Thinking about the things I'm indulging myself with during this time...
This was a thought generated when I was in the process of buying myself Yet Another Kind of Shower Gel, looking for one with vetiver notes (what is it with the butch coding of vetiver? I did not go for this one: 'Man's Best Friend: All our products are purpose built for men and ( Read more... )

I have, of late, my dearios, deplored the rise of the Reading Is Good For You (rather than a fun activity) You Should Be Doing It To Improve Yourself discourse -
- but I see we still have people who have not yet got that memo, and are absolutely appalled that their daughter is reading and reading a lot (as a fast reader, I know and cringe at that ( Read more... )

This may not have crossed all my dr rdrz' radar: Wellcome Trust and Wellcome Collection: planned building closure. And, as my dr rdrz may or may not know, the Trust is one of the world's major medical research NGOs, and the Collection is one of the world's major centres for the history of medicine. We feel that they know whereof they are dealing ( Read more... )

At this rather gloomy time of the year, I was rather charmed to open the latest issue of Literary Review, which can be rather uneven, and has, indeed, something in the way of form for ponceyness and higher codswallop in the opening 'Diary' page, which tends to be by very various hands.
But this month, Philip Hensher comes good in praise of ( Read more... )

I.e. it is possible both to curse the darkness and to light candles, and in fact, going 'f*ck this darkness' is often the precursor to going groping in the cupboard in which one thinks one left the candles and the matchbox.
And, okay, some part of me is just nihilistically humming along with Sir Noel about 'Bad Times Just Around The Corner' (at ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished The Favourite: query, was not Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, an early victim of Streisand Syndrome? Her extremely vigorous attempts to control the narrative about herself by writing or causing memoirs to be written do not seem to have had the effect she intended but quite the reverse: although one must take into ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Fashion is Spinach, which was okay, I suppose, but perhaps more one for the dedicated fashion historian (like the person I heard enthusing about it at the conference)?
Also finished And One to Die On.
Finished Liberty and Other Stories - maybe it's just me, but I greatly prefer it when Alexis Hall does not do ye demotic ( Read more... )

Can't find this in the Guardian online, but it's reported in 'The Week in Books' bit in the Review section that Howard Jacobson recently gave a speech dismissing children's fiction and crime fiction as mere 'stories' unfit for the designation of 'novel'.
This finally gives me a context in which to place this lovely and touching testimony in a ( Read more... )

Has been very mixed.
Got to bed really early last night and slept pretty well until fairly early this am, when couldn't get back to sleep, so decided to get up and get the earlier bus.
I am still boggling over the shuttle driver hotel-bus terminal chatting me up (I was the only passenger and probably could have risked the later shuttle...). WOT, ( Read more... )

Spotted via Twitter or maybe Facebook just now:
Can Reading Make You Happier?
(and I note that it's from 2015 and maybe I've even noticed it before, and we do observe that the writer was taking bibliotherapeutic advice from the School of Life in Bloomsbury, founded by Alain de Botton, aaaargh.)
We note that there is a certain skew towards Real ( Read more... )