Friday recommendations:

Cows on the Village Commons (click for larger version)

* The fabulous summer edition of Goblin Fruit is live and waiting to be devoured. There's a weekend's worth of great reading right here...but if you want more:

* Lily Hyde discusses The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach in the "Fairytale Reflections" series at Katherine Langrish's Seven Miles of Steel Thistles.

* Erzebet YellowBoy discusses the process of becoming an artist, with the help of cartoonist Jellyvampire, at I Saw an Angel.

* Howard and Rex have posted more comic pages at John Barleycorn...going into the world of the "mundus" this time. (I've just been into their studio next door to see them, and they look great. The pages, I mean. Howard and Rex, that's another matter....)

* There's a fascinating article on ancient beers in The Smithsonian, one on the artist Lee Krasner in Tablet, and a good article on Virginia Woolf's later essays in The London Sunday Times.

* Today's art recommendations: First, check out the magical portfolio of English illustrator Brett Ryder (via Phantasmaphile). Second, oh how I love Rabbit in Front of a Mirror by the German painter Michael Sowa. (For more his work, go here.) Third, have a look at the "leafcuts" of Spanish artist Lorenzo Duran at Naturayarte (via Ruthie Reddon). And fourth, for you New Yorkers: "Horus' Daughter," an exhibition at "Cinders Gallery" in Brooklyn, looks mythic and interesting. Could be fabulous, could be dreadful, hard to tell.

* Today's fiction recommendations: First, "Demons, Your Body, and You" by Genevieve Valentine, in the YA Fiction issue of the Subterranean Press online magazine, edited by Gwenda Bond. Second, "The Wolves of Brooklyn" by Catherynne M. Valente in Fantasy magazine; plus, an interview with the author here.

* Today's poetry recommendation: "A New Kind of Map" by Christina Cairns at A Mermaid in the Attic. And be sure to follow the links back to the posts by Rima Staines and The Dark Mountain Manifesto that inspired the poem.

Have a good weekend.