Happy Friday Links
1-20-23
Happy Friday, readers,
I hope your week has been good and the weekend will be even better. It’s been a busy couple of weekends recently, with a belated Christmas celebration and my daughter’s birthday last weekend. I’m looking forward to a weekend just for me. I’ve had a good reading week so far, and I’m looking forward to finishing a couple of books before Monday.
Before I get to the links, I wanted to shout out the Strong Sense of Place podcast. I’ve mentioned Mel & Dave several times before and did an in-depth interview with them here. The 5th season of their podcast begins on February 6th with a visit to the country that (spoiler alert) Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, and Architectural Digest all named one of the best places to visit in 2023. Every two weeks through July 10th, they visit nine different cities, states, or countries and three theme episodes, all sure to please the armchair traveler and book lover. To make sure you are notified when the new season locations drop on their blog next Monday, you can subscribe here, and when you do, you will receive their 30-page Reading Atlas chock full of book recommendations and travel destinations. While waiting for the new season to begin, check out prior episodes on Hollywood, Alaska, Italy, and so many more. You’ll come away with dozens of book recommendations and, hopefully, some future travel ideas. Now, on to this week’s links.
While many books are printed overseas and shipped here on cargo ships, Amazon does some on-demand printing. I was fascinated watching how a book goes from “place order” to customer.
If one of your goals for 2023 is journaling,
is a great place to start. Francine’s weekly newsletter provides journaling inspiration, bookish goodness, and links for your creative weekend. She also runs the Sister Reads Book Club on Facebook.I don’t travel a lot, and when I do, I don’t fly on airlines that provide meals to their passengers; it’s economy for me. I found this NY Times article (gift link) fascinating. I had no idea where and how the food was prepared or how it managed to get to the plane on time.
Thank goodness there are many more good people in the world than bad. The gall of some people; I’ll just leave it right there.
Overdrive app users are grudgingly heading to the Libby app after learning the Overdrive app is going away. The team at Libby are guests on many different bookish podcasts to help readers convert to the new app, along with devoting episodes of their podcast, Professional Book Nerds, to a successful transition to the Libby app. The weekly newsletter Libbylife blog highlights upgrades to the Libby app and other bookish articles. If you are struggling with the conversion, check out the Libby Tips & Tricks section for more helpful information.
Two of my favorite things are food and books, and both are located in a quaint London bookstore where the owners “cook the books” and serve lunch daily. The owners bring the books to life in their bookstore with lunch, and the customers line up for yummy food from recipes in the books.
I’d love to hear about your plans for this weekend and what you’ll be reading. Coming up next week is another author deep dive and a look at their books, along with some links to get to know them better. Have a great weekend, and happy reading!
I'm such a Libby fan—I think it's so much easier to use than Overdrive and am baffled more people don't use it! Libby stan 4lyfe!
You introduced me to Strong Sense of Place and I'm now completely addicted.