Welcome welcome! It’s Wednesday. Did you know that?
I hope you all blasted some Earth, Wind & Fire on Monday. September 21st might be my favorite day of the year and literally the only thing I’ve been looking forward to in 2020.
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Did you know Harlequin has serialized romance reads that you can access online? It’s a little wonky to figure out, but if you’re searching for some free reads to get you through waiting around somewhere…not a bad option!
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I am obsessed with the twitter account WaterCatlor, which turns cat photos into watercolor artwork.
https://twitter.com/watercatlor/status/1290271626131431425
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Sarah was recently on the Sh*t She Read podcast! She discussed doing a reread of Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist.
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Think you’ve exhausted all your streaming offerings? Let me introduce you to Netflix Roulette. It’s also not limited to just Netflix.
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I may have laughed until I cried.
Not sure who to thank for this, but it’s brilliant. Volume up. pic.twitter.com/q4OjWl4XXx
— Mark (@markaduck) August 10, 2020
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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’m really enjoying Enola Holmes on Netflix
And I came across this study which I assume might be of interest to the Bitchery: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681994.2016.1158805
Amanda, I’ll join you in celebrating September 21st. I had never seen that before and will now look forward to it! I’ve p(l)ayed it forward! I also look forward to Wednesday because of these links.
@Glauke: Give me the fiction every time!
Cory Doctorow discusses the problems with Audible’s dominance (interesting to think about in the wake of Audible Escape’s demise):
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/84384-we-need-to-talk-about-audible.html
An examination of unintended gatekeeping in OwnVoices:
https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/own-voices-forcing-lgbtq-authors-out-of-closet
I usually look forward to Wednesday links, this week I completely forgot. Had a “what day is it?” moment when I scrolled through SBTB. It is week 5 of online school for my kid, feels like year 5.
Here’s a relevant link – CW for parental burnout presented in a cute comic. Hugs to anyone experiencing same. https://www.vox.com/first-person/21450739/coronavirus-covid-19-school-remote-online-learning
And I’m back to post something more uplifting – beautiful men practicing traditional dance https://youtu.be/HGOv_RbAdcg
@Trix:
I understand these authors wanting to fight audible or Amazon.com, or whichever platform, but it often becomes well we’re not going to make it available in the big bad platform so there. And I think that always hurts customers. Shouldn’t we be getting companies who sell Audio books to implement subscription models, and shouldn’t the authors be saying hey if you want to get my book from another company, here’s another option? I would buy on I-books or Google play, but they don’t offer a credit system, and Audible has the largest catalog. I know many like downpur, but I haven’t tried it. I’m trying to sympathize with this author, but it is pretty hard to do so, when it feels like the choice to buy that book or have access to it is being taken away or restricted. This is coming from someone who grew up on audio books, and was listening to them before Audible existed. Maybe I shouldn’t be linked into Audible so closely, but for someone who was restricted to what I could get from the library of Congress Talking Books Catalog for a long time, any service which provides audio books feels like a godsend even if it dominates the others and makes it hard for them to survive..
As a follow-up, I’ve expressed similar opinions regarding Kindle.
Maybe I’m being too harsh on these authors for making these decisions. I do aplaude I think it was KJ Charles, and Jeanie Lin, when selections of theirs weren’t available at e-book retailers. And I liked the post that Lin in particular wrote explaining her decision, and letting customers know where they could get her book instead. If customers were allowed to load books into their audible libraries from other sources in the same way they can with Kindle, my frustration would be greatly reduced. I suspect I’m rambling at this point, and it’s okay to let me know if you all have seen similar complaints from me in the past.
Someone created a video of Paul Rudd’s dance moves to the beat of the Earth, Wind, and Fire September song which went viral:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsaR0UCRh5Y
Hope it put a smile on your face.
Better late than never (in so many ways), the first gay-themed Hallmark Christmas movie:
https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-jonathan-bennett-hallmark-first-lgbtq-christmas-movie-20200923-zovtohankrbp3asnan5v356jqe-story.html