Welcome back to Wednesday! We’re officially in December. Congratulations, everyone!
I had my last day at the bookstore last week and this week I’ve started a new job assisting a pretty cool research lab. They’re two very different things, but so far, I’m enjoying the change. Don’t worry, though! I’ll still be at SBTB and have plenty of book recommendations left in me.
I’m also ready for my first snowfall this winter in New England. All we’ve gotten so far is wind and rain.
…
I saw a few people I follow on Twitter tweeting about this Huffington Post article, about a middle-aged woman who hired an escort and how tender, sweet, and introspective it was.
…
Madelinetosh has launched a bookish yarn club for 2023! Definitely something of interest to the Bitchery. It looks like you get two themed skeins a month, plus some sort of bookish goodie.
…
EC Spurlock sent in this self-care checklist.
A handy, printable self-care checklist to make sure we have everything we need.
…
Sarah: I was asked to gather some of the funniest romances of the year for the Washington Post, and wow was this fun. Please note that this was submitted prior to the start of the HarperCollins strike. I had a ball writing this, and many thanks to Stephanie Merry at WaPo for being a truly fabulous editor.
…
Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting 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!
If I had villainous amounts of money, I’d use it to hoard yarn.
Sadly, such cutthroat priorities inhibit my ability to acquire villainous amounts of money.
Not sure how it was generally received, but I loved Emma Thompson’s “Good Luck to You Leo Grande”, a movie about an older woman reaching out to an escort.
I love Sarah’s notion of asking the funny authors on her best list to recommend *another* funny author for the best list. And now I have a lot of new books to check out!
I totally get that the rom-com roundup was submitted before the strike, and it probably wasn’t possible to have the WaPo delay or edit or pull the piece – it seems unlikely they would be able to be particularly supportive of unions in the publishing world given their situation, even if they wanted to be. And it’s a great piece, with great recommendations, and it sucks for those authors that they can’t be promoted without undermining the strike, especially at this time of year when everyone is putting together rec lists.
But …they can’t be. Especially because everyone is putting out rec lists. If Harper Collins books aren’t left out now, with attention drawn to why, it’s crossing the picket lines. I don’t think you can promote that article here and still have the header about solidarity.
Although I really appreciate the warning about it! A lot of people claiming to support the strike are linking to year end round ups that don’t, without any such caveat and I find it disheartening.
I am not on social media or remotely savvy about it, so idk how possible or desirable it would be to somehow disavow your own article, but perhaps this unfortunate timing is actually an opportunity to meaningfully signal boost?
The word I head is that you don’t boycott the authors, you just don’t submit new material to the company. Also, you can look for the books at the library, try to find them second-hand, etc.