This fortnight on the bookish internet

I missed last week’s bookish update due to a monstrous cold. So this Saturday you get a double-barreled bookish internet roundup. 

• Huzzah! Catherynne Valente’s brilliant The Refrigerator Monologues is being filmed! (The Mary Sue)
• In which we learn the strange tale of Petrarch’s cat. (British Library Blog)
• The United Kingdom’s war on libraries continues. Sian Cain reports that more than 100 libraries closed in 2018. (The Guardian)
• Fiona Macdonald reports on an actual scientific study about grammar nazis. Turns out, they really are jerks. (Science Alert)
• Are these the best book covers of 2018? (Book Riot)
• Tobias Carroll wonders why the novella hasn’t taken off in the United States. (Electric Literature)
• Molly Odintz’s list of things not to do to booksellers during the holidays is good year-round—especially #6. (CrimeReads)
• This story about a library directly on the US-Canada border being used to help families separated by Trump’s #@#$& travel ban will probably make you cry. (Reuters)
• It turns out I’m not the only one fascinated by novels featuring elderly women protagonists. (Electric Literature)
• Louis Menand has thoughts about authorship, veracity, and literary hoaxes. (The New Yorker)
• It’s time for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award! (The Independent)
  • Meanwhile, Sian Cain wonders how the “winning” book even got published. (The Guardian)
• I feel vindicated after learning that Louisa May Alcott hated writing Little Women. (Vox)
• …But learning about the “Slave Bible” makes me feel appalled and deeply sad—which is exactly why people should read about it. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Zita Cristina Nunes shares the story of hero-librarian Dorothy Porter. (Smithsonian)
• These bookend dioramas are pretty awesome. (OpenCulture)
• Olivia Páez has a novel (heh) method for dealing with her growing to-be-read pile. (Book Riot)
• Khipu is fascinating! (OpenCulture)
• Robert Draper takes us inside the search for ancient religious fragments, which seems to be equal parts dusty digging, scholarly debate, painstaking preservation, and skullduggery. (National Geographic)