Well, that was a pleasant holiday vacation. But back to my usual routine and schedule, eh?
At Lady Business, my fellow editors and I share our Best Beloved Books of 2015!
Links
Here’s Oscar Isaac covering Bill Murray’s Star Wars song, just to get the last week of 2015 off to a perfect start.
Okay, I haven’t read this yet, BUT a queer Brighton Sherlock Holmes fan group’s latest issue of their periodical is themed around “Queerness in Sherlockiana.”
Did you know that John Boyega does an impression of Daisy Ridley that delights her? It’s adorable.
This 1992 Vanity Fair profile of Barbara Bush is both fascinating and heartbreaking.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione have been cast for the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Hermione will be played by Afro-British actress Noma Dumezweni. I think this is great—Hermione can be easily read as black—but I also think it’s easy to make this choice now that the films have become the accepted visual representation of the novels.
Did you watch The Muppet Christmas Carol to celebrate the holidays? (We almost did, but Wolfboy insisted on Cars, and the existential horror gets worse every time you watch that movie.) Here’s a very sweet piece at The Guardian interviewing those who made the film, which was the first after Jim Henson’s death.
Look, this cast is too adorable, that’s why there are so many of these videos this morning. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Carrie Fisher (with Gary in tow, of course) talk shop on Graham Norton.
Interested in getting into Star Wars? tumblr user kingcheddarxvii has a handy guide for you.
I’m going to corral all of the spoilery Star Wars: The Force Awakens links I have here, so nobody gets accidentally spoiled:
- This is a great article about how the film uses Skellig Michael as a location, with a focus on the island’s history.
- Jessica Lachenal at The Mary Sure brings us “A List of All the Asians in The Force Awakens, and Why Representation Matters.”
- At Hypable, Natalie Fisher wonders if Poe Dameron is being set up as Star Wars’ first queer protagonist.
- Gavia Baker-Whitelaw has started writing about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it’s, of course, amazing.
Americans! This is a tumblr resource post about navigating our health insurance. It is not scintillating, but it is useful.
This week’s jam: Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip’s “I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper.”
Acquisitions
Books
Purchased: None
Added: None
Films
Purchased: None
Added: None
The Literary Omnivore 
Damn, I would really love it if they made Poe be gay. It’s dumb that that feels like such a radical move, but it still makes me go “whoa” to think about. And it would be best, it would be really lovely, if he had a proper romance thing with John Boyega. But I shall try not to pin all my hopes on it.
Right? That Hypable article makes such a good point: imagine growing up as a little queer kid knowing that Poe Dameron, the coolest dude to ever cool, was also queer.
I think we’re about to find out if enough fans and enough entertainment media outlets screaming about something positively can will it into existence or not.