Afternoon Tea (7/26/19)

A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Let Loose in the Night Woods

Honestly, this sold me, I'm going to try it: The Best Classical Music Streaming Service Is Idagio

Five Women Who Made the Moon Landing Possible

Peru celebrates Inca sun festival: Inti Raymi – in pictures

This is so neat: An Interactive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Journey in Homer’s Odyssey

Afternoon Tea (9/10/18)

Judging by the Cover: How the Magazine Industry’s Identity Crisis Is Playing Out on Its Front Page

Vitamin D, the Sunshine Supplement, Has Shadowy Money Behind It

An Ovidian Taste Test: The Old Verse Translations of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’

FRINGE: Ten Years Later, The Fox Drama is Still Underrated

Crime and the City: Phoenix

Afternoon Tea (4/9/18)

The World Is Changing. This Trappist Abbey Isn’t. Can It Last?

Why the True Story of “Chappaquiddick” Is Impossible to Tell

Awww: ‘Frozen’ on Broadway Made Them Sisters. Heartbreak Made Them Friends.

The Forgotten Africans of Iran

This kind of thing is always fun: The Long Goodbye: The 49 Best Covers from Around the World

Afternoon Tea (3/23/18)

Valley Forged: How One Man Made the Indie Video Game Sensation Stardew Valley

The Classics Scholar Redefining What Twitter Can Do

What Jasmine Guillory Reads

Incarnadine, the Bloody Red of Fashionable Cosmetics and Shakespearean Poetics

The Supermarket Cafeteria That Major League Baseball Players Love

Some Older Books I Liked in 2017!

I feel badly that new books get all the attention and then I feel guilty for not reading them all in time to make an annual list and HEY, I'm giving you some of my favorite older books I read for the first time this year, too.

Classic literature:
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Contemporary literature:
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

Mysteries:
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
A Small Town in Germany by John Le Carre
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters
Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer-Fleming (and several of that series leading up to it)

Speculative fiction:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Historical fiction:
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Historical romance:
In for a Penny by Rose Lerner

History:
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

Afternoon Tea (12/21/17)

I'm so excited to read this translation: A Translator's Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey

Why More Young Black People Are Trading In Church for African Spirituality

Untold Stories of England’s Militant Suffragettes

Malta, Where the West Was Born

Toasting Your Friends Once Involved Actual Toast

Afternoon Tea (11/14/17)

This is fascinating and this book immediately went onto my Christmas list: The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English

Aww, my friend Tim! Shopping for a Life He Didn’t Yet Have

The Secret History of Cricket Magazine, the ‘New Yorker for Children’

I wish to read a romance novel series about these brothers immediately: When He Needs Advice, a Philadelphia Flyer Turns to His Brother the Dancer

The Ancient Roman Cult That Continues to Vex Scholars (The Precession of the Equinox takes down another copyeditor, I see.)

Morning Coffee (7/29/16)

It's Friday AND the start of my birthday weekend, so it's time for some happy distracting links!

My friend James Moran (you may know him as a writer for Doctor Who and Torchwood) is making a webseries based on Dracula and it looks nifty. Here's a teaser.

Oprah will be in the A Wrinkle in Time movie and I remain cautiously optimistic about this whole endeavor.

Netflix is getting a bunch of stuff from the slow TV movement in August, including knitting and train rides!

The Cambridges are officially headed to Canada. Will they take the kids with them so they can be adorable with Justin Trudeau???

Speaking of: Prince George Has an Extremely Adorable Way of Ordering Cake

Whoa: WW2 silk escape map dress sold in Harrogate

Important investigative journalism: That 'S' Thing Everyone Drew in School, WHAT IS IT?

Ooh: Vatican library digitises 1,600-year-old edition of Virgil

How the Key to the Bastille Ended Up in George Washington’s Possession

When ‘Arrow’ sings ‘Hamilton,’ we all win

Morning Coffee (3/29/16)

Lest we forget what we're fighting against: Angola jails 17 activists for rebellion after public reading of political book

Oh good: North Carolina Sued Over Anti-LGBT Law

Bernie Sanders just won landslides in 3 diverse states. He's still toast.

This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest

Max Fisher sincerely tried to understand Trump's foreign policy positions and pretty much concluded that Trump just has no idea what he's talking about.

Related! Comments by Donald Trump Draw Fears of an Arms Race in Asia

Alyssa Rosenberg at the Post is doing a neat thing: she sent a survey about positions on the arts to all the candidates. Trump is the first to respond.

Well. This is an interesting Gallup poll for those who are convinced no one's excited about Clinton.

Lost in Trumplandia

The Onion, barely: Advisors Tell Trump, Cruz To Stick To Just Attacking All Women In General

A model first lady, despite receiving unprecedented scorn

Dirtbag Ethan Frome

Morning Coffee (11/24/15)

I love this annual feature from Vox: How to Survive Your Family's Thanksgiving Arguments

ISIS, a history: how the world's worst terror group came to be

The Female ISIS Suicide Bomber in the Bathtub Was Exactly None of Those Things

Perhaps the craziest thing in this totally insane New Yorker crime story is that NO ONE in it is sympathetic.

“All the world was made for you”: Talking Back to Ophelia in 1918

This Enya profile is fascinating. She named her castle Manderley, you guys.

Singin' in the Rain is coming to Broadway!!

Ooh, a Balanchine movie could be interesting.

Fascinating: The Invisible Library

The Onion, barely: Carly Fiorina Shares Heartbreaking Story About Father Of 3 Who Couldn’t Meet Sales Goals

Morning Coffee (11/13/15)

Happy Friday! FINALLY.

It's the most wonderful post of the year! My friend Beck has posted her annual review of Oprah's gift guide.

Awesome: A Judge Used Taylor Swift Lyrics To Dismiss The $42 Million Lawsuit Against “Shake It Off”

Ooh! A Lost Story by Edith Wharton Has Been Discovered in Yale's Library

Look at this 3D printed violin!! (I think the objections that it doesn't sound that great are nonsense; no one's saying it should be used by professionals, but it would be GREAT for making music learning more accessible for kids.)

This is old, but a friend shared it recently and it was too delightful not to pass along: Computing the optimal search strategy for finding Waldo

How the British Royal Family Became a Global Brand

!!! Whisky Advent Calendar!!!

The Funky Little Football Phone That Sold a Million Magazines

Treebooks Vs. Ebooks: Just Read.

"TRACY: I will say this, though: I appreciate that you are the only man in this entire movie who has not described me as a frigid bitch-goddess or a human statue.
MIKE: That is something, isn’t it? I said you were a girl, and that I liked your fire, and your self-sufficiency.
TRACY: It was, quite literally, the nicest thing any man has ever said to me, including my father and former husband.
MIKE: My God, that’s awful."

Morning Coffee (10/16/15)

Happy Friday!

Me elsewhere: I recapped the Haven premiere.

This week's New Yorker arrived in my mailbox yesterday with a piece about Thoreau LITERALLY ENTITLED "POND SCUM" and few things have ever made me so happy.

Except, actually, GQ's Taylor Swift cover story (by Chuck Klosterman!), which pulls off the pretty amazing feat of being genuinely interesting while making her seem even more exactly the person I've always wanted her to be. (Reading profiles of celebrities you like is always such a RISK.) There are many, MANY great things in that piece, and I really urge you to read it, but probably the BEST is the way Swift realizes that if her parents hadn't moved her to Nashville to focus on her music as a teen, she'd now be working in some kind of marketing like the rest of us.

I tend to put The Toast at the bottom of the link list, I guess because I'm a creature of habit and like ending with something funny, but Mallory's North and South is just too good:
"MARGARET: can you at least give me a general outline of your problems with the Church?
MR. HALE: sorry no
MARGARET: are you an atheist? a Methodist? a Tractarian? a schismatic? a Baptist?
MR. HALE: don’t worry about it
just know that I cannot renew my vows, so we must move North and be unemployed
MARGARET: Can you…specify which doctrine?
MR. HALE: No
and in fact I will never be discussing my new beliefs again
MARGARET: Will you at least be following your conscience and preaching whatever doctrine you think soundest up North?
MR. HALE: I will not."

The Zombies have a new album! Did you know the Zombies were still a thing? I most certainly did not!

"Being Santa Claus gives a person a political edge, he said. On more than one occasion he has called a legislator, lobbying for support on a child welfare issue. When he’s been brushed off, he has called local media and introduced himself. Then the local media, seeing a story, called the legislator. And then, magically, someone from the politician’s office called to discuss his concerns. It seems no politician wants to come out publicly against Santa Claus, he said."

!!!!!! Students Create 3D-Printed Wheelchair For Disabled Kitten

It's Friday. Let's look at Tom Hiddleston in glasses.

Go Inside the World Of June Kenton, H.M. Queen Elizabeth II’s Royal Bra Fitter

Whoa: Beautiful Harry Potter stop-motion short film builds Hogwarts from the pages of the books themselves

In a Small Village High in the Peruvian Andes, Life Stories Are Written in Textiles

Morning Coffee (9/17/15)

Me elsewhere: I'm reviewing the first episode of all the new shows again this year. First up: The Bastard Executioner. Also: teasers for Miss Peregrine and Allegiant.

I saw this Ted Cruz scorpion ad on TV for the first time last night and it was SO bizarre. And I did NOT get the message at all - when it was talking about harmful people striking again, and showing cowboy boots, I assumed he meant Bushes. Or Clintons.

I'm sure everyone has been telling you to read Ta-Nehisi Coates's new piece, but seriously: The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Here's the National Book Award nonfiction longlist (including the aforementioned Coates). I feel like there's more personal writing and less history than in previous years? Not that that's BAD, necessarily, but there were fewer things that made me think "Ooh, I want to read that" than usual. (Fiction longlist out today.)

That said, I loved this piece on writing in cafes, which combines personal history with history history. The most productive writing spot for me ever was the cafe at the Borders where I used to work. Like 2k words an hour good. Discounted drinks, people I knew around ALL THE TIME if I needed a moment of interaction, some say over the music, it was basically like being at home and in public at the same time. RIP Borders. Anyway, this has made me conclude that I need to find a good local writing cafe. (Though if you're near Cheshire, CT, let me take a moment to recommend Cheshire Coffee, which my dad and I discovered this weekend when we had a crumb cake/coffee emergency while driving home from New Haven.)

This story about Putin (not) chatting with Elton John is amazing. Did someone just . . . prank call Elton John? That's what's going on here, right? I want it to have been, like, Ringo. Ooh, or Prince Harry.

An important thing to keep in mind during refugee discussions: For Those Who Remain in Syria, Daily Life Is a Nightmare

Ooh: CIA declassifies collection of cold war-era intelligence memos (Actual conversation I had at dinner the other night: How the End of the Cold War Ruined Everything. [Okay, maybe not everything. We were talking mostly about the Olympics and the space program and spy fiction.])

Speaking of: Do real spies write the best spy novels?

"HELEN: I personally prefer to live alone
GILBERT: is this some sort of code
HELEN: No
I just don’t like company
GILBERT: WOMEN
SUCH MYSTERIES
AN ENIGMA WRAPPED IN A RIDDLE AND CLEVERLY SEWN INTO A PUZZLE"

Morning Coffee (6/16/15)

Me elsewhere: TV news.

They cancelled the Iowa straw poll and I find that weirdly earthshaking.

Aww: Amy Poehler is getting annual Leslie Knope updates from Mike Schur: “I just want to track what she’s doing”

"Let's say that you are Mitt Romney. That is, you are an American celebrity with a lot of money, few worries, and a loving and tight-knit family you enjoy being around. Now let's also say that you have a bunch of friends who 'could raise a billion dollars overnight.' Is 'run for president a third time' what you'd do what those opportunities? Or would you do 'almost anything else in the world.'"

On John Green, and Why I Love Him

Neat: Coca-Cola Introduces Line of Braille Cans

Star Wars lightsaber colors, explained

Fascinating: This Is What It’s Like To Get Fitted For A Bra At Six Different Stores

How To Tell If You Are in a Dostoevsky Novel

Morning Coffee (4/10/15)

I suspect your Friday morning could use Prince Harry flying a Spitfire.

And also Bill Nye kidnapping people and taking them to national parks.

This 3D printed violin is terrifying.

My main question here is why Poland wasn't ALREADY trying to capitalize on Chopin, but . . . okay.

Speaking of Chopin: Elizabeth Berg has a George Sand novel coming out!

Oooh: The colors of 94,526 paintings since 1800, charted

People named Burger and King are getting married and Burger King is paying. Aww.

ETHAN FROME: lets go sledding right now

Morning Coffee (1/15/15)

A Woman Has Pressed Charges Against Bill Cosby That Could Lead To Prosecution

Amazon’s deal with Woody Allen is historic — and remarkably stupid

Why Political Dynasties Are Good for Women

Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea

Harry Potter author mocks Rupert Murdoch for ignorant tweets about Islamic terrorism

What Happens When a Woman Walks Like a Man?

This Thomas Hardy infographic is the greatest thing I have ever seen. It's called BLEAKNESS IS MY WEAKNESS.

Quiz: Can you name a city just by looking at its streets?

Don't forget to save Alice!

What I Read: November 2014

Betrayal in Death by J.D. Robb (Dallas/Roarke #12): A particularly enjoyable entry in the series, thanks to an interesting mystery case, ties to Roarke's past, and the usual strong character dynamics. I love that (so far, at least) Robb is keeping Dallas and Roarke in a good place while still dealing with the differences between them, and the relationship between Peabody and McNab provides a good secondary romance plot.

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving: I knew the basic story but had never read this one, so I figured I should read along with the Classic Alice plot! I enjoy Irving's writing, and the Arthur Rackham illustrations in this edition were gorgeous. And, you know, ghost bowling. Absolutely here for the ghost bowling.

Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg: Quite funny, as expected - plus it made me want to go read or reread a bunch of the books it parodies IMMEDIATELY.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton: Read for book club. I'm not a fan of magical realism, generally, so I had trouble getting into this - when people suddenly turn into birds or are so tall they block the sun, my automatic reaction is to roll my eyes. That said, while I was never sold on those aspects of the story, Walton did a good job of making me care about the characters. And I liked her prose style; the bakery descriptions were definitely my favorite part of the book.

White Snow, Bright Now by Alvin Tresselt: This caught my eye when I walked past the picture book bins at my local library, and I'm glad I grabbed it! The narrative was charming, and I really like the illustration style.

A Demon Summer by G.M. Malliet (Max Tudor #4): I continue to really enjoy this series. While I missed the village stuff a bit in this one, the look at nunnery life was fascinating. The mystery itself was a little slow to get going, but satisfying in the end. And I'm so excited about the developments in Max's personal life.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: I'd read this for a history of children's lit class in college, but my memory was hazy, so I reread along with Classic Alice. As is often the case with classics, I was delighted to rediscover how FUNNY it was. It was also genuinely touching, and while I'm not always the biggest fan of animal stories, I mostly got past that here. (I did have to make myself stop trying to figure out exactly how anthropomorphic these animals were supposed to be, especially when it came to things like how large they were compared to humans - the illustrations made them human-sized - and exactly how the animal/human justice system worked.)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: This was delightful - hilarious and clever and compelling. I only wish I'd done more background reading first, as I fear a lot of things were going over my head because I'm not as familiar with this period of history as I should be.