Goooood morning! It’s a slow content day so that means afternoon links has turned into a little morning treat. Might I suggest giving it a read over tea or coffee and maybe your favorite pastry.
Also breaking news! I’m tired of it being hot. I am longing for fall or, dare I even say it, winter. I want to nest in my blankets or take a steamy bath without worrying about passing out. I also break out so much more in the summer, despite doing my best to be consistent in cleansing my shiny, sweaty face.
Thanks for letting me rant and complain! Hopefully some of y’all are in the same boat and I am with you in sweaty solidarity.
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Sarah: Australians, have you yearned for a site which lets you search for a book and gives you results from local independent bookstores? Here you go!
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Author Yulin Kuang is in The Cut, talking about how to write a good sex scene. This may be behind a paywall, depending on how many free articles you have left. I also wonder if this would make a good site discussion: what do you look for in a good sex scene? Let me know if you think it’s worth a post!
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Italapas posted this in the SBTB Patreon Discord! Bitcherton has launched on Kickstarter and it’s an improv comedy podcast with a Jane Austen inspired setting. It has a few days left to go and as of writing this, is only a few thousand off from its goal.
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Quick question! Have you met Howie Duwett?
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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!
Chief Mouser – The Downing Street Cats, video, 11 minutes.
Oooh, I think what makes a good sex scene discussion could be interesting but very subjective since “what is sexy?” in general is very subjective. Even when talking to someone of a similar age or background, I’m often surprised by who and what is considered sexy.
In sex scenes I am interested in the emotional connection and not the mechanics. How is each party looking to establish a connection and seeking to bring pleasure
It’s too hot to think about sex lol
Have you ever done recommendations about books where the setting is sultry? Maybe I need to lean into this rather than fighting it.
Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/giant-phallus-shaped-iceberg-floating-in-conception-bay-surprises-residents-of-dildo-canada
Old news report about an effort to rename the town of Dildo (which ultimately failed); I love the old man opposing the change: https://secreteast.ca/2018/10/that-time-a-resident-of-dildo-petitioned-to-change-the-towns-name-in-1990/
Even though I thought most of The Cut’s “Summer of Smut” romance novel coverage (as they called the series with the Kuang story) was reductive, trivializing, and full of outdated notions (and that was BEFORE most of the comments!), this piece was actually informative:
https://www.thecut.com/article/how-narrator-julia-whelan-makes-romance-novels-sound-so-hot.html
I’d love to hear what other SB think about sex scenes, so it seems like a fun idea for a topic!
Regarding the author and her “how to” in The Cut, I feel very McJudgy (kinda don’t really care since the book is a Reese’s book club so it’s not like no one is buying it) but am going to say it anyway: it’s her first novel so why should she get to the instructor in this (yes it’s all marketing, I know…), and I can’t actually tell if it’s a romance or one of those women’s fic books with some sex.
Anyway let’s chat about it in a fun topic amongst ourselves as I know all the awesome SBs will have some THOUGHTS! 🙂
NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast did a recent episode about what makes a good sex scenes in a movie, and I would love to see a discussion post here about what makes a good sex scene on the page.
And, like, does the type of good sex scene change depending on the genre?
We know it’s subjective to an individual reader, but what about how the sex fits in with the rest of the narrative? Does that even matter if it’s just really hot?
Also, even though I knew from the title what was coming, I still snort laughed at Howie Duett.
https://hopkinsreview.com/fmri-writing-prize
only for Baltimore residents, but the reason is cool, unfortunately the Sun article has a paywall, but I’m not above copy/pasting it for you below. I can never figure out where my computer hides the gift link.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/07/08/hopkins-researchers-launch-writing-contest-to-learn-about-how-the-brain-processes-stories/?lctg=246424C5B46E54A99573247572&utm_email=246424C5B46E54A99573247572&g2i_eui=soP1x1ewa29CcI96vZew84Si7B%2fRfgGhEQwhdzvyd6Q%3d&g2i_source=newsletters&active=no&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.baltimoresun.com%2f2024%2f07%2f08%2fhopkins-researchers-launch-writing-contest-to-learn-about-how-the-brain-processes-stories%2f&utm_campaign=trib-baltimore_sun-the_morning_sun-nl&utm_content=hybrid
From the day the first primitive human clambered up a tree while fleeing a pack of ravenous wolves — and later grunted out the details of their narrow escape to cave dwellers around a campfire — the human brain appears to have been hard-wired to process and retain stories.
Now, a research team at the Johns Hopkins University is asking for the public’s help in mapping the areas of the brain that kick into high gear every time we read a new Stephen King novel or see a “Deadpool” sequel, or watch reruns of “Doctor Who.”
It turns out that telling and listening to tales isn’t just fun — it’s a key survival strategy.
“Understanding stories is part of the fundamental anatomy of the brain,” said Janice Chen, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins, “and it’s a very robust brain system that you find in everyone.”
Chen said different regions of the brain tune into characters or location, while others are devoted to what could be described as the plot.
“If you think about it, your life is made up of a series of events. And each one of those events is a story,” she said.
But Chen doesn’t study literature. She studies how neural systems support memory. And she’s especially interested in a group of high-level brain regions, known as the “default mode network,” that appear to be involved in episodic memories, or those that spring from personal experience.
Many of her experiments involve putting subjects into an “fMRI” — a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine — and recording their brain activity as they read a book, watch a movie or talk about an episode of a favorite TV show.
Chen thought members of the public might enjoy helping to design her team’s research studies. How often does the average Baltimorean get a chance to don an imaginary white lab coat, to become Doctor You?
So she reached out to her colleague, Dora Malech, an associate professor in Hopkins’ Writing Seminars and editor in chief of The Hopkins Review literary journal, and asked for her help in devising a short story contest.
The fMRI Writing Prize contest, which runs through July 31, is for a piece of original, unpublished “flash fiction” or a very short story of between about 500 and 1,500 words. It is open to high school students and adults who live, work or study in Baltimore.
“We thought it would be an accessible way to engage the public in science experiments taking place at Hopkins,” Malech said. “There are overlapping questions about what makes enduring art and how art affects memory.”
Two winners — one aged 14 to 18, and one adult — will be selected to receive a $500 prize based on standard literary criteria as well as whether their work contains attributes useful to the researchers.
Chen, for instance, is interested in stories that have unusual narrative structures instead of unfolding chronologically. Sammy Tavasoli, who is studying for her doctorate in brain sciences, is intrigued by memories of emotional events, while scientist Christopher Honey is looking into why some stories linger in the brain for weeks or months after the reader has turned the last page.
The winning stories will be published in the Hopkins Review. Their authors also will receive a tour of the lab where the research is being conducted, plus a framed computer image showing the brain activity of study participants as they read the winning submissions.
Iris Lee, who has worked in Chen’s lab and who will begin graduate school in creative writing this fall, said that because the material collected in the contest will be used for a variety of studies, researchers aren’t looking for any particular type of story. A whodunit is as likely to win as a historical romance.
“Authors can experiment with plot,” she said. “They can experiment with time and write stories that cross generations and that show how the past and future affect one another.”
The winning submissions will be used in experiments exploring the link between narrative and memory, a relationship that helped our species persist from one generation to the next. If our early human couldn’t remember how they escaped the wolves, they might not think to climb a tree the next time. They couldn’t show their friends the hidden stream they found stocked with fat fish.
“If you don’t have a memory, you don’t the ability to go from one moment to the next and predict what’s going to happen,” Chen said. “You can’t connect cause and effect. Memory is essential to being a person.”
And stories have proven particularly suited for helping people remember better.
“There’s decades-old studies that show that if you just give people a list of random words to read and then ask them to recall it, they’re not very good at it,” Chen said.
“But if you force them to create a story out of that same list of words, their memory goes through the roof.”
She said stories across all formats are equally useful at transforming fleeting events into permanent memories, whether from written words, song lyrics played over the radio, or a sequence of images flashed onto screens.
And if at times it seems our need for narrative is insatiable, it’s because our brains are trying to motivate us to consume stories. Like other activities necessary for survival from eating food to having sex, we’re programmed to crave them.
That’s why the Hopkins researchers are asking for Baltimoreans’ help in generating new and original tales. It’s possible, they said, that researchers eventually will learn enough about memory to gain insight into the causes of some of humanity’s most intractable problems, from schizophrenia to Alzheimer’s disease to other forms of age-related memory loss.
“There’s a lot of questions you can ask about memory using the same data,” Chen said.
“This contest is really a two-way street,” she said. “We’re going to see what stories come in, and use them as a source of inspiration for thinking of interesting questions that we can try to answer.”