Last Saturday was the first annual Bookstore Romance Day! Did your local bookstore do anything? Did you grab any good books?
I attended a couple things and I loved seeing all the romance love on social media. Here’s to it being even bigger and better next year!
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Missing Jane the Virgin? Frolic.Media has some romance recommendations for you, if you’re looking to fill that void!
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We’ll be making a more formal announcement soon, but if you live in the D.C. area, mark your calendars for Sherry Thomas on October 25th!
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As a lover of all things dairy, I am obsessed with these images of oscypek, which is a type of smokey sheep’s milk cheese often molded into beautiful designs.
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io9 has ranked the roles of actor Karl Urban. He’s definitely one of those actors who shows up in a lot of things while you struggle to remember his name. I highly disagree with their ranking, but it was still a fun list!
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For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of dance competition videos. This creepy puppet routine blew my mind:
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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!
I’ve been rather tiresome about how I think the trend toward illustrated/cutesy/chick-lit covers is one of many cultural/social trends designed to limit women’s sexual agency and to “path” women’s sexuality toward something that can be reduced to a cartoon. Here’s a more eloquent overview from Book Riot:
https://bookriot.com/2019/08/20/illustrated-romance-book-covers/
Mmm, Karl Urban. I have absolutely no problem remembering his name!
Also, I still really miss “Almost Human”. It’s one of those shows – like “Firefly” & “New Amsterdam” (the Nikolaj Coster-Waldau show, not the other one) that were cancelled WAY too soon.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Wholeheartedly agree on the cartoon covers. Covers need to match the feel of the book, & cartoony covers don’t work for everything.
I too have Karl Urban opinions. I had no idea he was in so many Xena episodes. What’s your ranking, Amanda?
I can’t get worked up about illustrated covers. They were a thing back in the 90s or early 00s (see Rachel Gibson, Jennifer Crusie, etc.) in my earlier years of romance reading. It’s fine.
Sorry, but she demotes “Thor: Ragnarok” Karl Urban for shaving his head and then promotes “Dredd” Karl Urban where half his face is covered the entire film? NOPE. Also, we all know LOTR Karl Urban is the best Karl Urban. And Pete’s Dragon Karl urban should get an honorable mention for pulling off such a bumbling, misguided character in such a wholesome movie.
@DDDeb: thanks for the link. Myself, I am far more irked by the fact that the glut of YA titles are apparently written for and purchased by adults and why is this happening. Maybe it’s all just the road to Idiocracy.
I liked Almost Human and was really pissed that they cancelled it with no resolution of the over-arching plot. It was particularly infuriating as it was one of a series progrmmes I started with great enjoyment only to discover they’d been cancelled.
My favorite Karl Urban movie is Ghost Ship, and it didn’t even make the list 🙁
I have facial recognition problems but there are certain actors I inevitably adore (usually because of a scene stealing scenery chewing this one goes to 11 quality). Every time I see Ian McShane in something I’m like, oh my god that guy was so good and my boyfriend is like yup it’s your favorite actor, and I’m like wait that was Karl Urban? and he says nope, your other favorite actor. We have a slightly abbreviated version of this conversation when it is in fact Karl Urban, and a longer one when it’s Hugh Laurie.
@Rachel: Ghost Ship is one of my very favorite movies and I have a framed movie poster of it in my kitchen.
Aesthetic-wise: I love Urban’s weird rat-tail mullet in Riddick.
As for the illustrated covers link, all I’m going to say is that I highly disagree with the thesis statement and many of the points made.
Hah! I skipped the Karl Urban link thinking I didn’t know who it was. Read the comments and thought, huh, I know and like most of these show. Went to the link – huh, that’s nuts. No idea it was the same guy!
Uh… are we seriously casting blanket aspersions on the intellect of adults who read or write fiction with teenage protagonists? You’d think folks would know better in a place that celebrates Pregnesia and The Billionaire Viking Biker’s Virgin Mistress, but hey, gotta punch down at somebody, I guess.
No Karl Urban ranking is complete with Karl Urban in RED. I love the scene where he and Bruce Willis are fighting in the office.
Urban is good in THE BOYS, but it was a bit gory for my tastes. It’s definitely an interesting take on superheroes, though.
I’m with Jennifer Estep. How do you feel leave Agent Cooper off the list? The scene where he tries to stop the limo? Laugh myself silly every time.
I think Karl Urban is a sexy beast but I haven’t seen much of what he’s been in. Not my preferred subject matter. We started watching The Boys and I’ve dropped out after two episodes because I want to rewrite that f**ker start to finish and make it a straight-up girl power story. I was in a flaming rage almost immediately when they [redacted] the [redacted] for the apparently sole purpose of giving Generic White Hero Boy a reason to take action for the first time in his life. Then there were the two rapes and a rape attempt and the sexual harassment and the voyeurism. Noped right on out of there.
@kkw Facial recognition/face blindness is a hot topic today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/08/21/feature/my-life-with-face-blindness/?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
I’ve never had trouble remembering Karl’s name since I first saw him in LotR. He’s fabulous!
(For me he’s “one of those actors your mother loves, too” lol!)
@Ren Benton: You’re right, that came out snarkier than it should have. It’s not that I look down on YA, it’s that there is such a bloody glut of it. I like to read it sometimes, and I’ve read quite a bit of it since I like scifi/fantasy very much and much of that is YA these days. It’s just that I am in my 50s and my interest in experiencing the POV of a teenager over and over again is limited. And of course everyone can just not read books they are not into, but when, for instance, an author I really like moves to just writing YA, it makes me kind of sad and kind of mad at YA. But OTOH, there are some YA i really like and would rec. And for sure I don’t want to be instigating mean “you should feel bad for liking this” convos.
Jaja tends to pretty much rule when it comes to animation (she’s got some decent training in a few other styles too, thanks to her time on SYTYCD). B-Dash there also did an IT routine on the WoD TV show that was also creepy AF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyeW8un_kwo&t=235s
puppet video was really cool
Flight of the Feral Mattresses: https://twitter.com/JurisAbramenko/status/1163764569409556480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1163779563438170112&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.avclub.com%2Fajax%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-1163779563438170112%26autosize%3D1
Be sure to turn on the sound for all the assorted dubs
The bookriot article and YA comments here are interesting to me because … I dislike YA and was astounded to realize that so many adult readers enjoy YA. Simultaneous with being grumpy that there wasn’t this quality, quantity, or variety of YA when I was YA and would have been thrilled to read about characters my age.
[…] Linkity from Smart Bitches. […]
Karl Urban AND Cheese together in the same line — now that gets my attention!