Every Friday I point you towards some recommended reading around the blogosphere:
1. I don’t know about you folks actually living through the 2012 presidential campaign in America, but it sure is fun to watch from the sidelines. Check out Rick Perry’s “Strong” ad campaign and The Partisans: Rick Perry – Weak, man response.
2. All week long, The Guardian has been running a fascinating series analyzing the causes of this summer’s riots in London. Here’s a really neat interactive post on how rumors about the riots spread on Twitter.
3. As always, Joan Wickersham has a fabulous meditation in The Boston Globe on connectedness and human nature (via Charles Dickens.)
4. And speaking of literature, I’m absolutely loving Lisa Belkin’s Parentlode blog over at The Huffington Post. This is a recent, highly-trafficked post she did on Children’s Books Parents Either Love or Hate and a companion piece along the lines of “if your child liked reading X, he or she will also like reading Y.” (BTW, do some people really not like The Runaway Bunny? I’m shocked. Shocked!)
5. From the ever-arch McSweeneys, I give you excerpts from steamy romance novels for parents of young children.
6. Two fascinating, holiday-themed fact sheets: from the Los Angeles times, the history of Christmas Carol lyrics. (I always wondered what “wassailing” meant.) And from my brother (!) at the New York Public Library, how (and when!) to buy a diamond. (Well, OK, it’s Christmas-themed for some of us…)
7. And finally, this week’s LOL award goes to Dahlia Lithwick’s essay on how Jews deal with Christmas specials, appropriately titled: Oy, Hark!
December 11, 2011, 2:28 am
Living through the campaign by ignoring it, so far. It’s just sound and fury at this point. Soon that will change.