Links to Click: December 22, 2023
A deep dive into the Hollises, school internet censorship, fungi, and more.
Did you get any work done this week or are you in that end-of-year slump? I found this to be one of my best weeks in terms of knocking things off the to-do list in a long time. I suspect it’s partly recognizing that done is sometimes better than good, and my lack of child care has meant using the pockets of time I have as thoughtfully as possible.
This week’s link roundup is primarily my work from the last two weeks. I’ve got a couple of other interesting things to check out, but my reading has been the inverse of my output (actually, not true: I’ve just been reading quite a bit offline!).
There is a newsletter coming Sunday. It’ll be the last one for the year, and hopefully it’s one you can take something actionable from for the new year.
My Work These Last Two Weeks
Book banning is not slowing down but we know this already. This week over on , I’ve got a look at trends in book banning this year and the roundup of news. Last week, I explored the ways parents responded to two of the three surveys conducted by Book Riot and EveryLibrary about when they feel comfortable letting their children pick out their own library materials. Bonus cameo by the public library system cutting off access to the adult collections to anyone under 18 and the folks calling for a boycott of Barnes & Noble because they sell banned books (you know, the things that the people who ban books use as reasons why they don’t ban books—you can get them at your public library or buy them).
Speaking of the Book Riot x EveryLibrary survey, the final results for the final survey are in. Here are the very contradictory parental perceptions of school libraries. They want them but they want to limit them a lot.
In Elkhorn, Wisconsin, ONE woman got 444 books pulled from the middle and high school libraries due to a sketchy policy passed by the board in November 2021. I used to be a librarian in the neighboring town.
Two new bills hitting the US House to address book bans. I’ll be talking about each this weekend, but get to know the Books Save Lives Act and the Fight Book Bans Act.
PEN America released a report looking back at the trends in book banning over the last 2 years.
I’m on the Brooklyn Public Library’s new limited podcast series about book banning.
These were the most popular books in US public libraries in 2023.
In more non-book ban news, here are the YA books that will be seeing their screen adaptations in 2024.
Over on , I wrote about losing and rediscovering magic in bookstore browsing.
Other People’s Work to Consume
This story from WIRED on internet censorship in US schools is, perhaps, one of the reasons why information literacy and research skills have fallen off a cliff. If you can’t get accurate information because of filters, what are you actually getting? What are you missing?
I don’t know precisely what the takeaway of this deep dive into Rachel & Dave Hollis is meant to be except “ends abruptly,” but it was compelling start to finish.
Fascinating science on how traumatic memories are processed as present experiences.
This week, I finished reading Mona Awad’s absurd and funny exploration of grief and the beauty industry in Rouge (I wish it had been about 15% shorter, which is my usual complaint about newer books, honestly, and I think it stems from what came up on the You Are Good podcast episode about Twister–there is far too much desire to show everything rather than allow the consumer to fill in some of the blanks when it comes to storytelling!).
I also wrapped up listening to Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, all about the world of fungi and started listening to Dolls Of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl by Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney. It’s reminding me of some of the trauma I have wrapped up in AG–nothing I haven’t worked through but which impacts me nonetheless. That sounded a little more humorous maybe than I meant it, but I’ve got some STUFF wrapped up in AG, even though I love it.
I’ll see you on Sunday and then not for a couple of weeks. I hope you have a wonderful start to the New Year–or at least the start you hope to have.