Friday Free-for-All: A collection of links about writing/reading/stuff that I encountered during the week.
First up, Game of Thrones, presented as a collection of charts, graphs, and statistics. Not entirely sure how accurate it is over all, but it’s amusing none-the-less. Via SF Signal.
Second, how does one besiege a castle? According to medieval marginalia, the obvious answer is “with dogs.”
Via Got Medieval
Got Medieval reveals the utter Pythonesque nonsense that really does exist in the margins of illuminated manuscripts. Sometimes, the marginalia is related to the text. Sometimes, no so much.
Last, I came across a post at LitReactor from March about haunted houses and why they’re the popular choice for ghost stories. This came on the heels of writing about The Haunting of Hill House and recently rewatching Candyman. I tend to forget how much Candyman is grounded in certain places. There is a high creepiness factor to learning that the place you think you know well has unknown attributes. After living in my apartment for a few months, I closed the door to the back bedroom and found out that the door handle on the room side was completely different than the handle on the apartment side. It was a weirdly unnerving experience. But imagine if one day my closet is bigger than it was or that my medicine cabinets connect to my neighbor’s apartment? Home, when violated, is the most uneasy of places.
Books Received in the Mail
Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson
Free Fiction o’ the Week
- “Gordon, the Self-Made Cat” by Peter S. Beagle
- “Death and Waffles” by Lish McBride
- Excerpts from Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees anthology
