Great links: Everything you need to spend the day reading, not shopping

DOWNTOWN LANCASTER ON WEDNESDAY

I'm all for a vibrant and robust American economy, but you really don't want to go out shopping today, do you? Assuming that you're not working, wouldn't it be more relaxing to spend part of the day catching up on some smart and stimulating reading?

Here's my latest collection of great links that caught my eye, broken down into longer and shorter reads. I hope you find some of them enjoyable.

LONG, AWESOME READS

• The New York Times: "The Secret Life of Passwords" by Ian Urbina
• The Guardian: "Ursula Le Guin: ‘Wizardry is artistry’" by Hari Kunzru
• The Dish: "Top 60 boardgames" by Keith Law (Here's a partial spoiler with Nos. 6 through 10, to give you a sense of the kinds of games he is discussing: 10. Pandemic, 9. Splendor, 8. Dominion, 7. The Castles of Burgundy, 6. Jaipur.)
• The New York Times: "The Knowledge, London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test, Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS" by Jody Rosen
• Narratively: "The Last Fishermen of Long Island" by Doug Kuntz and Tara Israel
• Narratively: "Abe Lincoln's Loveliest Spy" by Christina Drill
• Narratively: "Is It Down There? A subterranean mystery lingering since the 1964 World’s Fair has baffled history buffs from Flushing to Florida" by Nicholas Hirshon

ONE FROM THE ARCHIVES

• Esquire: "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" by Gay Talese, from the April 1966 issue

SHORTER READS and PHOTO-CENTRIC POSTS

• Medium: "A Thanksgiving tale: Why Central Pa. should make peace with glazed bacon and The New York Times" by Scott Blanchard¹
• Poynter: "Three early food editors who did a lot more than share recipes" by Kristen Hare
• The Atlantic: "Thanksgiving Used to Look a Lot Like Halloween, Except More Racist" by Megan Garber
• Letters of Note: "We were not found wanting" (memo sent by Parkland Memorial Hospital administrator in November 1963)
• NPR: "Gruff Rhys Journeys Into The 'American Interior'"
• NPR: "Plan To Use Gulf Oil Spill Funds For Beach Hotel Sparks Lawsuit" by Debbie Elliott²
• The Atlantic: "Mark Twain Would Likely Be Ticked at the Library of Congress Right Now" by Daniel Hernandez
• A Day in the Lyceum: "Student Book Clubs of Yore" by Eric Baker
• Smithsonian.com: "The Origin of the Number Zero" by Amir Aczel

• The Atlantic: "What Happens to English When You Subtract the Letter 'E'" by Nikhil Sonnad
• Flavorwire: "50 Great Dark Books for the Dark Days of Winter" by Emily Temple
• Wired: "The Tricky Ethics of Intergalactic Colonization" by Charles C. Mann
• The New York Times: "Storybook Buildings, Authors Unknown: A Vast, Private Collection of Tiny Folk-Art Structures" by Sandy Keenan
• The New York Times: "Video Game Meets History, and France Rebels Again" by Dan Bilefsky
• Northern Soul: "Chetham’s Library: a medieval gem in a modern city" by Andy Murray
• PennLive.com: "This Central Pennsylvania township does -- and doesn't -- exist" by Nick Malawskey
• Joe Hill's Thrills: "Creature of Habit," in which an author lays out his daily routine, especially with regard to writing and revising
• CityLab: "Photographing Europe's Abandoned Border Crossings" by Sam Sturgis
• Yankee: "The Lure of a Simpler Life" by Justin Shatwell
• Huffington Post Books: "The Hidden Language of Food" by Libby O'Connell
• The New York Times: "Owner of Forgotten Clock Finds a Name (and Hands) to Put With the Face" by Franz Lidz (The clock once belonged to Homer and Langley Collyer.)
• Atlas Obscura: "Old Khndzoresk Cave Village: Right up until the 20th century this network of man-made caves was the biggest village in Eastern Armenia"
• BoingBoing: "How love and integrity made Welcome to Night Vale a massive success" by Jeffrey Cranor
• Forbes: "An Island You Can't Refuse: Marlon Brando's Tahitian Paradise" by Laurie Werner

Footnotes
1. Full disclosure: Blanchard is a tremendous editor and was a colleague of mine when I worked at the York Daily Record/Sunday News.
2. That story contains an infuriating quote from Gunter Guy, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. With regard to spending $60 million on a beachfront hotel and conference center, with those funds coming from the money that BP is paying out to remedy environmental damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, Guy states: "Sure, we could try to spend that on some more quote-unquote environmental projects, but we chose to do it on what we did because we think it's the right thing to do."