THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 23, 2023:
The Pulitzer-winning novelist discusses the sequel to his 2021 crime story “Harlem Shuffle.”
A museum in England devoted to the best-selling children’s author, who died in 1990, condemned his antisemitic views.
James Lasdun
John Burnside
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Deborah Friedell
James Butler
Times Literary Supplement (July 21, 2023) – Moral catastrophe – The great inflation in Germany in 1923 and the Hitler putsch; Pioneer’s in Women’s Sport; Colson Whitehead’s Harlem; Dangerous children; Dating The Tempest and Shakespreare’s tutor….
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 16, 2023: This week, Jeff Goodell’s “The Heat Will Kill You First,” feels particularly apt. “This is a propulsive book, one to be raced through; the planet is burning,” writes our critic Jennifer Szalai. But maybe you don’t want to think more than you already do about impending doom. We’ve got you covered: The issue brims with diversions — a charming novel about a reality TV show set on Mars, fiction about complicated families and a slew of good memoirs, including ones from a senior intelligence official, the war reporter Jane Ferguson and the actor Elliot Page.
In “The Heat Will Kill You First,” Jeff Goodell documents the lethal effects of rising temperatures and argues that we need to take hot weather a lot more seriously.
In Deborah Willis’s novel “Girlfriend on Mars,” a young woman enters a reality-TV contest to leave the planet, and her marijuana-farming boyfriend, behind.
GIRLFRIEND ON MARS, by Deborah Willis
Sometimes, a girlfriend needs space. Sometimes, she goes to space. That’s the — OK, obvious — premise of “Girlfriend on Mars,” a novel by the Canadian writer Deborah Willis, who knows what we’ve wished for from books all along, which is that they were TV instead.
The American Scholar (July 14, 2023): In his new book, ‘Under the Eye of Power’, Colin Dickey asks, “What if paranoia, particularly a paranoia of secret, subversive societies, is not just peripheral to the functioning of democracy, but at its very heart?”
The litany of contemporary conspiracy theories runs long: Pizzagate, QAnon, chemtrails, “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams,” “birds aren’t real.”
Some of these are funny—the rumor that Avril Lavigne and/or Paul McCartney have been replaced by doppelgängers—and some have deadly consequences, like the mass murders motivated by replacement theory or the Chronicles of the Elders of Zion.
We might like to think this is a recent phenomenon, but the first American president to espouse a conspiracy theory was actually George Washington, a freemason who believed that the Illuminati caused the French Revolution.
Times Literary Supplement (July 14, 2023) @TheTLS : The Republican presidential contenders; Noël Coward’s vortex; Techno-utopia; Too many elitists and more…
Meticulously rendered maps chart the sequence of broad historical trends, from the dispersal of our species across the globe to the colonizing efforts of imperial European powers in the 18th century, as well as exploring moments of particular significance in rich detail.
• Visualizes 7 million years of human history.
• Analyses cities and kingdoms as well as countries and continents.
• Features major technical developments, from the invention of farming in the Fertile Crescent to the Industrial Revolution.
• Charts the spread of major global religions, including Christianity and Islam.
• Explores the increasing interconnectivity of our world through exploration and trade.
• Investigates warfare and battles from across the ages, from Alexander the Great’s conquests to the D-Day offensive.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 9, 2023: In Too Deep – Laura Trethewey’s “The Deepest Map” plumbs the new world of oceanic exploration, and its dangers; “Fancy Bear Goes Phishing”; Lorrie Moore’s New Novel; Read your way through L.A., and more…
Laura Trethewey’s “The Deepest Map” explores the new world of oceanic exploration — and its dangers.
By Simon Winchester
In the past days, the world has been riveted by the story of the Titan submersible, which we now know imploded some 1,600 feet from the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all aboard. Beyond the human tragedy — and the macabre fact that James Cameron’s blockbuster is trending online — comes an opportunity for serious reflection.
“Undaunted,” Brooke Kroeger’s new history of women in journalism, tracks the victories, setbacks and pathbreaking careers that have marked the decades-long fight for gender parity in the field.
By Jane Kamensky
Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Anne O’Hare McCormick. I hadn’t, and as the director of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, which holds peerless collections documenting pioneers in print journalism, I could have, and definitely should have. Brooke Kroeger’s compendious and lively “Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism” introduced me to her.
In “Ultra-Processed People,” Chris van Tulleken takes a close look at the franken-snacks that barely resemble what they’re imitating.
Times Literary Supplement (July 7, 2023): The national religion – NHS at seventy-five; The history of female combatants from ancient times to the present; The temptation for Romantic writers to tip into over-familiarity, and more…
The temptation for Romantic writers to tip into over-familiarity
Authorship and Romantic readers by Lindsey Eckert
In times of uncertainty, hardship or illness, re-reading a favourite novel can be a source of immense comfort. Even when we read something new, elements of familiarity – in plot, character and theme – can make us feel that the words have sprung from our subconscious. Familiarity connects us to our past and gives a sense of belonging to a community of readers. It can turn fictional characters into friends, make authors feel like confidants and render imagined settings as reassuring as a childhood home.
Literary Review – July 2023 Issue: Brushes with the Dutch Golden Age; @LauraCummingArt’s ‘Thunderclap’ – a remarkable experiment in form as well as a richly satisfying extended meditation on art, life and death’; Bismarck’s Great Gamble; Eden by Thames – The Infinite City: Utopian Dreams on the Streets of London…
The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World By James Ball
Back in the mists of time, great idealism surrounded social media. There was a sense that global interconnection would shift us into a more egalitarian and democratic age. How time makes fools of us all.
Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art & Life & Sudden Death By Laura Cumming
As a teenager with an interest in art, growing up on London’s Old Kent Road with a father whose mantra was ‘God gave you legs to walk’ (he didn’t believe in God but he did believe in walking), I often found myself on Sunday afternoons walking to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I remember distinctly the day I discovered the Dutch painters. It wasn’t Rembrandt or Vermeer who caught my eye, but Hendrick Avercamp and, especially, Pieter de Hooch.
Boomers Daily 