Without the wonderful Ellen Kushner's spotting, I'd have completely missed Fernanda Eberstadt's fascinating piece about countertenors now and the castrati then: The 18th-century musicologist Charles Burney describes a (possibly apocryphal) lung-power contest between the young Farinelli and a German trumpeter, in which Farinelli, having finally exhausted his rival, “not only swelled and shook the note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions, and was at last silenced only by the acclamations of the audience.” I loved her nonfiction book about music and Gypsy culture in the south of France, Little Money Street.
A secret chamber discovered in the National Library at Kolkata: "National Library has always been reputed to haunted. Now, here is a really eerie secret. A mysterious room has been discovered in the 250-year-old building a room that no one knew about and no one can enter because it seems to have no opening of kind, not even trapdoors."
Seanan McGuire offers some advice on the interactions (or not) between authors, readers and reviewers, particulary to authors on responding to reviews online. This is my favorite part: "Don't be Princess Demandy-Pants." (Although number five is undoubtedly the most important.)
When I stop reading Poetry Daily, well, daily? But I did. And starting again is my pre-New Year's resolution.