make you want to go read a bunch of Russian things.

Perfect: Vape Aficionado‘s Guide to Finding a Token Lady-Writer

Morning Coffee (5/31/16)

This may be the best thing I've read about Trump: The Joke That Ate the GOP

Bernie Sanders didn’t play the inside game, and it both helped and hurt him

Related: Talking with Nevada's top political expert about the rift between Sanders fans and party leaders

This is very useful these days, sadly enough: Travelgate to Furnituregate: a guide to the Clinton scandals of the 90s

How Online Harassment Is Setting The Tone For The 2016 Election

The cool girls, good girls and bad girls of modern books

Sexual harassment in academia is, sadly, not a shocking subject at this point, but when the perpetrator is a famous ethics professor, that's... something.

Middle Eastern Writers Find Refuge in the Dystopian Novel

The people behind Hottest Heads of State have a new site devoted to making fun of New York Times Magazine ads, and now I officially want to be friends with them.

Every Meal Lucy Snowe Almost Eats in Villette

Morning Coffee (5/21/16)

Kinda fun: Vox's VP Generator: use political history to build Clinton and Trump's shortlists

Seriously, this Venn diagram was TERRIBLE.

This is GREAT, from Robin Wasserman: A letter to my teenage self: mess up more

How Rival Gardens of Eden in Iraq Survived ISIS, Dwindling Tourists, And Each Other

Interesting: Google Is Feeding Romance Novels To Its Artificial Intelligence Engine To Make Its Products More Conversational

Save the Allegory!

The Nazi Underground

Wow: London During the Blitz: Then and Now Photographs

The Swiss Have Made Cheese Since the Iron Age

Inside the 19th-Century Free Love Commune Powered by Electric Sex, Eugenics and Delusions of Immortality

Book Review: Girls on Fire

Robin Wasserman, author of some of my young adult favorites including The Book of Blood and Shadow and The Waking Dark, released her first adult novel this week, and while her previous books were very good, Girls on Fire is breathtakingly great. I just opened my copy to find a quote from the first pages for you and can barely bear to pick one.

Impossible not to see them, not to remember what it was like, when it was like that. To sit there, shivering, as the sun dips toward the horizon and the wind blows cold over the waves, as the sky blazes red and darkness gathers around the girls, neither of them knowing how little time they have left before the fire goes out.

Remember how good it felt to burn.

As that quote suggests, the main characters here, as in Wasserman's YA novels, are teenagers for the bulk of the narrative, but in this case the narrator - and reader - is looking back at these experiences from an adult perspective. And from the lyrical first chapter with the all-important "there's always one in charge" on, Wasserman writes some of the most realistic descriptions of all the flavors of intense, complicated dynamics between adolescent girls I've ever read. Friendships, relationships, frenemy-ships, jealousy, love, hatred, rivalry - it's all here, and it feels like this book is telling all of our old secrets, and then taking them to a new level with gigantic stakes.

Most of the novel is set in the early nineties; the characters are a few years older than me, but close enough in age that their world and cultural touchpoints felt both comfortingly and scarily familiar. Who among us wasn't wearing flannel and doing pagan rituals in the woods? (I'm not, however, as familiar with the music - mostly Kurt Cobain - that plays a large part in the story; I should see if Wasserman has put together a playlist.) Wasserman perfectly captures the changes taking place both in her characters' small community and the culture at large; this intense specificity of setting plays very well against the universality of her characters' emotions and the teen girl experience she describes.

There's a central mystery here, too, the death of a classmate before the action starts, along with a palpable feeling from the beginning that the characters - and reader - are hurtling toward another terrible event. There are twists and terrible secrets gradually unraveled, but unlike in many high-profile psychological thrillers like Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, the twists didn't annoy me because they felt vital to the story and to the characters themselves, rather than reading as a careful puzzle constructed to convince the reader of the author's intellectual dominance. (Which is not to say that Wasserman is not smarter than all of us. I know her - full disclosure - and she is.)

But for me, the mystery, as compelling as it was, was both secondary to and made frightening by Wasserman's perfect portrayal of the power of teen girl friendship. Because what's so fascinating and wonderful and terrifying here is not that the things that are done by and done to these girls are foreign and unique, but that it's all too easy to imagine that with a few different casual decisions and chances of fate, any of us could have wound up exactly where they do.

Morning Coffee (4/15/16)

Happy Friday! As usual, we're going with lighter links to end the week.

Me elsewhere: I hated the new NBC show Game of Silence a surprising amount.

And if you want even MORE links from me every day for some reason, I've started a Daily Read section of Read the Screen, with adaptation news, interesting criticism, etc. each weekday afternoon. I guess I'll link it from here the next morning, at least for a while?

ICYMI, yesterday I thought way too much about Free Cone Day.

Every time a new Taylor Swift profile comes out I get worried because it's BOUND to do something to destroy the image I have of her in my head, but they NEVER DO and this one is great. (Note: Said image has nothing to do with her authenticity or anything; I don't care about that either way. I just want her to remain in complete and rigid control of her messaging forever.)

I am fundamentally opposed to every single stunt proposal in history except for this one.

My friend Robin Wasserman IS AN ANSWER IN A BUZZFEED QUIZ, so clearly she has no more to achieve in life. Also, you should preorder her book Girls on Fire immediately because it is great.

The kind of important news story that needs our attention: Cute Firefighters Rescue Kitten from Well

And some international cat news: We Met The New Foreign Office Cat And Asked Him Five Important Questions

These new Penguin fantasy and sci-fi classics are gorgeousssssss.

This new late night breakfast restaurant sounds like it's probably obnoxious but let's be real, I would go at least once because LATE NIGHT BREAKFAST.

I suspect your Friday needs Will and Kate feeding adorable baby elephants.

This is lovely: Behind the Scenes at the Met

LEGO KNAUSGAARD

Morning Coffee (1/13/15)

I'm running late but SO MUCH EXCITEMENT today. Okay.

First: New Avengers trailer!

Second: Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest is out today and it's incredible and you should go read it immediately.

Third: Robin Wasserman's first adult book is coming out next year and I am already beside myself with excitement.

Fourth: Get your Converse ready to win a copy of Susan Adrian's awesome debut novel Tunnel Vision next Tuesday!

Fifth: Colbert's Late Show will premiere on September 8th!

Sixth: New Kelly Clarkson song!

Seventh: Arthur is doing Downton Abbey!!

Eighth: Don't forget to save Alice!!!

Morning Coffee (9/29/14)

Me elsewhere: weekly TV news roundup, pilot review of How to Get Away with Murder, Haven recap: "Spotlight," Bones premiere review.

Aww: The last Mitford sister has died.

Robin Wasserman on adolescence and hysteria: Girl Trouble

Interesting: Readers Predict in 1936 Which Novelists Would Still Be Widely Read in the Year 2000

Look Out Look Out Look Out: The Dark YA Fiction Of The Shangri-Las

Not sure these are all surprising, but they're interesting: 22 maps and charts that will surprise you

Going West: The World of Live Action, Competitive Oregon Trail

The Gibson Girls: The Kardashians of the Early 1900s

Two Monks Invent Denominations

Morning Coffee (9/12/13)

Happy Friday!

Robin Wasserman talks to Entertainment Weekly about her great new book, The Waking Dark.

Hilarious: A Day in the Life of a Troubled Male Antihero

Next in that X-Files TV writer interview series: Arrow's Andrew Kreisberg.

Men Dressed As Batman And Captain America Rescue Cat From Burning Building

IKEA Stonehenge Infographic

47 Years of Star Trek

A Perfect Storm of Cute: Cheetah Cubs Grow Up With Puppy

You Want to Watch Chipotle's Amazing "Scarecrow" Video

Book Recommendation: The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman

They called it the killing day.
Twelve people dead, all in the space of a few hours.
Five murderers: neighbors, relatives, friends. All of them so normal. All of them seemingly harmless. All of them now dead by their own hand . . . except one. And that one has no answers to offer the shattered town. She doesn't even know why she killed — or whether she'll do it again.

Something is waking in the sleepy town of Oleander, Kansas — something dark and hungry that lives in the flat earth and the open sky, in the vengeful hearts of upstanding citizens. As the town begins its descent into blood and madness, five survivors of the killing day are the only ones who can stop Oleander from destroying itself. Jule, the outsider at war with the world; West, the golden boy at war with himself; Daniel, desperate for a different life; Cass, who's not sure she deserves a life at all; and Ellie, who believes in sacrifice, fate, and in evil. Ellie, who always goes too far. They have nothing in common. They have nothing left to lose. And they have no way out. Which means they have no choice but to stand and fight, to face the darkness in their town — and in themselves. (from RobinWasserman.com)

I like to say that Robin Wasserman's previous book, The Book of Blood and Shadow, is like The Da Vinci Code except actually good. Well, this one is like Stephen King's Under the Dome, except better. It deals with some similar themes of power and religion and drugs and evil in a small town that has been isolated by a sudden traumatic event, but the overall plot hangs together better here, civilization falls apart in a much more believable way, and the "solution" to the central mystery makes much more sense. (I sort of wanted to throw Under the Dome across the room at the end.)

Even more importantly (at least to me), the depth of the characterization made me really care what happened to the teenagers at the center of the story. Wasserman does a great job of seeding the action with genuine character moments that make the horrors of the story resonate even more. She starts with some "types" you'd expect in a small town story - the high school football star, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, etc. - but then manages to turn them into real, complex people, making both the reader and the other characters question their assumptions and prejudices. No one is quite what they seem, but it doesn't feel like a trick - it's just realistic, sometimes horrifyingly so.

I will say that horror is not my genre - but/and also that this book wasn't as frightening, exactly, as I feared. (I only had a few nightmares while reading it.) But it's intense. This book is not for the faint of heart, which is either a warning or an encouragement, depending on your tastes. A lot of terrible things happen, and Wasserman is pulling no punches here. There were a few times when I literally stopped, said "Did that just happen?", and reread a sentence or paragraph. But it never feels like bad or scary things are happening just for shock value - it's all earned and meaningful, never gratuitous. And the tone manages to be simultaneously bleak and hopeful, which is one of my favorite combinations. Oh, and did I mention the creepy? Bleak, hopeful, and creepy - a combination that makes it a perfect fall read.

(Disclaimer: I know Robin and she gave me an ARC, so I can't say I'm unbiased, but I wouldn't say I liked something I didn't.)

Morning Coffee (1/31/13)

How is it the last day of January already?

Whoa: Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months

Look look look! The cover for Robin Wasserman's The Waking Dark has been revealed.

You must listen to Jewel and Kelly Clarkson duetting on "Foolish Games."

Prince Charles and Camilla rode the Tube for the first time.

Never forget that Ryan Seacrest is really darn good at his job.

How Smash Became TV's Biggest Train Wreck

Robert Frost: Darkness or Light?

Artist Uses Kittens to Recreate Classic Album Covers