By: Jill Grunenwald, Marketing and Communications Specialist

Library friends! I hope those of us who spent the weekend in New Orleans had a fun and productive time in the Big Easy. I’m headed back home to Cleveland today and admittedly really looking forward to seeing all four of my cats (Yes. Four). Whether you’re hanging out at the airport waiting for a flight home, still at the convention center for post-conference meetings, or were #ALALeftBehind and this is just another Monday for you, here are this week’s offering of 5 articles that caught my attention.

Monday Mardi Gras.jpg

The Rumpus has an exclusive excerpt from Dana Schwartz’s new memoir
Even if you haven’t heard of Dana, you’ve probably heard of her alter ego: @GuyInYourMFA. This is, hands down, one of my favorite Twitter accounts ever. I don’t have my MFA, but I do have my BFA in creative writing and fifteen years ago I knew That Guy (confession: I may have actually dated That Guy). Dana’s memoir Choose Your Own Disaster is out now.

The US Patent and Trademark office has issued its 10 millionth patent
Before becoming a librarian, I very seriously considered law school and had I known intellectual property attorneys were a thing, I probably would have ended up there instead of where I did. But, on the subject, while I was a MLIS graduate student at the University of Kentucky, I fell down a patent rabbit hole trying to track down a single missing page. Visit my Twitter page for the entire story.

(The editor respects this shameless self-promotion)

Do you read spoilers? BookRiot looks at a study that argues spoilers increase enjoyment
This Whovian really just wanted an excuse to use a River Song .gif

Tor.com takes us down memory lane and looks at the very first episode of Welcome to Night Vale
I didn’t get Welcome to Night Vale at first. It was just this weird, bizarre podcast and I couldn’t quite figure out what, exactly, they were doing. But, at the same time, it felt like something I should really like and so I kept pushing through and somewhere along the line it clicked that “Oh, this is like a local radio station. Now I understand” and that made all the difference. Welcome to Night Vale is still a weird, bizarre podcast but now it’s the weird and bizarre I like. In my cube, I even have a quote hanging: There’s no such thing as fiction. Just non-fiction written in the wrong parallel universe.

Kid Lit is stepping up in the face of injustice
The well-coordinated effort surpassed their initial goal of $42,000 in less than 24 hours but that’s no reason to stop. Follow this link if you’re interested in contributing.