It is great when a kid’s film has something to it that adults can find compelling but I think the expectation of Universal Demographical Appeal kind of hurts animation just as much as the stereotyping of it as a juvenile medium. If adults keep demonstrating that they want adult-level mental stimulation from animated cinema you’d think that’d mean more studios making adult animated cinema, but no, that’s not what’s happened. Instead Hollywood still rigidly keeps most animated films wholesome and safe for babies but also wants them to emotionally satisfy the average boomer New York Times columnist.

It’s a meaningless measure anyway because by now the big studios know how to make a movie feel deeper just by copy/pasting their favorite tried and true story beats in the right order. Something that made the NYT boomer break down weeping in the theater can still actually be formulaic oscar bait slapped together by nobody who really cared about telling a story, it happens all the time!

Words change meaning - another example.

@tartapplesauce reblogged my (long) post about Dublin coddle, which mentioned a weird version called "New World Coddle" using chorizo and squash.

TBH, my Mind Palate suggests it would taste quite good, but it's so far from traditional or even well-tweaked-traditional coddle that it's not coddle any more, and should have a different name entirely, possibly in Latin American Spanish.

Also TBH I've already amended the recipe thrice in my head, (1) chipotle powder not smoked paprika; (2) finish with a scatter of toasted pine-nuts; (3) restore the chickpeas mentioned in the Method to the Ingredients where they'd been forgotten.

I've already admitted to breaking the Dublin coddle rules by browning things, so all bets are off. :->

(BTW, this wasn't ours; @dduane's spine and hip have been rather a trial this past couple of days, so we just took things easy and let the Ibuprofen do its thing.)

Re. coffee mornings, what about various tea-breads, fruit sodas, barm brack etc.? Those could be made either trad or tweaked-trad, and though I'm not sure how they could be made "dainty" like petits-fours and so on, I bet it could be done.

*****

As for the changed-meaning word (getting there eventually) it's "notions" and @tartapplesauce added this link.

"To have notions" in Ireland is to think highly of yourself, often without justification - though if the justification is, er, justified, "begrudgery" will often follow. I've encountered "begrudgery" before, but this version of "notions" is a new one.

I have, however, experienced the Northern Ireland - or maybe just my family - version, which is "don't put yourself forward". This is a bad notion to have when thinking about author profile and book publicity and as DD can confirm, it took me far too long to shake it off.

On the flip-side, having notions can mean thinking outside the box, being imaginative, boldly going where no-one has gone before...

Um, got a bit carried away there... Right to the NYT bestseller list, in fact. Twice. ;->

*****

Neither of those are MY usual meaning.

Whenever I use "I have a notion", either said or written in a post, it's either "I have a thought" with the thinking-intensity dialled down a few notches, or "I have a vague memory of", otherwise known as IIRC or AFAIK.

And the other OTHER meaning of "notions", the one I first thought of (maybe with notions of food already in mind) was this:

That book was published in 1890, and the title, translated from Victorian English, is something like "Tips and Tricks" or, in more modern English, "Household Hacks".

There's nothing derogatory about it.

*****

DD and I have both posted about Mrs de Salis in the past; all her books are what's usually referred to as "slim volumes". Here are six of them alongside Mrs Beeton's doorstopper:

I inherited a copy of "Savouries a la Mode" from Mum, who inherited it from Granny, and we've made several things from it, all of which worked - though far and away the best so far are the Parmesan Biscuits, which are...

Well, "more-ish" is a good start, though it doesn't hint at the underlying desire to get in there with both hands...

Here:

All of Mrs de Salis's books are Public Domain, and while we intend eventually to have a full collection of the Slim Volumes, they're also available as PDFs here.

I have a notion that anyone reading this Tumblr will like them... ;->

[NYT is US Media]

The newspaper was the recipient of United States government grants and was printed on an American government-financed printing press operated by Freedom House, an American organization that describes itself as "a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world." In addition to the United States, several European countries -- Britain, the Netherlands and Norway among them -- have helped underwrite programs to develop democracy and civil society in this country. The effort played a crucial role in preparing the ground for the popular uprising that swept opposition politicians to power.

"Of course, this infrastructure had an influence," said one European election observer. [...]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan quickly became an aid magnet with the highest per-capita foreign assistance level of any Central Asian nation. Among the hundreds of millions of dollars that arrived came a large slice focused on building up civil society and democratic institutions. Most of that money came from the United States, which maintains the largest bilateral pro-democracy program in Kyrgyzstan because of the Freedom Support Act, passed by Congress in 1992 [...] Hundreds of thousands more filter into pro-democracy programs in the country from other United States government-financed institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy. That does not include the money for the Freedom House printing press or Kyrgyz-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a [US Congress funded] pro-democracy broadcaster.

"It would have been absolutely impossible for this to have happened without that help," said Edil Baisolov, who leads a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, referring to the uprising last week. Mr. Baisolov's organization is financed by the United States government through the National Democratic Institute.[...]

Those Kyrgyz who did not read Russian or have access to the newspaper listened to summaries of its articles on Kyrgyz-language Radio Azattyk, the local United States-government financed franchise of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.[...]

Other independent media carried the opposition's debates. Talk shows, like "Our Times," produced in part with United States government grants, were broadcast over the country's few independent television stations, including Osh TV in the south, where the protests that led to Mr. Akayev's ouster began. Osh TV expanded its reach with equipment paid for by the State Department. "The result is that the society became politicized, they were informed," Mr. Kim said. "The role of the NGO's and independent media were crucial factors in the revolution."[...]

Mr. Akayev began suggesting that the West was engaged in a conspiracy to destabilize the country. A crudely forged document, made to look like an internal report by the American ambassador, Stephen Young, began circulating among local news organizations. It cast American-financed pro-democracy activities as part of an American conspiracy.[...]

The American Embassy sent Freedom House two generators the day after the power went out, allowing the press to print nearly all of the 200,000 copies of MSN's special issue[...]

MSN informed people in the north of the unrest in the south. The newspaper also played a critical role in disseminating word of when and where protesters should gather. "There was fertile soil here, and the Western community planted some seeds," said one Western official. "I'm hoping these events of the past week will be one of those moments when you see the fruits of your labors."

Wow I wonder why Kyrgyzstan might treat foreign NGOs as suspect. Probably because of Poutine

2005

a reminder

So Claudine Gay has resigned over accusations of plagiarism.

I don't have any fondness for President Gay, and my opinions on this are pretty much wholly detached from any specific facts or people.

But one rationalization for any high profile cancellation is that the target is rich and powerful and this loss represents only a minor setback in life. They'll be fine, so even if the accusation is in some way unjust or disproportionate, we shouldn't worry about it.

No one has a right to be President of Harvard, after all. (Or CEO of Mozilla, or a movie star, or a Congressperson.)

But here's the thing about cultural norms. They aren't written down, or enforced by neutral courts. They are mostly mirrored behavior. We look around and see what various punishments for various misdeeds other people are receiving. Most people just intuitively follow the role models they see in that.

And well, the powerful and famous are our primary role models in this culture. They are the only examples of cancellation we see very often. Okay, you might hear about one in your social group, and one that happened to a mutual on tumblr, but mostly you're aware of the accusations and cancellations that make the NYT op ed page.

And so when we see how the rich and famous are punished, then usually that becomes the standard for everyone else. Claudine Gay lost her job for copy pasting the acknowledgments section of her thesis? Well then the single mother adjunct professor who has enemies in the department will be too. Because Gay became the norm's standard.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't have standards of justice. Our society won't be anywhere without some standards. But when you want them enforced, you really should think about what that enforcement will do to people who DO have a lot at stake. If you approve of that brand of justice, fine. But don't promulgate examples of a famous person losing their job, if you wouldn't be okay with a poor minority losing their job to.

Because they will, in much larger numbers.

LEAKED NYT GAZA MEMO TELLS JOURNALISTS TO AVOID WORDS “GENOCIDE,” “ETHNIC CLEANSING,” AND “OCCUPIED TERRITORY” Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives.

THE NEW YORK TIMES instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.” While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives. “I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.” First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months. It presents an internal window into the thinking of Times international editors as they have faced upheaval within the newsroom surrounding the paper’s Gaza war coverage. “Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.” Issues over style guidance have been among a bevy of internal rifts at the Times over its Gaza coverage. In January, The Intercept reported on disputes in the Times newsroom over issues with an investigative story on systematic sexual violence on October 7. The leak gave rise to a highly unusual internal probe. The company faced harsh criticism for allegedly targeting Times workers of Middle East and North African descent, which Times brass denied. On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff that the leak investigation had been concluded unsuccessfully. WhatsApp Debates Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups. The debates between reporters on the Jerusalem bureau-led WhatsApp group, which at one point included 90 reporters and editors, became so intense that Pan, the international editor, interceded. “We need to do a better job communicating with each other as we report the news, so our discussions are more productive and our disagreements less distracting,” Pan wrote in a November 28 WhatsApp message viewed by The Intercept and first reported by the Wall Street Journal. “At its best, this channel has been a quick, transparent and productive space to collaborate on a complex, fast-moving story. At its worst, it’s a tense forum where the questions and comments can feel accusatory and personal.” Pan bluntly stated: “Do not use this channel for raising concerns about coverage.” Among the topics of debate in the Jerusalem bureau WhatsApp group and exchanges on Slack, reviewed by The Intercept and verified with multiple newsroom sources, were Israeli attacks on Al-Shifa Hospital, statistics on Palestinian civilian deaths, the allegations of genocidal conduct by Israel, and President Joe Biden’s pattern of promoting unverified allegations from the Israeli government as fact. (Pan did not respond to a request for comment.)

Many of the same debates were addressed in the Times’s Gaza-specific style guidance and have been the subject of intense public scrutiny. “It’s not unusual for news companies to set style guidelines,” said another Times newsroom source, who also asked for anonymity. “But there are unique standards applied to violence perpetrated by Israel. Readers have noticed and I understand their frustration.” The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says. “Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.” Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians. In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks. The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000. The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months. Touchy Debates The Times memo touches on some of the most highly charged — and disputed — language around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The guidance spells out, for instance, usage of the word “terrorist,” which The Intercept previously reported was at the center of a spirited newsroom debate. “It is accurate to use ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in describing the attacks of Oct. 7, which included the deliberate targeting of civilians in killings and kidnappings,” according to the leaked Times memo. “We should not shy away from that description of the events or the attackers, particularly when we provide context and explanation.” The guidance also instructs journalists to “Avoid ‘fighters’ when referring to the Oct. 7 attack; the term suggests a conventional war rather than a deliberate attack on civilians. And be cautious in using ‘militants,’ which is interpreted in different ways and may be confusing to readers.” In the memo, the editors tell Times journalists: “We do not need to assign a single label or to refer to the Oct. 7 assault as a ‘terrorist attack’ in every reference; the word is best used when specifically describing attacks on civilians. We should exercise restraint and can vary the language with other accurate terms and descriptions: an attack, an assault, an incursion, the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, etc. Similarly, in addition to ‘terrorists,’ we can vary the terms used to describe the Hamas members who carried out the assault: attackers, assailants, gunmen.”

The Times does not characterize Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinian civilians as “terrorism,” even when civilians have been targeted. This is also true of Israel’s assaults on protected civilian sites, including hospitals. In a section with the headline “‘Genocide’ and Other Incendiary Language,” the guidance says, “‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law. In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.” Regarding “ethnic cleansing,” the document calls it “another historically charged term,” instructing reporters: “If someone is making such an accusation, we should press for specifics or supply proper context.” Bucking International Norms In the cases of describing “occupied territory” and the status of refugees in Gaza, the Times style guidelines run counter to norms established by the United Nations and international humanitarian law. On the term “Palestine” — a widely used name for both the territory and the U.N.-recognized state — the Times memo contains blunt instructions: “Do not use in datelines, routine text or headlines, except in very rare cases such as when the United Nations General Assembly elevated Palestine to a nonmember observer state, or references to historic Palestine.” The Times guidance resembles that of the Associated Press Stylebook. The memo directs journalists not to use the phrase “refugee camps” to describe long-standing refugee settlements in Gaza. “While termed refugee camps, the refugee centers in Gaza are developed and densely populated neighborhoods dating to the 1948 war. Refer to them as neighborhoods, or areas, and if further context is necessary, explain how they have historically been called refugee camps.” The United Nations recognizes eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. As of last year, before the war started, the areas were home to more than 600,000 registered refugees. Many are descendants of those who fled to Gaza after being forcibly expelled from their homes in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which marked the founding of the Jewish state and mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The Israeli government has long been hostile to the historical fact that Palestinians maintain refugee status, because it signifies that they were displaced from lands they have a right to return to. Since October 7, Israel has repeatedly bombed refugee camps in Gaza, including Jabaliya, Al Shati, Al Maghazi, and Nuseirat. The memo’s instructions on the use of “occupied territories” says, “When possible, avoid the term and be specific (e.g. Gaza, the West Bank, etc.) as each has a slightly different status.” The United Nations, along with much of the world, considers Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to be occupied Palestinian territories, seized by Israel in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war. The admonition against the use of the term “occupied territories,” said a Times staffer, obscures the reality of the conflict, feeding into the U.S. and Israeli insistence that the conflict began on October 7. “You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict,” said the newsroom source. “It’s like, ‘Oh let’s not say occupation because it might make it look like we’re justifying a terrorist attack.’”

Have you been playing the NYT Connections puzzle? I recently got hooked and discovered a site that lets you make your own. Of course I made one for LazyTown. :)

Click here to solve LazyTown puzzle #1.

Hopefully it's not too hard or too easy. Let me know what you think!

You can share your results without spoiling the game by clicking the "Share Results" button when you finish. It will give you something like this to copy-paste:

🟪🟨🟩🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦

That means my first guess was super wrong, but then I solved the green category, then the yellow one, then purple, and finally blue.

A copy of the NYT rules is below the cut if you've never done this kind of puzzle before.

How to Play

Find groups of four items that share something in common.

Select four items and tap 'Submit' to check if your guess is correct.

Find the groups without making 4 mistakes!

Category Examples

FISH: Bass, Flounder, Salmon, Trout FIRE ___: Ant, Drill, Island, Opal

Categories will always be more specific than "5-LETTER-WORDS," "NAMES" or "VERBS."

Each puzzle has exactly one solution. Watch out for words that seem to belong to multiple categories!

Each group is assigned a color, which will be revealed as you solve:

Yellow (easiest) Green Blue Purple (hardest)

"THE NEW YORK TIMES instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives."

....

In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.

The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.

The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months.

.....

The Times does not characterize Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinian civilians as “terrorism,” even when civilians have been targeted. This is also true of Israel’s assaults on protected civilian sites, including hospitals.

can someone post the nyt taika interview as a printed pdf or copy/pasted text of the profile so it’s not paywalled

quick miscellaneous blanc headcanons copy-pasted from the character notes on his bio page lol

The type of settled old queen that straight people often don’t clock, despite the fact that he is confidently singing along to the Broadway musicals on his iPod classic.

When he was young, he would go to great distances to earn clients’ and colleagues’ respect and prove how clever he was. But now, with experience and the wisdom of old age, he’s perfectly content to.... well, to put it quite bluntly, he just doesn’t give a shit about looking a fool anymore.

Trans man. 🏳️‍⚧️ ✌️

He gained a small amount of fame as a bit of a “Nancy Drew” type as a kid, although even people who remember that teen sleuth from the local papers rarely realize that the gentleman detective featured in the NYT is the same person.

His true passion is finding the truth, but he likes to say his greatest skill is frivolous spending.

Surprisingly eclectic circle of friends.

So I stumbled upon this NYT article about wedding favors and it’s literally the MOST Dair-coded wedding thing I have ever read: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/style/books-wedding-favors-for-guests.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkTFUZCybOQckjo1qMgv_M2_kji3PyLS6aDDhL0eMPGM2O_F2IardufMcomTSHQdsLeJkeeMtP9M4NdUp8V1vv5ZKehJUOJyhy8dnvVTtrg5mIA-tj_3q3NTHgbbcmmuD6tkzYaGW6WqTV0yAiNx8l9cU-DSyi2XIDwKvOEeF-y4M-ia9nXsYmMG9GMCqavPDoCAF9OcGEaHzf6wo0XeJZWFLDjILWquJAIEgJVwWwHD4o6n086dhcJNsVIK38ShYic8P7ir4SYXd6g_KbOh8b6HzChlPug4AZIA&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare (I know it’s a long ugly link but I had to unpaywall it so 🤷‍♀️)

omg thank you so much for sending!!! i’m so obsessed with this adding to my list of #wedding plans in my head. you’re SO right they are ABSOLUTELY these people!!

some screenshots from the article under the cut (or you can copy and paste the link this lovely anon provided):

A well known VF article exposed the scam behind the NYT best sellers rankings. Numbers are inflated and bought by publishers often with unchecked and over reported bulk sales. Do not believe for a second Sam's book made it that high with the current competition of releases in the non-fiction, biography and memoir section, even with mommies purchasing multiple copies. Bookshops may have ordered in large bulk, without person to person sakes yet, to made it appear as sales are high

Everyone knows the term 'bestseller' has been invented by marketeers to advertise a product! I remember the Dutch author Rutger Bregman was once praised in a Dutch talkshow for being a NYT bestseller author (twice). He laughed and said; 'it doesn't take much to have your book on the NYT bestseller list. The percentage of book readers in the US is very low, you don't have to sell that many copies to get on the list'.

Anyway, bestseller or not, it's not going to convince me to buy a book, any book (same as with the multiple award winning booze). I'll still read the book flap or the sample pages in apple books to decide if I'm interested and want to buy a book to read. I said already a number of times how I couldn't get past chapter 2 of CL, and I read the sample pages of CLA but was turned off quickly. Didn't even read all the sample pages. Main cause, the constant booze talk, all the time making it sound as if it is cool to get drunk, pissed, wasted and having a hangover. Not my jam, bestseller or not!

We used to have an early evening talkshow here in the Netherlands that had a monthly item called 'the book table'. They invited a number of bookshop owners who all brought their 'book of the month'. They all got a set time to tell about the book, what it is about and what made it stand out for them. One of the books was always chosen to present in an animation created by a student of an art academy. At the end of the show the final 'book of the month' was chosen out of all the books that were presented.

I loved that way to learn about books, always watched it. Sadly it doesn't exist anymore, but to me it was one of the items of the talkshow that always was interesting and informative in a good way.

I was tagged by the wonderful @valeriianz (sorry if you got a double notification, my finger slipped and this posted prematurely)... thank you! I loooove talking about myself and I'm finally catching up :)

Rules: Tag 10 (or less) people you want to get to know better

Relationship status: my husband and I have been married since summer 2019, a couple since early 2016, and friends since the fall of 2009. I highly recommend dating/marrying someone you're already good friends with; we skipped a lot of the awkward early relationship nonsense and just went right to the good stuff (good sex and arguing about Star Trek).

Favourite colour: my usual answer is red, but I haven't been vibing with it as much lately and have been much more drawn to the green/blue family recently.

Song stuck in my head: well, it was a random psalm setting from this week's choral Evensong service, but then I copy/pasted and deleted valeriianz's answers and now it's Sonny & Cher ;P

Three favourite foods: food is one of my great pleasures and joys in life and I couldn't possibly pick just three. but here are three things I cook a lot because I love them: fresh homemade Spätzle with sautéed cabbage and chicken sausage, stir fried veggies and chicken (or shrimp) with homemade peanut sauce, and this miso maple salmon from the NYT Cooking blog which I usually serve with rice and roasted green beans or broccoli.

Last song Iistened to: this movement from Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, also on account of this week's Evensong service (we sang it with organ and harp and it was exquisite).

Dream trip: I would really really love to go back to Ireland; my husband has never been and I want to take him. as for places I haven't been yet... I would love to visit the Mediterranean, especially Greece. New Orleans. Cairo. the Azores. Costa Rica. Japan. New Zealand. Prince Edward Island. Rome. the list is honestly endless... I've traveled a fair amount in the United States and western Europe, but there's still so much of the globe I haven't even touched yet. I miss traveling.

Last thing I googled: "site:archiveofourown.org dream of the endless is a horny weasel" I just wanted to know if it was already a tag!! OKAY!!!!

I really haven't been online this week so I have no idea who's already done this and who hasn't and I don't know who to tag, so I'm going to take the coward's way out and just say if you're seeing this and looking for an excuse to answer these questions, consider this your sign.

What if I bought a New York Times subscription, copy and pasted the contents of an article into a tumblr post and just did that for every article… would I get arrested? How long would it take for anyone to notice? Does anyone have a NYT subscription they wanna share with me?

Very little of what was mentioned in my marketing plan on the publicity side ever materialized, especially not on the scale they were talking. Is there any way for me to determine why that is? I know that a lot of it comes down to luck and it doesn't necessarily mean someone dropped the ball or that all of the major outlets hate my book, but I also don't understand why my publisher talked such a big game if it wasn't likely they could deliver on any of it.

It's hard for me to say, based on the zero actual info I have and not being part of the process, seeing the plan, sitting in on the calls, etc. But (and forgive me if you know all this already), I can just say generally:

"Marketing" means things that they PAY for. Those things are often somewhat invisible to you from the outside, because in the book world MOST marketing efforts are really geared toward booksellers/librarians/gatekeepers rather than the general public.

Examples of marketing: ARCs / eARCs, sending ARCs or finished copies to specific "bigmouths", offering retailers a special discount if they buy x-number of copies or a display, "swag" creation, ads in trade publications such as PW, Edelweiss and Shelf Awareness newsletters, promoting at Winter Institute (big bookseller conference), regional bookselling conferences, and ALA (big librarian conference), wining and dining librarians, etc. There's a wide variety of things that fall into the marketing bucket, but what they all have in common is, they cost money and the publisher wants to spend that money in the wisest way they can.

(That's why they focus on booksellers/librarians/gatekeepers -- because if one buyer for a library system or a book chain buys, say, 100 books, has them on display, talks them up to patrons and customers and classrooms, etc etc -- and then checks out or sells them to the public and orders more, that's a better bang for their buck than trying to reach a hundred individual people randomly who don't have the power to reach lots of other people. Each ONE bookseller or librarian might be able to reach hundreds of people. A dozen booksellers or librarians might reach THOUSANDS of people. And so on.)

"Publicity" means earned media -- it doesn't cost money, but it's a LOT harder to get. The publicist pitches your book to a variety of media sources -- that could be anything from reviews in the newspaper to interviews in a magazine to keynoting a conference to a special feature on Good Morning America. The problem is, of course -- all those outlets have A MILLION publicists pitching them things, and they are in full control over who and what they actually cover. So they are mostly probably going to cover, frankly, things that they think their audience will be most interested in. Which often translates to "people they have already heard of" or "people with a quite resonant and unusual story to tell" or "people who are writing something incredibly timely" or "people whose thing has gone viral" -- or something like that. Basically, they want the clicks.

Unfortunately most "regular" books probably won't fall into those buckets. So of COURSE the publicist has to try -- but the hit rate is likely kinda low for MOST books. I'm guessing the publicity plan said something like "targeted outreach to major media, local media and trade review outlets (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Newsweek, Sacramento Bee, NPR, PW, Kirkus, etc)" -- well OK. But all media is stretched thin, and even trade journals like PW and Kirkus are trending toward reviewing less and reviewing later than in the past...

So if the publicist pitched to, say, 100 places and only four decided to cover the book -- that doesn't mean she didn't do her job. She still had to write to those 100 people. (Nor does it mean the Sacramento Bee hates you -- they just only had room for 5 reviews and had 100 books to choose from).

ALL OF THAT TO SAY: I guess the publisher "talks a big game" in their publicity and marketing plan because they are so often accused of "doing LITERALLY NOTHING" to promote people's books -- because so much of the work they DO actually do is rather invisible. So they want to show, like, no, look, we ARE doing things.

(Do those things matter or move the needle? Eh. Sometimes. Mostly not, but sometimes. Are they doing them? Yep.)

biggest peeves when it comes to recipe bloggers:

1. just saw this, putting ads on the printable version of your recipe???

2. tiktok/instagram recipe bloggers who put the recipe in the caption so its impossible to copy and paste (create a blog!!! and post the recipes! i beg)

3. don’t specify kosher or table salt

4. found out that australian tablespoons are bigger (4 teaspoons) than the american tablespoon (3 teaspoon) (and teaspoons are universal?)

5. (this one isn’t a huge deal, but) recipes w/o measurements in weight

6. don’t indicate how long to leave on/in the pan after it has finished baking (especially for cookie recipes... gotta know if i should let them continue cooking/firm up on the pan or take em off immediately)

7. when they put “1 9-inch pan” or “1 14oz can”... please write “One 9-inch pan” or “One 14oz can” or even “1 (14oz) can”

8. nyt cooking paywall

"The heart, the raw authenticity, the original lens, this has become my favorite series of the year and I'm begging for more!" ~ Catherine Cowles, USA Today bestselling author

Bitter Sweet Heart, a steamy, reverse age gap, hockey romance from New York Times bestselling author Helena Hunting writing as H. Hunting, is now available!

From the outside looking in, I live a charmed life: hockey legend for a father, my own promising future in the league, a great family, awesome friends. It’s not untrue, but it’s not quite that simple either.

My dad’s advice has always been to make hockey my number-one priority—at least until I make it to the pros. So, going into my senior year of college, I have a plan. I’ll put in the effort required to pass my classes, play hockey like my life depends on it, and avoid relationships. All I have to do is stay focused on the end game, and I’ll walk away with a degree and into a career in the NHL.

It should be easy.

But when a woman literally floats into my dock, just before summer ends and my senior year begins, I can’t resist one last hookup. What harm could a one-night stand do? It’s not like we even exchanged numbers.

Everything is fine until I run into her on campus.

It’s a big school. I should be able to avoid her.

Except she happens to be in my class.

And she’s not a student.

She’s my professor.

Download your copy today, exclusively on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3MofZDk

Amazon Worldwide: https://geni.us/BitterSweetHeart

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/3xt69KT

Amazon Worldwide Paperback: https://geni.us/BitterSweetHeartPB

Add to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3xaMYFn

About H. Hunting

NYT and USA Today bestselling author, Helena Hunting, writing as H. Hunting, lives on the outskirts of Toronto with her incredibly tolerant family and two moderately intolerant cats. She started her writing career with new adult angsty romance and branched out in sports romance and romantic comedies that will make you laugh and swoon. But sometimes she likes to serve up a little heartache on the way to the happily ever after.

Connect with H. Hunting

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My Review

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Bitter Sweet Heart! (Lies, Hearts & Truths Series #2) by H. Hunting.

Utter Perfection! Page by page this brilliant, addicting, raw, emotional book consumed me. Infused with H. Hunting’s unique style, she weaves a sexy, forbidden love story, full of emotion, between these two broken characters with such finesse that I simply could not put this down and for me this is one of my top reads of 2022.

Maverick (Mav) Waters, is the son of hockey legend Alex Waters. With his college ice hockey career in the final stretch, all he needs to do is focus on his grades and hockey, and he will be rewarded with a degree and a NHL career. But then on one of the last days of his summer break, fate floats right into the dock he is sitting on, in the form of a beautiful, sleeping woman Clover Sweet.

This is Maverick and Clover’s story. Well written with strong characters, I was addicted after the first few pages. I fell hard for Maverick. He’s so protective and caring that every little action brought a smile to my face. I adored Clover she is just simply lovely, trying to fight for herself and put her past behind her. But what made this book one of my top reads of 2022 was the emotions they endured on their journey. It’s forbidden, charming and juicy and has the best banter. I swooned hard, smiled a lot, and savored the moments of angst that squeezed my heart until I had tears. The chemistry between Maverick and Clover is electrical. The heat level is incendiary, the heart even stronger. I could not get enough of them.

I am loving this series and I can’t wait for more! 5 STARS are not nearly enough for the journey H. Hunting took me on. Get in on this Utter Perfection today!!

Received an early copy and this is my honest review.