Now that the linkspam is in bloom...
Men Are Terribly Poor Stuff, reprised yet again: Online dating: Cyber Cyrano for hire - Too busy to chat up the suitors in your online dating account? No problem. Matt Prager will simply assume your identity and do it for you. Can I get a loud, collective *EEEEUUUUWWWW*? At least Christian had already seen and fancied Roxanne when he asked Cyrano to do the literate stuff for him.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on home smoking - alas, less helpful than I had hoped because he, like all the books I've found on the subject so far, is all about the SALT. I have managed to produce some extremely acceptable smoked food without brining or rubbing with vast quantities of sodium chloride.
Oliver Burkeman on the virtues of imperfection. Fails to mention the necessity of leaving some slight flaw for the soul to escape, lest it be trapped in the work (if this was ever a concept, I think I found in a poem by D H Lawrence about Navajo blankets, which I somehow doubt to be an entirely reliable source).
Helen Fielding: 12 things I love about Blighty: I know it's so LA to be creepily upbeat, but being back in England is awfully nice.
Frances Spalding finds much to enjoy in a biography of a bohemian couple who lived the artistic life to its extremes, though I must say, these two artists also sound very, very annoying and being able to get away with bad behaviour in a v gendered way.
And on this The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, like the reviewer, I am more than a little iffy about presenting a woman as Everywoman, rather than as an individual subject, and double that if she is an Afghan woman. I am perhaps too much reminded of Marina Warner in Monuments and Maidens about the plethora of statues and imagery representing women as abstractions, and the very few of individual identifiable women.
Steve Roud, a folklorist of great experience and distinction, is fascinated by the way we massage details into stories and prefer them to the more prosaic reality; or, as he puts it, the "grain of untruth" that lies at the heart of urban legend.
And has documented these extensively in London Lore: The Legends and Traditions of the World's Most Vibrant City
Kathryn Hughes praises Chloë Schama's digging into a court case which inspired one of Collins's lesser known novels, Man and Wife (1870).
And for anyone who hasn't seen the latest update on this extraordinary case: Historian Orlando Figes admits posting Amazon reviews that trashed rivals. And a fairly bizarre column by one of his trashed rivals.
Penelope Cruz edits Vogue 'plus-size' edition. Plus-size in this context meaning up to UK sizes 12 and 14, though even so, someone makes the argument "it's not such a good thing to show plus-size because it's not really physically healthy and not always flattering to fashion." How sizes 12 and 14 amount to pathologically unhealthy obesity (problematic enough a concept in itself) alas escapes me.
[H]as the naked calendar gone beyond a joke? We asked feminist Sali Hughes and naturist Sam Hawcroft to argue the case. I am so Point Thah U Hav Misst It about the naturist's claims.
Cod-faking scandal.
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1214349.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.