Links: Book Titles, Wine, & a Visual Romance Kickstarter

We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming this week with Wednesday Links. However, there are a lot of links in this post. Hopefully, the bigger dose will help get you to Friday!

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This has come up on a previous podcast and thanks to Reader Abbey J for sending this link to us, but what’s the deal with all the “Girl” titles:

Who are these girls? Why are there so many of them? Books with “girl” in the titles make up a tiny fraction of all the books published in a given year, but they appear again and again on the bestseller lists. Other people have written about this trend, often with great eloquence, but none of them were backed by a data set. Using the database at Goodreads, the popular social networking website for readers, we set out to change that. A number of patterns emerged in our analysis: The “girl” in the title is much more likely to be a woman than an actual girl, and the author of the book is more likely to be a woman. But if a book with “girl” in the title was written by a man, the girl is significantly more likely to end up dead.

It’s an interesting and delightfully nerdy analysis!

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For those who are motivated to begin calling or writing their local representatives regarding issues affecting their communities, here are some good sample letters and sample scripts.

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This is not a drill! There are Princess Bride wines out! There’s a red wine (an Inconceivable Cabernet) and a white wine (an As You Wish Chardonnay), but you can also purchase both of them together. I’m not sure you can only buy them through the website or if we’ll eventually start seeing them in stores.

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Battery chargers!

Every few months a bigger, better, and lighter weight battery charger comes out. At this point I have 3 in various sizes—lipstick sized, 6.5oz, and the 12.5oz, which lives in our travel bag. I can recharge my kids' DS, tablets, my phone, etc, before it runs out of charge. - SW

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Coinciding with our Rec League post on Female Friendships, I found this awesome list of rules by Roxane Gay on female friendships:

9. Don’t let your friends buy ugly outfits or accessories you don’t want to look at when you hang out. This is just common sense.

10. When something is wrong and you need to talk to your friends and they ask you how you are, don’t say “Fine.” They know you’re lying and it irritates them and a lot of time is wasted with the back-and-forth of “Are you sure?” and “Yes?” and “Really?” and “I AM FINE.” Tell your lady friends the truth so you can talk it out and either sulk companionably or move on to other topics.

Part of me wants to print the list out as a daily reminder.

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PJ Our Way is a great, free literacy program for Jewish families, allowing kids to receive a free book of their choice each month:

PJ Library is a book-based program available to North American Jewish children ages 6 months through 8 years-old. Every month, eligible families receive a specific, age-appropriate book in the mail. PJ Our Way is the next chapter of PJ Library for kids ages 9-11. With PJ Our Way, rather than receiving a specific book in the mail, kids can go to www.pjourway.org every month to choose the book they want to receive. Kids can also submit reviews and videos about the books. They can apply to be part of the national Design Team that has early access to PJ Our Way books and helps create content for the website.

This is so cool and I know many people who would have loved this when they were kids.

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Lastly, I want to talk about a Kickstarter I’m personally backing and hope some of you will too! The Arcana is a fantasy/romance visual novel based on tarot cards:

The Arcana is a fantasy/romance visual novel for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. You, the player, are an apprentice magician with a gift for fortune-telling. Left in possession of an unusually enchanted Tarot deck, you must navigate intrigue, murder, magic… and perhaps a few saucy encounters.

The name and gender of the protagonist is entirely up to the player’s imagination, and with a variety of characters to meet (and romance), The Arcana promises a more inclusive experience than your average visual novel.

The art is gorgeous and each reward tier automatically comes with a copy of the game! They have a little over $3000 to raise in five days, so even if you don’t back the project, sharing is incredibly helpful!

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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!