• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance, queer romance), Reactor (YA SFF/horror), Book Riot (YA horror, horror,  feminist nonfiction, YA, best out this week, YA romantasy)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• Linkity from BookWyrm Knits.
• What a dangerous sport – who thought automobile polo was a good idea?
• 30 one-pot dinners for fall.
• No-bake chocolate eclair cake.
• Peanut butter cup bars.
• Cute converted shipping container house.
• Nice one in St Paul, MN.
• This has so many bookshelves!
• A bit quirky.
• Castle esque with a very thematic shower curtain in bathroom #3.
• A mansion that’s not horrifically tacky!
• You’re going to need roller skates to get around this place.
• Vision check – the tile in the kitchen is green, right? Not blue?
• Very BLUE.
• Very BRIGHT.
• Very DRAMATIC.
• Perhaps you’ve always wanted a used tour bus?
• Or maybe you’ve always dreamed of owning a swinger’s resort…
• Some unusual choices were made.
• Poorly converted funeral home, but at least all of the creepy stuff is gone.
• You can use the car lift to get your vehicles up to your condo and then park them on your terrace.
• Huh.
• Also huh.
• Mind the gap indeed.
• Mind the drop!
• Definitely terrible.
• That first step is a doozy.
• D’oh.
• No landing except what you’ll be doing after you fall down them.

So much Attitude.

Polly on the move.

Harry!

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (witchy, romance, SFF, queer, graphic novels, nonfiction, mysteries/thrillers/true crime, YA, all genres), Reactor (SF, fantasy), Gizmodo (SFF/horror)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• A fascinating story of a very sturdy rose that survived several weeks underwater after Hurricane Katrina.
• An actual Gothic castle tower!
• Cute fairy tale cottage.
• I like this, although the optical illusion bookcases are freaking me out.
• Strange.
• Must be ok with dangerous rock features.
• Personally, I’m glad the creepy figures aren’t included.
• Very gaudy NYC mansion – unsurprising when you see who the owner was.
• “Cold War-era luxury bunker” in Las Vegas.
• Decor that just makes you go “huh”.
• Railings would be good.
• They had space to make them normal!

Polly cannot believe!

Very serious Harry is very serious.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (YA nonfiction/comics, YA, best out this week)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• “Books as a ballast against brainrot“.
• “A guide to caring for each other while changing the world“.
• So many times.
• Free exercise library with a geeky slant.
• 48 zucchini recipes.
• Lovely woodwork.
• Nicely done manor house with a library in the tower.
• Two-house property in Taos.
• Decent condo in a converted cotton mill/factory.
• I’ve walked past this one before.
• Inspired by Japanese teahouses.
• Little Red Caboose – definitely not for the serious chef.
• Pueblo style house with a mystery in the shower.
• Very colorful.
• Unusual layout, plus lots of color and lots of stuff.
• Carpeted basement detracts from its castle-esque vibe.
• If renting’s your thing, how about a land-bound boat?
• Over-the-top Las Vegas home. Figures may or may not be included.
• Overdesigned.
• Why would you turn a pole barn into a house?
• Ridiculous.
• Why.
• Seriously, why.

Harry, looking thoughtful.

Polly, looking like she’s pretending to listen.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (YA, best out this week, mysteries)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• I can’t imagine why On Tyranny would suddenly be popular… Sadly most of the article is behind a paywall.
• If you use Firefox on desktop, you might want to turn off all the machine learning stuff they added recently.
• Accurate cat interaction drawings! The last one is totally Harry and Polly.
• From the way back – a computer with embedded globe.
• “Toothpaste made from hair works better than fluoride, scientists say“…
• Very nice casita compound in Taos.
• Cool MCM spaceship style house that was originally built for Jackie Gleason.
• Converted stagecoach station.
• Medieval castle tower in Ireland.
• Definitely not the most disappointing castle-esque house we’ve seen.
• Moderne style with your own little waterfall.
• Reasonably priced and hopefully none of the statuary stays.
• What kind of hobbit house doesn’t have a kitchen??
• Hobbit-esque, but with an indoor pool and skylights (and a kitchen).
• Has a home theater with an actual stage.
• Definitely an interior that must be experienced.
• Odd looking outside.
• Wrought iron for everyone!
• This one has part of a plane inside.
• The photos are terrible, but so is the house.
• Kind of creepy MCM.
• A rundown motel turned into condos.
• :facepalm:
• Eww.
• Give it a minute.
• Hmm.
• Jenga or stairs?
• No.
• It’s a ladder, not stairs, but I think it’s only for very, very svelte people.
• Gawking injuries on the stairs, I can see it now.

Polly “helping” me take art journal photos.

Harry and the poor battered ‘nip jack’o’lantern.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (YA, best out this week, space operas, queer/two-spirit indigenous fiction)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• “None of these books are obscene.“
• AOL is ending its dial-up service after 34 (!!!!) years.
• Experience being in a bag of cornflakes.
• Oreo Reese’s cookies apparently taste different than the peanut butter-filled Oreos. Who knew?
• Easy gluten-free strawberry cake.
• Romeo and Juliet as you’ve never seen it before.
• Dragon building!
• Just looks like a good place to live.
• Nice little condo.
• Lovely converted fortress on its own island.
• I hope no one “renovates” it.
• An MCM in the woods.
• Unique MCM formerly owned by Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson.
• Little thatched cottage.
• Fascinating former Masonic lodge.
• Very colorful condo with a wtf coffee table.
• “Globby“.
• Floating house with death stairs.
• Must absolutely adore turquoise.
• OMG, the kitchen.
• Castle-esque with a massively disappointing interior.
• Disappointing sort of cartoon-themed former Airbnb.
• Penguins going down stairs.
• They’d be better off rebuilding them.
• It IS dumb.
• Why.
• That living room is NOT big enough for that hot mess of stairs.
• More people installing stairs should ask themselves if they could honestly make it down those stairs in the middle of the night in the dark to use the bathroom.
• Nope.

Pretty Polly.

Focused Harry is focused.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance, queer romance), Book Riot (YA, graphic novels, nonfiction, historical fiction, best out this month, queer, romance, SFF, mystery/thriller), Gizmodo (SFF/horror), Reactor (fantasy, scifi)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• Linkity from BookWyrm Knits.
• Virtually visit the Roddenberry Archive.
• Some airplane humor from xkcd – make sure you long-press/hover your cursor for the caption!
• Looks like a tiny castle outside but not so much inside. That said, I love the rooftop deck and the general coziness.
• Pretty nice church conversion.
• A manor built in 1331 and added on to in th 15th century.
• Condo above the St Louis City Museum.
• Frank Lloyd Wright inspired.
• Very tiny home.
• Baroque with a professional recording studio.
• The arcade looks like a lot of fun! But the thought of trying to clean that rocky shower…
• I do not like the kitchen tile.
• All sorts of interesting details, but it needs a lot of work.
• What a strange compound.
• This has some moments of over the top design.
• Weird one in Salt Lake City.
• Hard to decide which I hate more – the murder bathroom or how the master bedroom is painted (I mistyped that as “badroom” the first time…).
• The stairs in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• These don’t look fun.
• Ok, there’s some distortion elongating everything, but it’s terrible anyway.
• Watch out for those top steps.
• Huh.
• Give me boring, safe stairs any day.

The Hooligans turned five years old on August 5th!

Harry might have some anxiety about it. 😉

Polly just does not believe it. 😉

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (YA, best out this week, best out last week, more YA, YA comics/nonfiction)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches. And more!
• A comic about teachers saving the planet.
• Live in a former Carnegie library.
• Amazing quilts.
• Another reason to use Duck Duck Go instead of Google as your default search engine – you can choose to not include AI images in your results.
• This is beyond concerning.
• BOOM.
• “GET HIM STEPHEN“.
• Good to remember in these trying times.
• S’mores icebox cake.
• Maximum cozy.
• Lovely converted electric substation.
• Fun Victorian – I especially love the “cloud room”.
• Eggo themed. Not a typo.
• Ice cream themed.
• You MUST see the decor.
• Unique MCM with loud carpet and terrifying stairs.
• Large parts look like an operating suite.
• This one’s just too much.
• Includes a 60,000 square feet (5,574 square meters) cavern bunker.
• I don’t trust any of it.
• I have to believe there’s a less dangerous way to implement this concept.
• Absolutely not.
• “Make stairs, not art“.

Serious Harry is serious.

Silly Polly is much less serious!

‘Tis true, this is the last linkity of July, as I have a class during my linkity creating time for the next two weeks.  (I’ll be learning about Risograph printing.)

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance, queer romance), Book Riot (YA, manga, best out this week), Reactor (YA SFF/horror)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• Linkity from BookWyrm Knits.
• Read a free Murderbot story after the season finale.
• …I have questions.
• Good news related to trans folk.
• On boots.
• Barbie Yaga Dream Hut.
• Cats are indeed very unergonomic.
• Lovely house with turrets.
• An exceptional Craftsman.
• Very nice MCM. I wish they’d updated the bathrooms with warmer colors to blend with the wood better.
• A pair of cute cottages.
• Cool converted schoolhouse.
• Parts are unusual, parts are bland.
• Converted water tower.
• Interesting late MCM. Where the heck is the toilet in the master bath??
• Why is there a driving range in the living room?
• Has an 83-foot tall climbing wall.
• Oddly shaped with issues.
• So much nope.
• No way.
• Dubious.
• Umm.
• I don’t think so.

Harry, deeply asleep.

Chatty upside-down Polly.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Gizmodo (scifi/fantasy/horror), Book Riot (queer [disability pride], queer, romance, YA, mystery/thrillers, historical fiction, nonfiction, comics/graphic novels, scifi/fantasy), Reactor (scifi, fantasy)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• “Why oppressive fictional societies suppress reading – and how they mirror our current culture“.
• Ficlet.
• Oh hey, turns out there’s no such thing as male or female brains.
• Oh, good.
• “Superior it’s said never gives up its dead…“
• On the physics of catsup and toothpaste.
• No-bake s’mores bars.
• Love this!
• Cool church conversion.
• What a lovely historic townhouse. Except for that tub enclosure. Lol!
• Cute boat house. It does look like an awful lot of the wood (especially the floors) needs to be refinished.
• Tiny house. That bathroom sink!
• I like this style, although that green is a bit much.
• Nice, but my favorite thing is that coffee table.
• The carpet is terrain.
• The most orange bathroom possible.
• I’m not sure if I’ve ever hated ceilings as much as I hate these ceilings.
• The Mushroom House.
• Kind of a weird one.
• The stairs to the second bedroom – yikes.
• Your balance must be impeccable at all times.
• I guess at least it’s not a kitchen counter.
• Mysteries in stair construction.
• Here’s what it looks like when you descend glass stairs.

Harry, having a bit of an existential crisis.

Polly looking up, up, and away through the window.

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Book Riot (YA comics/nonfiction, best out this week, queer historical fiction, YA)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• A very heartfelt post about reading LotR for the first time.
• Comic about libraries.
• Haunting ficlet.
• There will be The X-Files and Wallace & Gromit LEGO sets!
• Horchata inspired Oreos.

• Very cozy.
• Barbie house, but guaranteed to get hit by hurricanes and such.
• Parts of it are castle-esque.
• The lighting is terrible and it’s hard to tell what the house looks like beyond all the art, but other than that!
• The wallpaper in the half bath is very meta.
• The little round blue sink in the kitchen bothers me.
• Monastery vibes.
• Perfect if you want to live someplace ornate.
• A very unusual property.
• I wish they hadn’t painted the kitchen cabinets.
• Hack job remodel of this poor late MCM.
• Really hope they sealed their Scrabble tile bathroom floor.
• Who needs a complete railing anyway?!

Harry keeping an eye on SOMETHING.

Polly grooming her leg, as one does.