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Literary Wish List for Natasha Lyonne

Photo by All Bong on Unsplash

Have you heard? Natasha Lyonne is slowly being written off Orange is the New Black to headline a show of her own: Russian Doll on Netflix. In fact, the show premiered this week (!!!) and is executive produced by Amy Poehler. So why are we just now hearing about it? The show centers on Natasha Lyonne’s character Nadia, a young woman who can’t stop reliving her 36th birthday. Well…maybe it’s more accurate to say that she keeps dying on her 36th birthday and she just can’t stay dead. And it’s a comedy.

We’ll definitely be bingeing this show immediately, but it got us thinking about our deep deep love for Natasha Lyonne and all the literary adaptations we’re dying to cast her in. We want her to be constantly booked and unable to take any of our casting suggestions, but just in case…

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Pop Culture Mail Carriers Who Really…Deliver

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” goes the United States Postal Service motto. And why? Well, because mail carriers are badasses, that’s why—and people have noticed. Mail carriers of all shapes, species, and skill levels litter the halls of pop culture. Today, we celebrate eight famous fictional postal workers, regardless of if you trust they would correctly deliver your mail or not.

Posted by Maggie Fremont

A Literary Tour of Atlanta

Photo by Nate Hovee from Pexels

The Big Game is in Atlanta today! And rather than bite our nails down to the quick worrying if our team is going home with a win, we’re daydreaming about a literary tour of The ATL. Because let’s face it: we’ll be reading during all those commercial breaks anyway. Might as well stay on theme.

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Least Threatening Villains in Lit and Pop Culture

Looking for more villains like these? Check out The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains or The League of Regrettable Sidekicks by Jon Morris!


The best villains are the ones that are truly scary. The bad guys who make us quake in our boots, who leave us terrified and truly convinced that becoming their enemy would be the worst possible scenario. Take Amy in Gone Girl, a woman who isn’t at all physically threatening, but whose meticulous scheming and total lack of a conscience make her utterly terrifying. Or consider Thanos, the recent big bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a villain who may be bright purple, but who is physically intimidating and emotionally unperturbed by wiping out half the living things in the universe in a single snap.

These are the villains that are true nightmare fodder, that all other villains aspire to emulate. Of course, there are also the truly sympathetic villains — the cool kids, the guys who may want to raise hell, but are so charming that we’d probably just let them do it. And then…there are these guys. The ones who may dream of being true villains, but who barely make it out of laughing stock level who couldn’t make a chihuahua tremble if they tried.

Posted by Rose Moore

What If Fictional Archeologists Acted Like Actual Archeologists?

Editor's Note: To finish out 2018, we're revisiting some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. This post was originally published on 3/13/18. 


The adventurer-archeologist is a common story trope, traipsing through jungles and lost tombs in sexy outfits, firing guns and flashing whips, with a quip for every occasion. They’re ready for anything—except, apparently, the actual business of archeology. Here’s a peek at what it would be like if these action heroes acted like their real-world counterparts.

Posted by Jadzia Axelrod

Pop Culture/Literary BFFs Who Go Together Like PB&J

Editor's Note: To finish out 2018, we're revisiting some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. This post was originally published on 4/3/18. 


They say best friends are never more than a phone call away. But It’s 2018, so we should probably revise that to “never more than a FaceTime, Snapchat, or VR sesh away.” Even then, these fancy new methods of keeping in touch really only apply if you exist in the same dimension as your bestie, which to be frank, might not always be the case. Before passing away, Stephen Hawking co-published a final paper on the possibility of a multiverse, prompting us to wonder, can we really even say who our true best friends are? For all we know, they might not even exist in the same time or space. We tested the theory, and sure enough, in the case of these pop culture and literary icons, their perfect matches weren’t even found in the same story, let alone universe.

Posted by J. B. Kish