Still finding it hard to tear myself away from online coverage on Iran. Here are lots of links on lots of other subjects:

Mary Anning is apparently gaining in popularity. In addition to Shelley Emling's upcoming biography, Fossil Hunter Tracy Chevalier has also completed a novel based on her life, Spare Bones. Here's a bit of her description (she's changed the title since this update and the manuscript has been turned in):

I'm working on a novel about a fossil collector called Mary Anning. She was a working-class woman who lived all her life in Lyme Regis, a small town on the southern coast of England (where John Fowles set The French Lieutenant’s Woman). On its rocky shores and buried in its cliffs she discovered the first British pre-dinosaur fossils such as Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs. She sold her findings to eminent male geologists, who went on to write and speak about them, taking all the glory while Mary lived in poverty. She was tough, prickly, and eccentric. Plus she was struck by lightning as a baby.

Roger Sutton posted on the many various blogosphere discussions in the past couple of weeks and was - at least to me - a bit dismissive of it all. Yes, it's a lot of talking but if you're not talking then what is the point? And since the largest literary conversations are now taking place on the internet, it seems like the more talking the better. (And I do think lots of folks are listening - I know I have been.)

Sarah reminds everyone of the wonder that is Trixie Belden (talk about a childhood favorite - I don't even know where to begin.)

The NTY makes Kate Walbert's The Short History of Women sound like an absolute must read. Here's a bit of the review:

Now I must throw up my hands in despair: I’m running out of space, and the only thing I’ve addressed in a modicum of detail is the first chapter — a mere dozen pages! The trouble is that each chapter is like a slice of exquisite cake. But the reviewer’s predicament is the reader’s pleasure. I found myself going back time and again to reread whole paragraphs, not because they’d been obscure, but in the way one might press a finger to the crumbs littering an otherwise cleaned plate: out of a desire to savor every morsel.

Jenny's been doing some light reading lately - which always makes for some delightful recommendations for the rest of us.

Katherine Howe at Powells with an essay on writing historical fiction and her book The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Her thoughts on time travel tourism and the people she created:

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is an evolution of the time travel tourism game, an exploration of the interconnected relationship between the present and the past. I have never been satisfied by the tendency to reduce people in history to symbols on the one hand, weighted down with the heavy task of nation building, or to crazy people on the other, somehow insane for failing to see beyond the limits of their own time. The people caught up in the Salem panic were neither maniacs nor "forefathers"; they were individuals trapped in a situation that they could neither solve nor understand. They were flawed. They were concerned with their relationships and their day-to-day well-being. In that sense, they were like us.

And finally a bubble battle in NYC. "Make bubbles, not war" seems to have been the theme of the day. Behind the cut watch Ed's video - it is fantastic and not to be missed. Think of the students in Tehran while you watch - here's hoping sweet days are ahead for them.