Stuff We Like :: 9.14.18

It’s my birthday, so have a drink tonight to celebrate with me!

what’s happening at home/school/life

Collecting resources for a DIY curriculum is easy. Figuring out how to organize and use them? Not so much. Maggie has a plan, though.

Learn more about libraries.

So many good books are on sale right now, it’s ridiculous, including The Glass Town Game, which Suzanne raved about last year. (I just started it!)

one year ago: Shelli’s strategies for planning daily lessons

two years ago: Molly sees the seeds she planted in her early homeschool years start to bloom.

three years ago: Shelli makes peace with homeschool messes.

the links I liked

Lauren Groff called out the sexism in The New York Times’ By the Book column, saying: “Something invisible and pernicious seems to be preventing even good literary men from either reaching for books with women’s names on the spines, or from summoning women’s books to mind when asked to list their influences. I wonder what such a thing could possibly be.” And she was right: When the columns were analyzed, male authors recommended books by male writers four times more often than they recommended books by women. (Women split their picks pretty evenly between men and women.)

Librarians are basically book-finding superheroes.

Did you know John Quincy Adams wrote an EPIC POEM set in 12th century Ireland? (Spoiler: It is NOT a literary masterpiece.)

Ikea has completed its transformation into the place I would be most likely to wait out a zombie apocalypse. (The gist: Now there are reading rooms — and you can take your book home with you if you’re not barricading against zombie attacks.)

We were just talking about this: Why do all U.S. cities feel the same now?

What I’m reading and watching

I loved Arcanos Unraveled, which was pretty much everything I loved about The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic plus knitting (!) and a not-terrible ending. Anya Winter is a hedge witch who teaches enchanted textiles at a magical college, and her fabric-based magic may be the only thing that can save the magical world from an evil plot. I was charmed.

My son recently discovered the Danny Dunn series (it’s a 1950s series that kicks off with Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint), and he’s been giggling his way through it. I think he’s partially charmed by how dated some parts of it are, but he also seems to genuinely enjoy the adventures of Danny, whose mom works as a housekeeper for the eccentric Professor Bullfinch. In every book, Danny manages to get into one of the professor’s high-tech inventions (and they’re awesomely 50s high-tech inventions), and problems ensue.

Next up: The Casual Vacancy. I’m always looking for a good old-fashioned mystery, so maybe this one will fit the bill.

Things making me happy

• Nigella’s honey cake (for a sweet new year)

• My new shoes (I found them at the thrift store for $15!)

• The new season of The Good Place is coming!

• This sentence diagramming poster

• These knitted pencil toppers (I feel like my daughter would love them all!)

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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