Stuff We Like :: 3.4.16
I’ve been doing physical therapy like a madwoman so that I can wean myself off my walker in time for a little beach getaway this spring. Is it weird that I start planning what books to pack way before I start to care about what clothes to bring? (I’m packing Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Turnip Princess And Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales for sure.)
around the web
- The linguistic problems with Facebook’s new reactions
- Perhaps you’d like to nominate a book for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. (I think I’m rooting for Too Naked for the Nazis.)
- And speaking of books: How not to worry about teenagers reading
- I probably should have discovered this in time for Black History Month, but I don’t want to save it for a whole year: This guide to teaching about slavery is so, so good.
- Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf? I’m in.
at home/school/life
- in the magazine: My favorite quote so far from the spring issue: "You may have a young child who has difficulty paying attention to boring things. That’s only a problem if you're trying to force that child to pay attention to boring things.”
- on the blog:Shelli’s doing citizen science, and she didn’t even have to leave her house.
- on pinterest:This little necklace is so cute—wouldn’t it be fun to make a set based on your favorite book characters?
reading list
- I’m continuing my Diana Wynne Jones readathon; now I’m on Witch Week.
- My best friend got me a subscription to The New Yorker for Christmas, and I’ve really been digging my weekly journalism fix. (I got her the Buffy season eight comics, so you can tell which of us has the intellectual street cred.)
- I am so, so, so excited about the Sherlock Holmes comparative lit class I get to teach this summer, which means there is a lot of Holmes and Holmes-adjacent reading piled on my night table. But of course I’m kicking off with rereading A Study in Scarlet.
at home
- We’ve been trying (with mixed success) to add a weekly science experiment, complete with lab report, to our schedule. I like the science experiments, but I find the weekly job of getting together supplies and tools such a slog. Do you have any suggestions to simplify it?
- I am eating this avocado-mango salad (with cheese! and bacon! and toasted pumpkin seeds!) pretty much on repeat for lunch right now.
- Future knitting planning: I really love Magrathea, but the lace is all charts, and charts scare me. Has anyone knitted it without exploding head problems? Or maybe you could pep talk me into believing that charts are totally within my range of knit-ability?
notable sales
- Pandia Press's March Madness Sale gives you 25% off. (I will be stalking the mailbox for level-one Earth and Space.)
- Amazon has some great Kindle book deals going on this month: The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom(which is charming and hilarious) is just $1.99; Surviving the Applewhites (about actual unschoolers!) is also $1.99; Alas, Babylon, an old-school but still thought-provoking nuclear age novel, is also just $1.99; Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Storiescollection is just $2.99, and I don’t even know why you are still reading this when you could be reading that right now.
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