I’m having a wicked case of writer’s block when it comes to writing about books. Or maybe I’ve just spent too many hours bingeing on Jane the Virgin, which is truly one of the most delightful shows I’ve watched in a long time. Whatever the reason, today I’m bringing a link round up of some great (recent-ish) articles I’ve been reading – enjoy!

Speaking of Jane the Virgin, I loved tv critic Maureen Corrigan’s take on comedy’s takeover of television in the post-Golden Age era – lots of good shows to add to my list.

This piece about Donald Trump from the perspective of his longtime butler – what I bet the Trump campaign thought would be a puff piece – is one of the best subtle takedowns of Drumpf that I’ve ever read.

The layout and design for this Huffington Post piece on how women became seen but not heard in fairy tales is stellar, and the story is pretty interesting too – love the recommendations for Amber Sparks and Helen Oyeyemi.

Apparently plagiarism in crossword puzzles is a thing – scandalous!

Does sexism in the office make women love Hillary Clinton? Yup.

Is Hamilton the perfect mashup for every fandom? Yup again.  

Parul Sehgal’s stellar New York Times Magazine piece on the concept of erasure – “the practice of collective indifference that renders certain people and groups invisible” – is excellent, and crosses genres and formats to explore the issue.  

Literary ladies who may have gone too far… such a great list.

This quote, from Why It Stings So Badly When Men Tell Hillary Clinton To Smile, is basically the truest thing ever:

When powerful men tell a woman who might just become the most powerful in the world to smile, it reminds the rest of us that no matter how well we play the game, it is ultimately rigged against us. Because even becoming the Democratic frontrunner for president of the United States doesn’t exempt you from the bullshit any woman with a body and a face has to deal with.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links through Amazon. If you make a purchase through any of those links, I will receive a small commission.

Briefly | It’s been a slow day around here, evidenced by how late in the day this post is going up. After rolling out of bed pretty late this morning, I spent most of the day sprawled out on the couch binge watching the first season of Jane the Virgin on Netflix. I’ve got a theory that everyone (or maybe just me?) needs a total day of sloth every few months — today was mine.

Reading | I got a lot of reading done this week — I finished both Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman and The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell as part of a Brontë sisters binge. Now I’m working my way through Lucky Us by Amy Bloom (historical fiction) and planning to jump into Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein, Spinster by Kate Bolick, or All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister — seems fitting, given that it’s Women’s History Month.

Listening | My writing soundtrack for the last week or so has been Soft Pop Hits on Spotify. It’s been good, if sometimes also distracting because I want to sing along.

Blogging | This week I wrote about Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes and shared some March 2016 books on my radar.

Promoting | I’m just going to keep throwing this out there: Are you a book blogger who will be attended Book Expo America 2016 in Chicago? Join the Facebook group we’ve started to help bloggers connect and ask questions before the conference.

Hating | Tons of people around me are sick right now… and I don’t want to catch anything!

Loving | The weather was beautiful yesterday — sunny, upper 60s, with just a little breeze. Hannah and I got outside for while and were both very happy about it. Today’s been cloudy and threatening rain, which makes me feel less terrible about camping out on the couch for most of it.

Avoiding | I had planned to go to the grocery store today, but those plans got derailed by many, many hours of Jane the Virgin. Maybe I’ll run out quick before dinner… ugh, I don’t know.

Anticipating | Next weekend I’m heading up to the cabin with my high school girlfriends. The weather is supposed to keep being unseasonably warm, so we should be able to hang out outside while we enjoy each others company.

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links through Amazon. If you make a purchase through any of those links, I will receive a small commission.

You guys, March is so full of new and interesting books. Putting this post together certainly did not help my plan to #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks, but oh well. I mentioned a few of these in my February wrap up/March preview post, but didn’t go into much detail, so they’re coming around again. Here are some titles on my radar from this month:

All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister (March 1 from Simon and Schuster) – Rebecca Traister is such a smart writer when it comes to women and politics (Big Girls Don’t Cry from 2010 is excellent), so I’m certain that this look at the impact of single women on American society and politics will be awesome.

The President’s Book of Secrets by David Priess (March 1 from PublicAffairs) – I love books that get inside the world of the President of the United States. In this book, Priess looks at the relationship between the president and the intelligence community by looking at the process for developing the “President’s Daily Brief” and how modern presidents have used the document to make decisions.

A Tyranny of Petticoats edited by Jessica Spotswood (March 8 from Candlewick) – A bunch of YA writers got together to a collection of historical short stories featuring badass young ladies. Sold!

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow (March 8 from Viking) – I have no desire to live in a city, but I have a weird love for reading about urban planning. This book is “an empowering road map for rethinking, reinvigorating, and redesigning our cities, from a pioneer in the movement for safer, more livable streets.”

Empire of Things by Frank Trentmann (March 29 from Harper) – This book is quite the chunkster (880 pages) looking at a big question: How have we come to live with so much stuff, and how has this changed the course of history? It sounds fascinating, but I’m not sure if I’ll actually get to reading it this month.

Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein (March 29 from Harper) – Following up her excellent first book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Orenstein takes an in-depth look at the “new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage – high school through college – and reveals how they are negotiating it.” I’ve read a couple books on this topic, but none recently and none by authors who have the kind of clear-eyed approach that Orenstein takes in her writing. Excited about this!

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links through Amazon. If you make a purchase through any of those links, I will receive a small commission.

One of the ways that I try to remind myself of my One Little Word for 2016, open, is to think about one of the rules of improv I remember from Tina Fey’s Bossypants – always respond to your partner with YES, AND… For Fey, the idea of YES, AND is to contribute, to show up and be part of the scene or experience in front of you. For me, it’s been a gentle reminder that a spirit of openness requires approaching life with an attitude inclined towards looking for more, not less.

As I was putting together a casual reading list for the year, one of the books that immediately rose to the top was Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes, a memoir about Rhimes experience saying “yes” to her life.

Rhimes, creator and showrunner for major hits like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, embarked on her Year of Yes after her sister forced her to accept the fact that she never said yes to anything. As an introvert prone to panic attacks before publicity event, Rhimes realized she’d been letting fear – in the form of always saying “no” – dictate the terms of her life. The book is her chronicle of how a Year of Yes changed her life.

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Rhimes, and have to admit that I wasn’t initially enamored with the book. The first several chapters focus on Rhimes battle to deal with her social anxiety and introversion — the “say yes to everything” mantra had a lot to do with accepting invitations and going to social events, which, honestly, I didn’t find that interesting. I wasn’t really learning much about being open when all Rhimes talked about was how scared she was to be interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel.   

But somewhere in the middle Rhimes started to expand on what the year of yes meant to her – yes to play, yes to caring about her body, yes to difficult conversations, and yes to dancing it out with the best people in her life. As those topics came up, the book went from being an amusing memoir to this inspiring, soaring manifesto about female empowerment and making choices in your own life. The ending left me feeling excited and open and ready to take on the world.

Listening to the book on audio is really the way to go. Rhimes has a very distinctive cadence and rhythm to her television writing that translates beautifully to the memoir format. And the audio includes clips from several of the major speeches Rhimes gave during her Year of Yes that are fun to hear as given rather than read later.

Although a little slow to get going, I highly recommend this book for anyone feeling like their life needs a little bit of an shake up – even if saying yes isn’t quite the kick you need, the book will inspire you to make your own courageous changes.

P.S. If you want a quick preview of the book, I highly recommend watching the TED Talk Rhimes gave in February 2016 (embedded below). It gives a sense of the cool place the memoir ends up, skipping over the stories of the first chapters that I didn’t find as engaging.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links through Amazon. If you make a purchase through any of those links, I will receive a small commission.