I’m wide awake, but these links—these links can’t wait.

Over at The Burgundian, the ancient and medieval edition of Carnivalesque is in full swing.

The Cimmerian offers a lengthy review of the forthcoming Solomon Kane movie.

Jason Fisher is vindicated in his criticism of what may be the worst Tolkien book ever published.

Michael Drout wonders how much of scholarly success involves giving people what they want to hear. He also writes, with welcome bluntness, about the academic job market.

Meet a New Jersey shire-reeve straight from the pages of Chaucer.

When you’re on a mailing list for a Newfoundland gift shop—and really, what well-rounded individual isn’t?—you’re privy to some pretty grody specials.

The Philadelphia Inquirer researches Hercules, George Washington’s slave. 

Julie Rose reviews the novel Ice Land.

Neil Gaiman goes to Alabama.

Finally, how about some jazzy German pop?

If you’re one of the new readers who found this site in recent days, scratcheth not thy head! Peruse the “about” page; I hope you’ll stick around. You can browse the best of 2009, 2008, or 2007 and receive word of new posts via Twitter. You can also support this whole bumbling enterprise by ordering The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier either in a snazzy paperback edition or as a Kindle e-book.

Typically, this blog is about books and medievalism. Lately, it’s been taken over by gargoyles. Today, I offer only these diversionary links.

With all the snow we’ve gotten lately, one must learn how to distinguish a yeti from a wendigo.

At The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Thomas H. Benton” follows up his previous jeremiads about grad school with “The Big Lie About ‘The Life of the Mind.'”

Of course, you can show off your humanities chops by writing an online serial epic in verse.

I recently chatted about writing and translation with the good folks at Medievalists.net.

In Maryland, they’re preserving video-game code for posterity.

Jason Fisher has bad news about the publication of Tolkien’s translation of The Book of Jonah.

If you live near Highland Park, N.J., drop by Nighthawk Books, an ambitious venture by friend-of-this-blog Steven Hart.

Finally, here’s a number few have seen since 1980: writer, actor, and jolly Irish polymath Malachy McCourt backs up Christine Ebersole as she sings the most average love song in the world.

So “Quid Plura?” enjoyed a record number of visitors in January. Who knew you were all so curious about the inner lives of gargoyles?

Perhaps you’ll also like these random links, which have been hand-selected and flash-pasteurized especially for you on this chilly Tuesday evening.

Novelist Leslie Pietrzyk talks about her autographed copy of The Catcher in the Rye.

This refreshing New York Times piece debunks the tedious conventional wisdom among English teachers that J.D. Salinger was holed up in Cornish like Hitler in his bunker.

Speaking of people who bowed out before others got sick of them, here’s an interview with Bill Watterson.

Sometimes, life’s second acts surprise me: Larry Tagg, bassist for the underappreciated ’80s pop band Bourgeois Tagg, is now writing books about Abraham Lincoln.

The author of The Invisible Hook defends the medieval trial by ordeal.

Jake Seliger re-reads High Fidelity.

Shatner reads Poe.

Lingwë asks, “When is an English root word like a Mafia don?”

Like Charlemagne in the mind of a 19th-century French nationalist, this blog should, in the weeks ahead, come roaring back to life as the tired soul behind it strikes a happier balance between the things he wants to do and the things he needs to do. In the meantime, enjoy these links re-plucked from the great, fecund florilegium of the Web.

The Cimmerian hears echoes of Robert E. Howard in last week’s discovery of Persian bones.

Why do the spiders in The Hobbit hate being called “attercop”? Jason Fisher explains.

Open Letters Monthly reviews a new translation of Orlando Furioso.

Lex Fajardo visits comic shops in Scandinavia.

Come on, you know you’ve wondered about ancient Roman toilets.

Wulfstan speaks! Hear Anglo-Saxon sermons across a thousand years.

Neil Verma defends historical fiction and ponders the relationship of video games to reading.

Jake Seliger ponders an op-ed about teaching, Borges on literature, and the silly debate among writers about word processors.

Where are the wild things? Janet Potter reads the book based on the movie based on the book.

Bibliographing reads the 19th-century kunstmärchen of Ludwig Tieck.

Writer Beware asks: Do authors need “virtual assistants?” (The answer: no.)

Busy week! Busy weekend! So here’s an assortment of quite spiffy links.

Unlocked Wordhoard readers are answering a question: What classes do you take if you want to be a medievalist?

It’s the 2,000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, so Hermann the German is everywhere—but Studenda Mira didn’t expect to find him in Reformation propaganda.

For all Teutoberg-related scuttlebutt, Adrian Murdoch is your go-to guy. (Put his book Rome’s Greatest Defeat on your wishlist.)

Without YouTube, our descendants might never see people working on Linotype machines.

Today, after 72 years, “Guiding Light” is going off the air.

The good folks at The Cimmerian point us to Reclaiming the Blade, a documentary about swords; it’s narrated by Lord of the Rings cast members.

Do aspiring authors need to “know someone”? Victoria Strauss debunks that myth.

Jake Seliger reviews Last Night at the Lobster.

Will McLean finds something wonderful: build-’em-yourself paper automata!

Steve Donohue reviews a new Prince Valiant compilation. (He also reviewed a long-due book about unjustly forgotten illustrator J.C. Leyendecker.)

Ah, the consistency of pop music: Compare the folk song “Lovely Joan” with “Touch and Go” by Emerson, Lake, and Powell.

I grew up a short bike ride from Highland Park, New Jersey. Now blogger Steven Hart has given the town its own online newspaper: The Highland Park Monitor.

Speaking of the great Garden State, it’s the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Floyd. Revisit the mess in photos, won’t you?

The weekend comes, and nifty links come close behind.

This is neat: Someone made a short film out of Robert E. Howard’s poem “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville.”

Speaking of Howard, his collected poetry is now in its third printing, and the work of one of his favorite writers, Harold Lamb, is back in print.

Steven Hart appreciates the Robert Silverberg novel Dying Inside and wishes Peter Jackson would film it.

Jake Seliger writes intriguingly about The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

“Her lips were full, sultry or sulking, her expression unblinking; she seldom smiled. Yet the reeds held fond memories of her friend Hedges, her companion in slinky swimming until she, or he, was carried away in 1998 by the waters of the River Nene.” No, it’s not an Ursula Le Guin story; it’s one of the better obits of the year.

Happy birthday to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! The old boy would have turned 260 today. In his honor, here’s someone reading his poem “Prometheus,” and here’s “Quid Plura?” favorite France Gall singing “Ein bisschen Goethe, ein bisschen Bonaparte.” (You know you want to.)

Managing workloads, suffering fools, wishing the days could be longer—medieval people lamented these problems just as often as we do, but they soldiered on. “A thousand skeptic hands won’t keep us from the things we plan,” Charlemagne famously insisted, prompting Alcuin to quip: “unless we’re clinging to the things we prize.”

That’s my favorite passage from Einhard’s Vita Karoli; it invigorates me every time I’m slogging through an endless morass of work. In that spirit, here are links to smart and interesting people whose efforts you can reward simply by reading them.

With all due punctilio, Steven Hart appreciates science-fiction and fantasy writer Jack Vance.

Do you dawdle? Are you stalled? Jake Seliger reads books about learning to focus.

Neil Verma wonders about separating artists from their art.

Dear publishers, Scott Nokes implores you: Stop putting the monk Eadwine on book covers.

Open Letters Monthly reviews The Natural History of Unicorns.

Red in tooth and claw, OLM also steps into a literary feud over the annotated Wind in the Willows.

Enough cromulent problematizing! Vaulting and Vellum grumble at academic language that locks others out.

Bibliographing gets to know Abelard and Heloise.

“You got your manly, economic prose in my pipeweed!” “Your got your pipeweed in my manly, economic prose!” Lingwë asks: “Hemingway’s Silmarillion?”

What might be right be you may not be right for Ephemeral New York, who shows you buildings from the opening credits of “The Jeffersons” and “Diff’rent Strokes.”

Finally, smooth down the epaulets on your Members Only jacket and dance to this: the full-length commercial for the 1985 Plymouth Duster.

Twelve centuries ago, a certain Frankish king understood the need to remain clear-eyed after taking on too many tasks. “I know that I must do what’s right,” he confided to his queen in a letter from the front, “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”

O Charlemagne, how right you were! Because of work, writing, meine Deutschklasse, and preparing a syllabus from scratch, “Quid Plura?” has inadvertently slid into what can only be called “summer hours.”

This slowdown is temporary—but while I catch up with my commitments, here’s some stuff worth reading.

No one does medievalism better than Scott Nokes, who scours the Web for links you might otherwise miss. Check out his miscellanies from June 16, June 17, June 20, June 22, and June 23. Book reviews! Scholarly musings! Sentence and solaas! How can you go wrong?

What’s the hottest book in Louisiana right now? According to my family, it’s a memoir about a leprosarium.

Let’s welcome a sociolinguist to the blog world: “As a Linguist…”

Are you reading Ephemeral New York? Why the heck not?

According to Twitter, Julius Caesar is currently floating off the coast of Sardinia.

Everybody needs a little time away, so check out my snapshots from Aachen.