You guys. Rick Moody is my new hero.

A Forensic Poet for Our Time - yay, Poetry! Read more!

The Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2016

Dear Rick Moody: Why Do Men Spinster-Bait? New Life Hero Rick Moody Shutting it THE FUCK DOWN. I am Leslie Jones levels of hyped about this article. Witness:

The ideas of nurturing and selflessness that we associate with the feminine are the site for masculine attack, because it is in the feminine that men are woven into life. The “spinster,” the woman who is not prone to think of patriarchal power as tolerable or important in any way, has to be cut off from the herd, simply because she is in a very good position to articulate the moral dubiousness of the whole patriarchal charade.

Also, I accept the word "wanderluster" as substitute for "spinster."

Thoughts?

To read August 17, 2016

Granta Contributor Targeted in Anti-Gay Attacks

“When We Was Fierce” Pulled as Demand Grows for More #OwnVoices Stories

#Women_writers manifesto aims to build community of female authors

Librarians Have an Olympics, Too

The Before Columbus Foundation announces the Winners of the Thirty-Seventh Annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS - As Cliff says "See, somebody's doing the work." Also, Trace is on this list and you all need to read that book for real.

Tana Wojczuk: The Vanity of Crowds: Populism in Shakespeare's Coriolanus

Kristin Dombek on the New Narcissism Talking Selfies, Pyschology and God with the Author of The Selfishness of Others

Nadja Spiegelman on Storytelling, France, and a Mother’s Love

Also, I did stay up until some hour that I did not check on because I knew it was too late reading The Obelisk Gate and I have many thoughts and feelings and words and some of them are about the story (OMG) and some of them are about falling in love with an author (because it has been awhile, y'all)(NK Jemisin, y'all) and some of them are about being a writer and reading (so many words, so many many many words) and some of them are about where are the copycats (I NEED MORE OF THIS PLEASE NOW THANK YOU) and some of them are forming into the sentence that means that I will go to wherever the launch is for the third book in this series and that may become a plan, I don't know yet, but it has happened at least in letters in my head, so.

Simone Weil on the Paradox of Friendship and Separation

Colson Whitehead: 'My agent said: Oprah. I said: Shut the front door'

June 9 list with no context

June 18-26 of 2016 is Independent Bookshop Week in the UK. Perfect reason to take a trip, no? #IBW2016

Another Round, the life-giving/saving/enriching podcast from Buzzfeed has a newsletter. The newsletters are archived. Because you want to sign up for the thing, but maybe you've just discovered it and want all of the Vines and all of the links and everything that makes the Internet worthwhile.

PubWest Book Design Awards are announced. The list has no images of the designs that won, but, hey.

Lisa McInerney has won the Baileys Women's Prize. For actual information, go here.

Does Literary Criticism Have a Grade Inflation Problem? from Alex Shepard at The New Republic. I mean, outside of it seems like people really miss being able to read a book being thoroughly destroyed in print (humans are weird), there is a sense that in a changing cultural climate, the standards for "good" and "bad" are shifting dramatically, so maybe the rating systems that exist are part of the problem. Which is not what the article is actually about, mind. It's just what happened in my head when I read it.

The (Amazon) problem is bigger than you think.

There is this: The Depressed Cake Shop. Raising awareness for mental health one gray cake at a time. (thanks to Cliff for showing me this)

Also are you getting Two Bossy Dames newsletter? Because they wrote a lot about Lady Rage the other day and it is getting me in all the places and everyone needs to be talking about it. (hint: they get The Hulk thing)(it is everything)

New Segment!
Cliff-approved Movie Ideas: So. It's a coming of age buddy movie about three groups of girls getting to a Beyoncé concert. Ava Duvernay directs this rollicking road trip comedy about three groups of girls - two of them rivals at the same school just after their sophomore year, another their older sisters who are headed off to college - trying to navigate their way across the suburbs to the sold-out Beyoncé concert the night after graduation. Hijinks ensue as cell phones die, GPS lies and hapless though loving boyfriends & family members just get in the way. Stay in your seats after the show for amazing backstage selfies! Dream cast includes Amandla Stenberg, Tessa Thompson, Quevenzhané Wallis, Skai Jackson, Willow Smith, This Girl Who Is The Hero Of All Of Us, John Boyega (as the boyfriend who Kind of Gets It), and RJ Cyler (as the boyfriend who Is Learning It).