Dear friends,
It's Thursday again. The clocks go back in the UK this Sunday. I've just finished a knitting project I've been working on, sporadically, for 18 months. All is well.
If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was Katie Stone's post "I Don't Drink", with this piece about the tradwives' terrible bread a distant second.
Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:
- A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Criterion Collection, a film series that in the age of streaming fatigue has become a handy shortcut for finding good things to watch. But who decides what is "good"?
- There I was, merrily listening to Spotify's "Spooky" playlist while I did some tedious data entry, when I was hit in the ears by the voice of Gia Ford, an artist I had never heard of before. She sounds a like a bluesy early Lana Del Rey. There's a dark, cinematic quality to her album Transparent Things that I am totally hooked on. If they ever make another Bond film, she should be in the running to do the title song. Try my favourite track, album closer "Our Mutual Friend".
- I am always in the market for a new Pride and Prejudice take, and this one — Why Aishwarya Rai in Bride and Prejudice is the best Elizabeth Bennet — does not disappoint.
- "I just quietly suffered, and quietly achieved. It was not the same as thriving, but when I look back to that period, it is proof of life." Katherine May is very moving on what it's like to grow up autistic and live to receive a diagnosis in adulthood.
- Who Gets Shipped And Why? A fanfiction data analysis.
- The BBC documentary series 40 Minutes, which ran on BBC Two between 1981 and 1994, is truly wonderful. Offbeat subjects, handled with minimal narration, unspooling over an amount of time that is the correct length for a meal. Plenty of episodes are still available to watch on iPlayer, and I would particularly recommend the one about Angel tube station, the one about the Great North Road, and "The Mighty Leek", which documents the attempts of some retired old men in the north east of England trying to grow the world's biggest leek.
- Game of the week: Doubles. You have to double a number, then double it again, and again, and again, against the clock. Really tunes up those mental maths skills...
- A poem by Margaret Atwood that I like a lot: "Now":
I love you now, right now
inside this one word now, the one you’re reading
now. And then of course this means
I love you now forever, just as
long as you can stay inside
this lemon egg of time
- Street Nuns by Felipe Hernández — a photography project that is just... paparazzi shots of nuns out and about.
- Cheating allegations rocked the men's world conker championships. The winner, an 82-year-old man fulfilling a role known as "King Conker" during the competition, was found to have a replica steel conker in his pocket. The outrage! He has since been cleared of suspicion: apparently he had the fake in his pocket to show to people as a joke.
- On the dark, divided life of L.M. Montgomery. "Ultimately, Anne of Green Gables is a Rorschach test. Readers interpret the text through their own worldview. Is it a squeaky-clean, optimistic tale of overcoming adversity, espousing traditional values? Or is it a subversive, proto-feminist work reflecting the psychological struggles and frustrated Sapphic tendencies of the author? Two things can be true."
- If you need a little positivity to add into your media diet, the humanprogress.org site might work. It is backed by the US libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, so bear that in mind, but it will alert you to cool breakthroughs such as the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in India.
- Would you like an auto-generated compliment read to you at the touch of a button? This website can help with that.
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Until next time,
Caroline
