If you thought True Detective needed more women on it, check out our list of recommended female detective books, or read Helen McClory’s flash fiction piece from the perspective of the dead girl, “Pretty Dead Girl Takes a Break.”
True Women
A Well-Rounded Curriculum
“I have a girl brain but in a boy body. This is called transgender. I was born this way!” The Los Angeles Times reports on an elementary-school teacher reading I Am Jazz, written by transgender teenager Jazz Jennings, with her class; encouragingly, not that many parents freak out. Pair with writer T.K. Dalton reflecting on how to traverse the terrain of books, children, and gender.
“Nearly Useless”
What do Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew and J. K. Rowling have in common? No one can read their signatures.
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Talking Covers
What does Jonathan Franzen think of the cover for Freedom? What about Charlotte Strick, the book’s designer? Or the photographers that took photos of those trees, of that blue warbler? Talking Covers has collected their thoughts, and plays host to other cover-related conversations besides. Check out this one The Flame Alphabet.
Fantasy Authors game
If Fantasy Football is football for people who don’t like dirt or concussions, here’s a Fantasy Football for people who don’t like football. Book Riot has the details, which involve tracking your favorite authors’ career highlights much like an athlete’s: “publishes a book,” sure, but also “appears in another author’s book trailer,” “fatwa issued against author,” and “dies.” Our own Edan Lepucki makes the Rookies bracket, but, please–no fatwas just to win.
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Threat Level Seven
It’s hard to know exactly what North Korea will do these days, but if you’re looking for context, The Morning News published a cartoon guide to recent history.
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Song of Herself
Does she contradict herself? Very well, then she contradicts herself, she is large, she contains multitudes! Is Sarah Palin the Walt Whitman of Wasilla?
Ahead of His Time
“Adrianne [Lobel] suspects that there’s another dimension to the series’s sustained popularity. Frog and Toad are ‘of the same sex, and they love each other,’ she told me. ‘It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.’ In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, [Arnold] Lobel came out to his family as gay.” On love and Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad.