- Maggie Stiefvater on literary rape.
- On Book Covers and What Makes Them “Lousy” This is a good follow on to the Lousy Book Covers Tumblr from a few weeks ago
- 25 Hard Truths About Writing and Publishing All of these are true!
- Sex + Power = ? Really fantastic examination of erotic romance with a D/s edge.
- Critical Reviews & Critical Advocacy Yet another wonderful post from Kelly at Stacked.
- E-books, Wonkiness, and Feminism: Some Thoughts on Ruthie Knox’s About Last Night
- Realistic Depictions of Rape in Romance Superb guest post at Dear Author from Rebecca Rogers Maher.
- You’re Not Punk “Punk? Right now, it’s just this thing you tape to the end of another word to make it sound cooler; shorthand for “hip/weird contemporary fantasy”, when that’s actually a pretty good description already.”
- Sleeps With Monsters: Lesbian SFF Romance Was goaded into commenting a recommendation for Katherine V. Forrest’s Daughters of a Coral Dawn. Which is unsubtle lesbian separatist SF that is very much of its time. There are evil men and the planet is called Maternas. I may have to reread.
- The American Case Against a Black Middle Class
- Women in Realistic Outfits Does what it says.
- Micro-aggression, sexism, and cover art Seanan McGuire has some thoughts on this subject.
- Cadair Idris, Jo Walton This made me think of Robin Williamson’s rendition of “The Battle of the Trees” from Songs of Love and Parting. I can’t seem to even find the words online–and the book that Williamson wrote that has the words has been out of print since, well, forever. I have a bound photocopy made for me by a friend many years ago. Sigh.
- Why You Never Truly Leave High School The subtitle cracks me up: “New science on its corrosive, traumatizing effects.”
- Swarming a Book Online Organized one-star reviews intended to negatively affect a book’s sales. I kind of want to read the Michael Jackson book referenced in this article. I have a sick fascination with him.
Friday Links: Covid, Anger, Computers. And Decorative Gourds.
Three pieces about Covid, two about computers, and one about motherfucking gourds.
I love you guys.
That is all.
And we love you!
Yes we do!
It is an honour to appear in your linkspam.
I found the article on high school fascinating in several ways. Mostly because the US high-school experience seems to break down into distinct groups (jocks, popular, whathaveyou) much more widely and universally than the secondary schools with which I’m familiar, where generally the group breakdowns seem to be far more about social class rather than personal cachet. (US school also seems to be culturally accepted to be a much more violent, dog-eat-dog experience than that with which I’m familiar.) The science is fascinating, though.
And the article on critical reviewing is interesting indeed.
High school really is a strange beast here in the US–for such a large country, you would think that there would be a lot more variation in experience, but there’s not. At least not for folks in public schools. Group breakdowns in the US also fall along class lines but, as you know, we like to pretend we don’t have social classes here.
Indeed. Mind you, we like to pretend *here* that class has ceased to matter – but it hasn’t, of course.