Dept of, terribly poor stuff: Bride Asks For Divorce The Day After Her Wedding Thanks To Childish Prank - what's boggling is that the likelihood of some kind of jolly wheeze on the groom's part was in the mix, and she told him NOT THAT, so he rules-lawyered, but if he was so likely to do X you said specifically NO why were you even marrying the guy ( Read more... )

Suspend your belief on a very fragile thread - though it is a rom-com, so being prepared to accept the dubiously realistic is there from the get go: Tartan and tinsel: a Scottish castle-dwelling novelist on Brooke Shields’ new romcom: [T]his is not a film you want to get into authenticity arguments with.... Obviously, they have never had a ( Read more... )

Will confess that I did not even know that 'rhythmic gymnastics' was a thing, let alone an Olympic sport (will also confess that there are LOTS of things I do not know are Olympic sports until the Olympics come round and suddenly everybody is talking about them).
But it sounds like a classic 'backwards and in high heels' thing that gets put down ( Read more... )

Saw a discussion on Twitter earlier today about the YA category of books, which apparently somebody had claimed was some new millenial thing? and people were saying no, it went back earlier than that -

- and I went to myself, hang on, when I was But A Young Thing, Penguin Books put out a list for people who had slightly outgrown Puffins for the ( Read more... )

Swedish contraception app reported after dozens fall pregnant.
I'm not sure that the 'unsuitable for irresponsible youngsters' argument has anything to do with this - would irresponsible feckless young'uns, who will not stop nookying just because the app light turns red, use such a thing, which requires a fair degree of faff to use, even if it's ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Boys will be Boys, which was still very familiar although it is many years since I last read it. Wonder if Turner would really have liked to be writing something a bit more serious about matters of popular culture; and would have liked to be nerdish in the archives of the publishing companies, because there are sometimes ( Read more... )

Today's ODNB Life of the Day: Marje Proops by Katharine Whitehorn.
I daresay that many of my dr rdrs were in the wrong country to know of or born just a bit too late to recall Dear Marje, so I will copy a few choice bits here, as those links do not last: [T]he editor of Good Taste magazine asked her to write an article on the problems of mothers ( Read more... )

I am so with Hadley Freeman on the perniciousness of the notion that the teenage years are the best of one's life and that if they are that is an awfully long downhill slope.
I'm sure I've ranted before about the narrative - possibly in the version of, that if a fellow had been Head of School at Eton, everything else, including being e.g. Viceroy ( Read more... )

Is it just me, or does this article on the mid-life crisis assume a default male?
And does not this connected piece, Help! My partner's having a midlife crisis, although it does at points say him/her, seem somewhat geared towards women dealing with the male mid-life crisis?
(And thinking about midlife crises and ageing and gender, was given to ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished des Anges, As Simple as Hunger, which was - interesting. Didn't work for me as well as Brown Bread, Boys, and also I am detecting a bit of a pattern (perhaps on insufficient evidence). But was still worth reading.
Sally Smith, Marshall Hall: A Law Unto Himself (2016), as recommended by
( Read more... )