This piece is about weird enough people to begin with (and I mean the people who think they're the rightwise ruler of Some Island in the South Seas by Mysterious Divine Right): ‘There was a prophecy I would come’: the western men who think they are South Pacific kings : The fantasy of being revered by people on the far side of the world is an old ( Read more... )

I was moved to think this lately when reading a blog post apropos of the introduction of Fancy Furrin Fudds into England by George III and Queen Charlotte: How King George III’s kitchens gave Britain a taste for international cuisine.
At which I was, yer what? having encountered some years ago an early eighteenth century manuscript recipe book from ( Read more... )

Or else it was compiled by somebody who really doesn't get out very much, because I am reminded of that time some guy whinged on about ye rare and exotic ingredients in the recipe columns of the newspapers these days, in terms that suggested that, you know what, he never, ever, does the supermarket shop for their household or he would regularly see ( Read more... )

Since yet again I have nothing declarable to discuss, except for 2 short stories by Barbara Hambly on my Kobo, one of which I have not yet even finished.

So, I will turn to
( Read more... )

Today in the Guardian obituaries, Han Suyin.

A writer whom I have not read for many years. I enjoyed, at the time, her three volumes of autobiography The Crippled Tree (1965), A Mortal Flower (1966) and Birdless Summer (1968), but haven't read them for years, in fact I'm not sure I still have copies because I lent at least one of them to a friend ( Read more... )

Thinking about that list of books that I am not going to touch with a ten-foot bargepole unless there is no other reading matter around, and wondering if there is any common factor that makes these books 'meh' to me (and to a fair number of my dr rdrz).

All except one are by male writers, but there are male writers whose works you will pry from my ( Read more... )

I've just been re-reading Margaret Drabble's trilogy of novels about the 1980s, The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), and The Gates of Ivory (1992), and realising that there is no overall name to the sequence that one can apply.

These were really good and I enjoyed them, the first two slightly more than the third. I think I see what ( Read more... )

I don't know how widespread this one is? it's the one about Bedouin putting pebbles in the wombs of female camels to prevent them getting pregnant on caravan duty.

Apparently not.
When Arab gynaecologists hear this story at European conferences, they normally respond with a simple, short question: “Have you ever tried to put a stone in a camel’s ( Read more... )

Because this article (and presumably the book this couple has written) is W T Stead's Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (1885) bang up to date and on the global scale (even down to the strategy of purchasing a young girl).

Let's get out of the way the fact that, yes, there is a problem, and worldwide a lot of horrible things are done to women.

I'm ( Read more... )

Afghanistan - the new skiing destination: Taliban-plagued Afghanistan is not an obvious tourist draw. But it's hoped that a snowy valley may change that.

Apart from all the other objections (dangerous political situation, lack of infrastructure, etc, etc): in what sense can this possibly be described as "ecotourism"? Only if you wend your way ( Read more... )