Linkety-linkety

[oursin]

Words of wisdom:

Sometimes Guy Browning's 'How To...' columns hit nails right on the head:
There is generally held to be a deceitful and manipulative element to cunning but being considerate requires exactly the same mental processes, only for nicer ends.

Ditto Oliver Burkemann's 'This Column Will Change Your Life':
But there's a slightly less

Comments

[hafren]

the realm of big events traditionally colonised by men, in particular military action.

Oh, bleedin' Jesus... when I think of all the women who have written novels about military conflict in recent years, and earlier - how can reviewers be so damn ignorant?

[oursin]

Even if you don't go back as far as the Great War itself, exactly how long is it since Pat Barker's GW trilogy? - getting on for 20 years?

Am also irritated by the condescending notion that women should be writing about Big Events of the traditionally male-defined kind.

[noveldevice]

Whoo, golly, that Tanya Gold article was chilling.

Suddenly my history looks a lot saner. It feels good.

[tree_and_leaf]

Can one at all trust the reviewing capabilities of someone who can perpetrate this wild and wholly inaccurate generalisation?

The Return offers welcome evidence that women's fiction is getting more ambitious, marching into the realm of big events traditionally colonised by men, in particular military action.

Oh, good grief. Even if you substitute 'romance' for 'women's fiction', has she never heard of Georgette Heyer?

[oursin]

Or all the women during and after the Great War who were writing about it. Or Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters (1896) about the Indian Mutiny.

[amaliedageek]

Burkeman needed to read the articles to work out that Real Simple is not an exemplar of the voluntary simplicity movement? The ads for Tiffany's would have been a big hint in that direction.

[flats]

Tanya Gold: Reading the intro, I was thinking you'd have to be pretty insane to write an article like that, digging over things mercifully past and private and bringing them in the public realm...

...And oh god was she! Bloody batshit, actually. How can people with that little self-awareness exist? I imagine it applying to prioprioception too, with these people accidentally amputating thumbs each time they try to slice a loaf of bread.