I can recommend two books, which have reminded me to slow down and savour my crosswordsA little sentence can hold a world. Continue reading…
‘We always see sex from the man’s view’: Cammie Toloui, the peep show performer who peeped back
Turning her camera on her customers, the sex worker and photojournalist exposed the male gaze to itself – and opened up a world of shame and desire“As a rebellious preteen, I sat down and made a list of my life goals,” writes Cammie Toloui in her phot…
Bookfilter: Magical Economies
In Ask Metafilter, miles per flower asks, “I’ve recently enjoyed a couple books that dive deep on what magic costs — Sanjena Sathian’s Gold Diggers and Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education — and I’m looking for more to read along those lines: detailed mech…
The Reckoning by Mary L Trump review – how to heal America’s trauma
A revealing blend of family lore, history, policy and anger casts light on the background and legacy of Donald TrumpLast year, Mary Trump delivered a salacious and venomous takedown of her uncle, Donald J Trump. Too Much and Never Enough doubled as awe…
Paul Mason: ‘Modern fascism’s interests are being represented in government by rightwing populists’
The former Channel 4 News broadcaster on writing at 4am, reading Carlo Rovelli and the danger posed by the new wave of fascism that’s on the rise across the worldPaul Mason was born in Lancashire in 1960, the son of a headmistress and a lorry driver. H…
Micro marvels: Levon Biss captures seeds close up – in pictures
“As a boy, my main interest in nature was finding the tallest tree to climb,” says the British photographer Levon Biss. However, after travelling the world, his curiosity shifted to nature’s most minuscule structures. For his photo series The Hidden Be…
On my radar: Shaun Keaveny’s cultural highlights
The 6 Music presenter on Schitt’s Creek, Douglas Stuart’s extraordinary Shuggie Bain and the canal-side pub he longs to visitBorn in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in 1972, radio DJ and presenter Shaun Keaveny began his career at XFM and in 2007 joined 6 M…
Summer in the city: Edmund White on sex and dancing in 60s New York
The hot summer of 1967 was full of cruising and drinking, sleeping on roofs, and listening to music late into the night• Read other authors on their memorable urban summersThere was a hit song in the 1960s by the Lovin’ Spoonful called Summer in the Ci…
Goodreads’ problem with extortion scams and review bombing
How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare (Time) Scammers and cyberstalkers are increasingly using the Goodreads platform to extort authors with threats of “review bombing” their work–and they are…
Speak, Silence by Carole Angier review – a remarkable biography
The first major study of revered author and academic WG Sebald reveals an obsessive and brilliant mindWG Sebald’s mother Rosa once said that her son had been born without a skin, so that he was unable to protect himself from being overwhelmed by the su…