What I read
Finished Stripping Gypsy, which was interesting, but I think it had a bit that problem of Doing A Biography when, if you know a bit about the period and other women doing similar things, you think, well, she was part of a context? and probably not the only woman making a remunerative career who had Issues with Men and Marriage, and ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished A Civil Campaign and honestly, would we really recommend that she marries him? really?
However, I did then re-read The Flowers of Vashnoi (2018) and the short story 'Winterfair Gifts' (2004) to round off the binge.
On Thursday subscribers to KJ Charles' newsletter got a freebie short story tying up threads from Think of England ( Read more... )

I put this on my 'interesting?' list a while ago, and I recently noted that it was Very Cheap On Kindle, so bought it.
It is, I apprehend, self-published: this is the author's website.
It's about six young women writers of the 60s who wrote plays/books that are a) now considered iconic of the period and continue to be produced/reprinted b) had ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago we watched the Kenneth Branagh Love's Labour's Lost (2000).
Which is rather a weird mashup.
It sets it in 1939 with the King of Navarre basically turning his back on the outbreak of European conflict to do the whole celibate oath of study thing (you know where Navarre is? what has the guy been doing during events in Spain?)
But it ( Read more... )

I sent off for free delivery vouchers some weeks ago, but when they turned up, whoever was delivering our neck of the woods was over capacity and no longer taking any more customers. But idly checking the site last week I saw that it is now possible to set up delivery (and I also have prepay vouchers), though not whether this is with same supplier ( Read more... )

Hmmm: OK Boomer, tell us how to set up an underground abortion-provision network? ‘You have to stand up to illegitimate authority’: what veteran abortion activists can teach us in the Trump era: Last year, Heather Booth headed from her home in Washington to Georgia to tell, once again, the story of Jane. It was a disheartening moment, to consider ( Read more... )

A thing that has been popping up a lot this week across various things - books I've been reading, threads on Twitter, papers at the symposium yesterday - has been that thing about the valuing of Works of Art in various fields for doing things which are visibly technically difficult or remarkable, or demand Effort from the person engaging with the ( Read more... )

As I thought while watching and mentioned in a discussion elsewhere, perhaps the most recent movie fits betters into the category of works inspired by/riffing off LMA's famed work, of which there are so many, rather than as a recreation: but, as I suggested elsewhere, if you want the backing for a movie, you have to make LW for TODAY, rather than ( Read more... )

The ever excellent and incisive Anne Billson: Anna Karina, Catherine Deneuve: how movies malign women by calling them muses.
Amid tributes to Anna Karina, who died earlier this month, the word “muse” recurred. As in “the muse of Jean-Luc Godard” or “Karina served as a cinematic muse to Godard”. And in nearly every homage and obituary, you could ( Read more... )

In Greta Gerwig’s new film of Little Women, the March girls wrestle with sexual politics and creative fulfilment. How true is it to Louisa May Alcott’s vision?
Possibly, the article suggests, truer than publishing conventions of the day allowed Alcott to be?
Though I'm now thinking:
a) By the next sequel (Little Men) as I recall John Brooke had ( Read more... )