Starting this week’s links off with the light, fun stuff, there’s a post at io9 on the 8 Types of Expository Beards.

The A.V. Club examines Willow after 27 years, which makes me feel both kind of old (has it really been 27 years?) and a little defensive because Willow is, no joke, one of my all-time favorite fantasy movies.  It’s up there with Dragonslayer and Ladyhawke and Legend in my book.

Web Urbanist looks at 13 of the world’s most beautiful bookstores, any one of which would be an acceptable place for me to go when I die.

Kate Hart has some designs for Book Pumpkins. I’m a little sad to say that I don’t think I’ve read any of these titles since I haven’t read any YA in about a year and a half, but this is such a great idea I had to share.

Looks like Laverne Cox will be the new Frank-N-Furter in a TV version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Brain Pickings has “Ursula K. LeGuin on the Magic of Conversation and Why Human Communication is Like Amoebas Having Sex.”

Margaret Atwood was interviewed by The Millions.

Kameron Hurley was interviewed by A Fantastical Librarian.

Diabolical Plots writes about the unaddressed issues in YA dystopian fiction, which actually explains a good deal of why I’ve shied away from YA recently. Namely, I think the YA dystopia often squanders the storytelling potential of the dystopian setting in favor of telling small, personal stories, dealing with individual issues rather than societal or global ones.

Meanwhile, at Dark Matter Zine, Kameron Hurley asks, “What comes after dystopia?” 

Geek Mom wonders why we’re so hard on heroines (spoiler alert: the answer is sexism) while at Tor.com, Sleeps With Monsters tackles the related issue of strong female characters and double standards.

At Kirkus Reviews, a look at Playboy’s history of publishing science fiction. Maybe with no more nudes in the magazine, we’ll be getting more fiction in the future.

This week saw the publication of one of the books I have been most anticipating this year, Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance. She talks about the book in The Big Idea, tells about some of her literary influences at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog, and answers a ton of questions from fans in a Sword and Laser podcast.