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The TED Reading List

I recently came across this very interesting reading list, published by TED in 2018.  It is wonderfully varied, and certainly contains quite a few niche genres which I certainly have not read before.  Although the list specifies that these choices are aimed at summer reading, I thought that I would look through it and pick out ten titles which I would like to get to over the next year or two.

1. A Lucky Man: Stories by Jamel Brinkley 412vb-c3-l._sx336_bo1204203200_
‘In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J’Ouvert can’t help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history.  Jamel Brinkley’s stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class–where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.’

51xf8lggsll2. Sophie’s Misfortunes by Comtesse de Ségur
Les Malheur de Sophie (Sophie’s Misfortunes) describes the life of Sophie before the events of Les Petites Filles Modèles, when she still lives with her parents in the French countryside. She is a lively, adventurous child who keeps getting into mischief with the critical complicity of her cousin Paul. Each chapter, with a few exceptions, follow a similar pattern: Sophie does something bad or stupid; she is found out or confesses her mischief; and she gets punished –or not – by her mother Mme de Réan, who uses each incident to teach a moral lesson.’

3. Eunice: The Kennedy Who Changed the World by Eileen McNamara 41gx2bnlk4el._sx327_bo1204203200_
‘A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist examines the life and times of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, arguing she left behind the Kennedy family’s most profound political legacy.  While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the Senate, his Stanford-educated daughter Eunice was tapping her father’s fortune and her brothers’ political power to engineer one of the great civil rights movements of our time on behalf of millions of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Now, in Eunice, Pulitzer Prize winner Eileen McNamara finally brings Eunice Kennedy Shriver out from her brothers’ shadow to show an officious, cigar-smoking, indefatigable woman of unladylike determination and deep compassion born of rage: at the medical establishment that had no answers for her sister Rosemary; at the revered but dismissive father whose vision for his family did not extend beyond his sons; and at the government that failed to deliver on America’s promise of equality.  Granted access to never-before-seen private papers—from the scrapbooks Eunice kept as a schoolgirl in prewar London to her thoughts on motherhood and feminism—McNamara paints a vivid portrait of a woman both ahead of her time and out of step with it: the visionary founder of the Special Olympics, a devout Catholic in a secular age, and a formidable woman whose impact on American society was longer lasting than that of any of the Kennedy men.’

41ipnhudval._sx326_bo1204203200_4. The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
‘Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer–one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.  How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered?  Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? “Profound and poignant” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Bright Hour is about how to make the most of all the days, even the painful ones. It’s about the way literature, especially Nina’s direct ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer.’

5. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown 51uu9frdkhl._sx324_bo1204203200_
‘For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times–the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.  It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.’

51epm2wuoil._sx327_bo1204203200_6. The Overstory by Richard Powers
‘An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers-each summoned in different ways by trees-are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest. In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? “Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”‘

7. No Pity by Joe Shapiro 41gldpjfgsl._sx321_bo1204203200_
‘In No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, Joe Shapiro of U.S. News & World Report tells of a political awakening few nondisabled Americans have even imagined. There are over 43 million disabled people in this country alone; for decades most of them have been thought incapable of working, caring for themselves, or contributing to society. But during the last twenty-live years, they, along with their parents and families, have begun to recognize that paraplegia, retardation, deafness, blindness, AIDS, autism, or any of the hundreds of other chronic illnesses and disabilities that differentiate them from the able-bodied are not tragic. The real tragedy is prejudice, our society’s and the medical establishment’s refusal to recognize that the disabled person is entitled to every right and privilege America can offer. No Pity‘s chronicle of disabled people’s struggle for inclusion, from the seventeenth-century deaf communities on Martha’s Vineyard to the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1992, is only part of the story. Joe Shapiro’s five years of in-depth reporting have uncovered many personal stories as well. ‘

8. A Kind of Mirraculus Paradise by Sandra Allen 51hyyhwsbql._sx338_bo1204203200_
‘Writer Sandra Allen did not know their uncle Bob very well. As a child, Sandy had been told Bob was “crazy,” that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than Sandy had been alive, and what little Sandy knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences over sixty, single-spaced pages, the often-incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic,” and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world.  In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia, Sandy translates Bob’s autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Lacing Bob’s narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable.’

9. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien 61u61td7s2bl._sx331_bo1204203200_
‘Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations–those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences. With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality.’

51ni9lnyfdl._sx325_bo1204203200_10. Sorry, Not Sorry by Haji Mohamed Dawjee
‘Why don’t white people understand that Converse tekkies are not just cool but a political statement to people of colour? Why is it that South Africans of colour don’t really ‘write what we like’? What’s the deal with people pretending to be ‘woke’? Is Islam really as antifeminist as is claimed? What does it feel like to be a brown woman in a white media corporation? And what life lessons can we learn from Bollywood movies? In Sorry, Not Sorry, Haji Mohamed Dawjee explores the often maddening experience of moving through post-apartheid South Africa as a woman of colour. In characteristically candid style, she pulls no punches when examining the social landscape: from arguing why she’d rather deal with an open racist than some liberal white people, to drawing on her own experience to convince readers that joining a cult is never a good idea. In the provocative voice that has made Mohamed Dawjee one of our country’s most talked-about columnists, she offers observations laced with acerbic wit. Sorry, Not Sorry will make readers laugh, wince, nod, introspect and argue.’

Which of these books take your fancy?  Have you read any of them?

‘Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness’ by Susannah Cahalan ****

I have wanted to read Susannah Cahalan’s memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness for such a long time, but have struggled to get my hands on a copy.  Thankfully it was added to my online library app, and I was able to borrow it straight away.  Unusually in this case, I actually watched the film before picking up the book, and thankfully found a memoir which has so much depth in both formats.

Brain on Fire is described as ‘the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture 13547180her identity’.  As a twenty four-year-old, Cahalan was establishing herself as a journalist in New York City, living in a studio apartment by herself, and working at the New York Post.  After having a series of strange symptoms for a number of weeks – the certainty that there were bedbugs in her apartment which were biting her, a sudden out of character jealousy which causes her to check her boyfriend’s emails, migraines, numbness in various parts of her body, and paranoia – she wakes alone in a hospital room, ‘strapped to her bed and unable to speak’, and with no memory of how she came to be there.  This previously astute and independent woman was labelled ‘violent, psychotic, a flight risk.’

Cahalan has vivid and terrifying hallucinations, and violent moodswings.  She loses her appetite, she forgets how to read, and she loses her ability to speak.  When she is first admitted to hospital, Cahalan writes: ‘This new me was physically different: skinny and pale, cheeks sunken in, and thighs whittled down to toothpicks.  My eyes were glazed over…  it was hard to maintain a conversation because I operated on a delay, responding to basic questions several seconds after they were posed.’

Cahalan spent weeks visiting different medical experts, with both her family and her boyfriend, in order to get to the bottom of her illness.  All of her tests and vital signs came back as normal, but her family pushed for answers.  Although she does eventually get an answer, many of the doctors whom she sought help from tried to convince her that her illness was all in her head, and originated only from a psychological source.  Cahalan believes that her illness may have been caused by a pathogen ‘that had invaded my body, a little germ that set everything in motion.’  She comments: ‘I would learn firsthand that this kind of illness often ebbs and flows, leaving the sufferer convinced that the worst is over, even when it’s only retreating for a moment…’.

Cahalan’s experiences are harrowing, and rather troubling to read about.  Her first seizure ‘marked the line between sanity and insanity.  Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming weeks, I would never again be the same person.  This was the start of the dark period of my illness, as I began an existence in purgatory between the real world and a cloudy, fictitious realm made up of hallucinations and paranoia.’  She forgets huge chunks of time, and moves through various misdiagnoses, some of which are rather traumatic.

Along with her own experiences, Cahalan has woven in those of her divorced mother and father and their new partners, her boyfriend Stephen, and her brother, who was away at college and largely kept in the dark about her illness.  Cahalan also includes portions of the stream-of-consciousness journal which she kept whilst in hospital, and which in retrospect she does not recognise herself within.  Some of her patient notes also feature in Brain on Fire.  This, alongside her narrative, demonstrate how erratic her behaviour so quickly became, and the way in which she had no control whatsoever over her body.

Throughout, Cahalan is open and honest about all of her experiences, many of which must have been highly traumatic to recount.  The terror of her condition within Brain on Fire is almost tangible.  Of course, with a memoir or illness narrative dealing with such a strange and debilitating disease, parts of the book are rather difficult to read.  However, Cahalan charts her incredibly hard and harrowing journey, in a thoughtful and fascinating manner.  There is so much depth to Cahalan’s narrative, both scientifically and emotionally, and it feels like a privilege to finally be able to read Brain on Fire.

‘Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland’ by Patrick Radden Keefe ****

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which blends together history and a particular true crime case, was the winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.  I have travelled to Northern Ireland many times before, and am fascinated by the history of the country.  I had been drawn to the book for some time before I found a copy to borrow on my library’s app.

43363624._sy475_The prologue of Say Nothing begins in July 2013, in the library of Boston College, which ‘holds the most comprehensive collection of Irish political and cultural artefacts in the United States’.  Here in 2013, writes Radden Keefe, ‘two Belfast detectives arrive, and take back with them a series of secret files… [which] contained sensitive and dangerous secrets.’

Part of the focus of Say Nothing is the disappearance of thirty eight-year-old widow Jean McConville, from a small home in the notorious Divis Flats in Belfast.  She was the mother of ten children, and four more who died in infancy.  Throughout, Radden Keefe relates details of her home life, and later her case, to the societal conditions in Belfast at the time, showing that Jean’s circumstances were far from unusual: ‘But this was Belfast in 1972, where immense, unruly families were the norm, so Jean McConville wasn’t looking for any prizes, and she didn’t get any.’

Radden Keefe makes Jean’s case feel so immediate; he writes, for instance, the following about the circumstances of her disappearance: ‘But when they opened the door, a gang of people burst inside.  It happened so abruptly that none of the McConville children could say precisely how many there were – it was roughly eight people, but it could have been ten or twelve.  There were men and women.  Some had balaclavas pulled across their faces; others wore nylon stockings over their heads, which twisted their features into ghoulish masks.  At least one of them was carrying a gun.’  These people were the McConvilles’ neighbours.  They dragged Jean away, using her son Michael as a decoy, and left little trace behind them.

Michael McConville becomes the focus of one of the earlier chapters, in which Radden Keefe examines how he spent his time during the Troubles.  Michael ‘spent most of his time thinking about pigeons’, as opposed to the other children, who made danger their playground.  These children would ‘scuttle outside and crawl through the skeletons of burned-out lorries, trampoline on rusted box-spring mattresses, or hide in a stray bathtub that lay abandoned amid the rubble.’

We learn much more about Jean as the book goes on.  After her husband’s death to cancer, she, who ‘had been delicate by temperament to begin with, fell into a heavy depression’, and became a recluse.  She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and had little support from those outside of her home.  According to Michael, his mother was ‘an overworked, depressed, psychologically fragile’ woman, who ‘spent her days cocooned in her flat, smoking cigarettes and juggling children and doing laundry by hand.’  A day before she was dragged from their flat, attest her children, she did not come home from bingo.  She had been forcibly taken to an army barracks after being ‘tied to a chair, beaten and interrogated’.

Jean’s story is, of course, heartbreaking, as is the majority of the historical and political context against which her disappearance occurred.  After she is taken, her children are left alone in the flat, having to fend for themselves: ‘They held onto one another, marooned inside the flat.  Bedtime was suspended and dishes piled up in the sink.’  Helen, the eldest McConville daughter, takes charge of her younger siblings, and receives no help whatsoever from their cruel neighbours, or the Catholic church, who were ‘unsympathetic’ to the McConvilles’ plight.  Soon, rumours began to spread about Jean’s disappearance, with some believing that she ‘had absconded of her own free will, abandoning her children to shack up with a British soldier.’  The children are eventually taken into care, where many of them are treated in appalling ways, the traumas of which profoundly affect their adult lives.

Radden Keefe’s writing pulled me in immediately.  He covers the historical and political background with impeccable control, and although the information within the book could quite easily have become dense, he makes it accessible.  The author has such a handle on complex and tumultuous periods of Northern Irish history.  Radden Keefe’s prose is informative, intelligent, and intoxicating.  He focuses on many different individuals throughout, who all have a part to play in the wider story.

Say Nothing is so much more than a true crime book; it is a social, political, classist, and geographical history.   Radden Keefe writes at length about the IRA, Sinn Fein, and tensions between Northern Ireland and the British government, and focuses on individuals who had quite a part to play during this period, such as Gerry Adams.  Of course, there is a great deal of shocking content here, some of which I found quite difficult to read.  Radden Keefe examines the myriad concerns which the wider political context fostered, all of which are intertwined with the story of Jean and her children.  Say Nothing is fascinating and incredibly thorough, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Books for Springtime

I have always been a seasonal reader to an extent – particularly, it must be said, when it comes to Christmas-themed books – but I feel that my reading choices have been aligned more with the seasons in the last tumultuous year. Connecting my reading with the natural world around me has given me a sense of calm whilst the world has reached such a point of crisis, and picking up a seasonally themed book has become rather a soothing task. With this in mind, I wanted to collect together eight books which I feel will be perfect picks for spring, and which I hope you will want to include in your own reading journeys.

These books are best enjoyed with hot cross buns, birdsong, and long walks in the countryside

1. The Nature of Spring by Jim Crumley

‘Spring marks the genesis of nature’s year. As Earth’s northern hemisphere tilts ever more towards the life-giving sun, the icy, dark days of winter gradually yield to the new season’s intensifying light and warmth. Nature responds… For our flora and fauna, for the very land itself, this is the time of rebirth and rejuvenation – although, as Jim Crumley attests, spring in the Northlands is no Wordsworthian idyll. Climate chaos and its attendant unpredictable weather brings high drama to the lives of the animals he observes – the badgers, seals and foxes, the seabirds and the raptors. But there is also a wild, elemental beauty to the highlands and islands, a sense of nature in animation during this, the most transformative of seasons. Jim chronicles it all: the wonder, the tumult, the spectacle of spring.’

2. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

‘When orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live at her uncle’s great house on the Yorkshire Moors, she finds it full of secrets. The mansion has nearly one hundred rooms, and her uncle keeps himself locked up. And at night, she hears the sound of crying down one of the long corridors. The gardens surrounding the large property are Mary’s only escape. Then, Mary discovers a secret garden, surrounded by walls and locked with a missing key. One day, with the help of two unexpected companions, she discovers a way in. Is everything in the garden dead, or can Mary bring it back to life?’

3. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

‘A discreet advertisement in ‘The Times’, addressed to ‘Those who Apppreciate Wisteria and Sunshine…’ is the impetus for a revelatory month for four very different women. High above the bay on the Italian Riviera stands San Salvatore, a mediaeval castle. Beckoned to this haven are Mrs. Wilkins, Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester, each quietly craving a respite. Lulled by the Mediterranean spirit, they gradually shed their skins and discover a harmony each of them has longed for but never known. First published in 1922 and reminscient of ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’, this delightful novel is imbued with the descriptive power and light-hearted irreverence for which Elizabeth von Arnin is renowned.’

4. Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively

‘Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother’s garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.’

5. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

‘”Now, my dears,” said old Mrs Rabbit one morning, “you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden.” But what does Peter Rabbit do? Beatrix Potter’s delightful ‘Tale of Peter Rabbit’ tells the story.’

6. Spring: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons by Melissa Harrison

‘It is a time of awakening. In our fields, hedgerows and woodlands, our beaches, cities and parks, an almost imperceptible shift soon becomes a riot of sound and colour: winter ends, and life surges forth once more. Whether in town or country, we all share in this natural rhythm, in the joy and anticipation of the changing year. In prose and poetry both old and new, Spring mirrors the unfolding of the season, inviting us to see what’s around us with new eyes. Featuring original writing by Rob Cowen, Miriam Darlington and Stephen Moss, classic extracts from the work of George Orwell, Clare Leighton and H. E. Bates, and fresh new voices from across the UK, this is an original and inspiring collection of nature writing that brings the British springtime to life in all its vivid glory.’

7. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald

‘From the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Offshore’, ‘The Blue Flower’ and ‘Innocence’ comes this Booker Prize-shortlisted tale of a troubled Moscow printworks. Frank Reid had been born and brought up in Moscow. His father had emigrated there in the 1870s and started a print-works which, by 1913, had shrunk from what it was when Frank inherited it. In that same year, to add to his troubles, Frank’s wife Nellie caught the train back home to England, without explanation. How is a reasonable man like Frank to cope? How should he keep his house running? Should he consult the Anglican chaplain’s wife? Should he listen to the Tolstoyan advice of his chief book-keeper? How do people live together, and what happens when, sometimes, they don’t?’

8. Spring Morning by Frances Darwin Cornford (my own review)

‘I love discovering new poets, and came across this title at the back of Charlotte Mew’s Saturday Market. Published in 1918, this is a relatively short collection, made up of just 17 poems. It is complete with charming woodcuts. Whilst I found a couple of these poems quite odd, Cornford’s nature writing throughout is lovely.

I have chosen to copy out the entirety of ‘Autumn Morning at Cambridge’, which made me feel rather homesick for my home city:

I ran out in the morning, when the air was clean and new,
And all the grass was glittering, and grey with autumn dew.
I ran out to the apple tree and pulled an apple down,
And all the bells were ringing in the old grey town.

Down in the town, off the bridges and the grass
They are sweeping up the leaves to let the people pass,
Sweeping up the old leaves, golden-reds and browns,
While the men go to lectures with the wind in their gowns.’

Please stay tuned for subsequent summer, autumn, and winter recommendation posts, which will be published at the beginning of each new season. Also, let me know if you have any seasonal reads to recommend!

‘These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards’ by Jean Sprackland ****

I love walking through graveyards, and have been lucky enough to do so all over the world.  Although creepy to some, for me, it is a very peaceful environment.  Whilst living in central Glasgow, I would regularly walk up to the Necropolis, where enormous and grand mausoleums wound their way up the hill, and more modern graves filled the slopes.  In fact, Akylina and I took a lovely long walk there when she visited the city for a conference.

Graveyards all over the United Kingdom are the focus of poet and non-fiction author Jean Sprackland’s These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards.  Her memoir of sorts has been split into eight different sections; these include loose musings on topics like ‘The Graveyard in Spring’, ‘The Graveyard at Dawn’, and ‘The Drowned Graveyard’. 49569565._sy475_-1

In her prologue, Sprackland comments: ‘I can remember my life by the graveyards I have known…  Wherever I have lived, I have found them – some like cities, others like gardens, or forests of stone – and they have become the counterparts of those lived places: the otherworlds which have helped make sense of this world.’  She goes on to write about her decision to ‘revisit all my old hometowns, to make a journey into the physical fabric of my own past.’

In beautiful prose, Sprackland takes us around the country.  The first stop on each trip is the graveyard, the place where she believes ‘the stories are kept’.  Her descriptions are gorgeously poetic; of a grave in Stoke Newington, for instance, she writes: ‘A breeze ripples the roof of the tomb with shadow.  The lower branches of a holly tree languish exhaustedly over its surface, like the thin arms of a girl over her books.’

For Sprackland, too, graveyards are a place filled with peace: ‘Sorrow is present, but age and weather have tempered it.’  She writes at length about her infatuations with individuals buried in the various graveyards which she visits – Elizabeth Pickett, for instance, who died in 1781 ‘in consequence of her Cloaths taking Fire the preceding Evening’, and a smuggler and ‘sometime leader of a notorious gang’ in Devon, quite wonderfully named Hanibal Richards.  Alongside these individual stories, she seamlessly integrates a wider sense of place, and discusses the avoidance of, and discomfort felt toward, the notion of death in many modern day societies.  She also writes about the history of each graveyard which she visits.

Sprackland writes with such insight.  She informs her reader: ‘I am accustomed to thinking of the graveyard as a kind of archive, a source of information which is not available elsewhere.’  She is also honest about the little she knows regarding her own family: ‘What does it mean, anyway, to belong somewhere?…  No place owns me, and I like staying free, staying lost.  But I don’t know where the bones of my ancestors lie, and I have never seen a monument bearing my family name.’

These Silent Mansions is both absorbing and moving, and infused with such beauty.  Sprackland’s journey, around both her past and the pasts of so many who lie beneath the ground, is a quiet and absorbing one.  The author writes so tenderly about the natural decay of both gravestones, and the bodies which lie beneath them: ‘Words blur and lose their definition, or the stone recedes and the leading stands proud on its pegs like long teeth before loosening and falling out.’  These Silent Mansions is utterly transporting, and so thoughtful.

‘In My Own Time: Thoughts and Afterthoughts’ by Jane Miller ****

I had not heard of Jane Miller’s In My Own Time: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, but I could not resist picking up a brand new Virago hardcover online for just a couple of pounds when placing a remaindered books order in the late autumn of 2020. Imagine my surprise when I found that this lovely collection of articles, written by a British author for an American magazine, had just five ratings and two reviews on Goodreads! I felt that it would be a title of interest to a lot of my friends and fellow readers, and had no choice but to add my own review to the very small pool in existence.

In My Own Time follows Miller’s memoir Crazy Age, which Diana Athill commented came from ‘a mind so subtle and well furnished.’ Interestingly, Miller, who has worked for many years as a teacher and Professor in London, writes that she only became a journalist when she was almost eighty years old. The columns collected here were all first published in the Chicago-based proudly Socialist magazine entitled In These Times. They have been published together here for the first time, specifically for British readers. However, I feel that a lot of the topics which Miller writes about and comments upon are relatively universal, particularly within the Western world. There is, of course, a lot of emphasis upon Britain and its politics, but the subjects here are wide-ranging. In My Own Time surely has a great appeal for a wide range of readers.

The topics of Miller’s articles, of which she has full selective control, vary greatly. She writes, amongst other things, about ‘reading Tolstoy in Russian, on Syrian refugees, on the demise of the NHS and on struggles with technology.’ She discusses class, economic inequality, the monarchy, travelling, the media, the changing use of language, education, Charles Dickens, protests… Each subject is a surprise, and most of them wonderfully feel quite unrelated in content to those which they are sandwiched between. Interviews with historian Eric Hobsbawm and Labour politician Tony Benn, both of whom Miller was greatly fond of, have been included as appendages.

Miller carries rather a charming humility throughout. Of the span of twentieth century history, she comments: ‘We grandparents were there, witnesses to it all; yet I am shaky and uncertain when it comes to change itself and not much good at remembering moments when the world spun on its axis… But more often time is marked for me by the births of babies, the deaths of my elders or the day in 1985 when I stopped smoking.’

In her preface, Miller writes about the difficulties which she sometimes faces in selecting topics for her monthly articles. She says: ‘There is often far too much in the news or in my life, not all of it suitable, though on one or two occasions I could think of nothing at all.’ In her first column for the magazine, which is included here, she reflects: ‘it seems to me now that I was announcing – perhaps a little apologetically – who I was: confessing that I was middle-class, had attended a school where I didn’t learn much, was a bit of a technophobe or technofool, and that I was awash in memories of a sort which might seem dull or incomprehensible to an American readership.’

The pieces here range from May 2011 to the start of 2016, and are arranged chronologically, which I appreciated. It seems a logical way to arrange such a book, and I enjoyed being able to follow threads of idea from one article to another. Alongside recent occurrences, there are some marvellous anecdotes sprinkled through its pages; for instance, when, in 1875, Karl Marx helped Miller’s great aunt Clara with her German homework. There are some very personal troubles here, too; she writes quite candidly about her husband’s death from cancer, and the loss which is left after his passing: ‘When someone you know and love dies you are confronted by the unique, particular shape of the hole they leave, by the utter specificity of their absence. That strange, contradictory, complicated person will never exist again.’

Miller writes with truth, and honesty. On the monarchy, for example, she writes: ‘I wish I knew quite why I should want to watch these strange people at their play and in their hats and uniforms doing what they do. I don’t know them. We’ve got almost nothing in common. They spend their days doing things I’ve never done, just as I spend mine doing things they’ve probably never done.’ Miller is an author who is very to the point, which I admired.

Miller is wonderfully scathing about the Conservative government, their misleading comments, and their utter lack of transparency. She writes the following in a column entitled ‘Bad Language’: ‘We’ve had prime ministers recently “passionately believing” things, and entirely sure that something is “the right thing to do” and “the right ting for our country”. These are weasel words, which bypass the expectation that we might be told exactly why we have gone to war, why the National Health Service will be even better once it has been privatised and reduced, why bankers must be indulged and everyone else must take it on the chin, and so on.’

In My Own Time is an important reflection on the modern world, and an excellent work of social commentary, written by an author with a great deal of wisdom and wit. Miller is an erudite person, in touch with both the modern world and the twentieth-century history which has helped to shape much of it. She also has a marvellously warm sense of humour, and I found myself chuckling at points. The pieces within In My Own Time are relatively brief, covering an average of four pages each, but without exception, they have been so well executed. I am so surprised that this wonderful book has not had a larger readership, and can only hope that more readers come to it in the near future. I also hope that another book of this kind is forthcoming.

‘The Body: A Guide for Occupants’ by Bill Bryson *****

Like many readers, I very much enjoy Bill Bryson’s non-fiction work.  I picked up his newest publication, The Body: A Guide for Occupants having not read any of his writing for such a long time, and was so pleased that I did.  I was reminded once more of how warm his prose is, and how fascinating his subjects.

Many of Bryson’s books are essentially travel writing, in which he writes about countries and regions which he has lived or travelled within – the United States, United Kingdom, and Africa are just three examples.  The Body is something a little different to these personal geographies, though.  It is far more science-based than much of his work, and does not include many personal stories, something which his books tend to be built upon.  It looks inward, trying to decipher what really makes a human being. 43582376

The Body has been split into many chapters, each of which focuses upon a distinctive part of the human body.  These range from ‘The Immune System’ and ‘The Brain’ to ‘Into the Nether Regions’.  These chapters are incredibly thorough; there is not an element of the body which has not been explored in some way.  He moves seamlessly from one topic to another.  With his chapter on the skin, for instance, he moves from bacteria found on the skin to the phenomenon of itching, and then the reasons as to why we lose hair as we age, all in less than two pages.

Bryson writes about so many things here, including the beginning of forensic science; microbes and proteins, and their functions and uses within the body; viruses; advances in medicine; evolutionary changes within human anatomy; how different parts of us age, and the consequences felt; the myriad benefits of exercise; and the wonder found within the structure of our bones.  He writes about so many things that are known about the human body, and also the surprising number of elements which remain a mystery.  Bryson introduces several medical conundrums, interesting cases which cannot be solved.

Bryson has chosen to begin The Body with rather a fascinating chapter, entitled ‘How to Build a Human’, which calculates how expensive it would be to procure all of the elements which make up the human body – clue: a lot.  This memorable prologue, as it were, sets the tone for the book, and feels perfectly placed.

As ever, Bryson’s writing in The Body is both absorbing and accessible.  He grapples with complex ideas throughout the book, but presents everything in a way which can be read and understood by newcomers to this subject.  He introduces myriad facts in marvellous ways, which really make one think; for instance, ‘In the second or so since you started this sentence, your body has made a million red blood cells.’  One can see from the outset that Bryson clearly has quite a passion for this subject, and this shines throughout, as does his humour.  Throughout, Bryson consults experts in different fields, and also mentions a lot of books which focus upon biology along the way.

The Body is a book which one can learn, unsurprisingly, a great deal from.  I have always been fascinated by biology and the human body, and have read a few books on the subject before, but I found myself learning new facts throughout.  Although there is such a great deal packed into the pages of The Body, and a great deal of impeccable research has clearly been done, it never feels saturated with information, and can easily be read from cover to cover.  The Body is, all in all, a fact-lover’s dream, which demonstrates how wonderful the human body is, in all of its strangeness.

I will end this review with a passage which I, personally, found fascinating: ‘The most remarkable part of all is your DNA.  You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto.  Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system.  You are in the most literal sense cosmic.’

Armchair Travelling: Korea

My boyfriend and I had planned to travel to South Korea last year; evidently it did not happen.  Like almost everyone else, the majority of my travelling since March 2020 has been through the medium of books.  I am so keen to go to South Korea – I am obsessed by its food, its films, its fashion – but until I can safely step on a plane and explore properly, I thought I would gather together some books in case anyone wishes to join me in armchair travelling.  I have read the first of these, and count it as one of my favourite novels, but the others are high on my wishlist.

1. Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin ***** (review here) 9720572
When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom?  Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

6132182. When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park
Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul are proud of their Korean heritage. Yet they live their lives under Japanese occupation. All students must read and write in Japanese and no one can fly the Korean flag. Hardest of all is when the Japanese Emperor forces all Koreans to take Japanese names. Sun-hee and Tae-yul become Keoko and Nobuo. Korea is torn apart by their Japanese invaders during World War II. Everyone must help with war preparations, but it doesn’t mean they are willing to defend Japan. Tae-yul is about to risk his life to help his family, while Sun-hee stays home guarding life-and-death secrets.

3. The Calligrapher’s Daughter by Eugenia Kim 6400109
In early-twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is encouraged by her mother—but her stern father is determined to maintain tradition, especially as the Japanese steadily gain control of his beloved country. When he seeks to marry Najin into an aristocratic family, her mother defies generations of obedient wives and instead sends her to serve in the king’s court as a companion to a young princess. But the king is soon assassinated, and the centuries-old dynastic culture comes to its end.  In the shadow of the dying monarchy, Najin begins a journey through increasing oppression that will forever change her world. As she desperately seeks to continue her education, will the unexpected love she finds along the way be enough to sustain her through the violence and subjugation her country continues to face? Spanning thirty years, The Calligrapher’s Daughter is a richly drawn novel in the tradition of Lisa See and Amy Tan about a country torn between ancient customs and modern possibilities, a family ultimately united by love, and a woman who never gives up her search for freedom.

299837114. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.  So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.

5. I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young-Ha Kim 797192
A spectral, nameless narrator haunts the lost and wounded of big-city Seoul, suggesting solace in suicide. Wandering through the bright lights of their high-urban existence, C and K are brothers who fall in love with the same woman – Se-yeon. As their lives intersect, they tear at each other in a struggle to find connection in their fast-paced, atomized world.  Dreamlike and cinematic, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself brilliantly affirms Young-ha Kim as Korea’s leading young literary master.

175915606. My Son’s Girlfriend by Mi-Kyung Jung
At once an ironic portrayal of contemporary Korea and an intimate exploration of heartache, alienation, and nostalgia, this collection of seven short stories has earned the author widespread critical acclaim.

7. The Guest by Hwang Sok-Yong 1447640
Based on actual events, The Guest is a profound portrait of a divided people haunted by a painful past, and a generation’s search for reconciliation.  During the Korean War, Hwanghae Province in North Korea was the setting of a gruesome fifty-two day massacre. In an act of collective amnesia the atrocities were attributed to American military, but in truth they resulted from malicious battling between Christian and Communist Koreans. Forty years later, Ryu Yosop, a minister living in America returns to his home village, where his older brother once played a notorious role in the bloodshed. Besieged by vivid memories and visited by the troubled spirits of the deceased, Yosop must face the survivors of the tragedy and lay his brother’s soul to rest.  Faulkner-like in its intense interweaving narratives, The Guest is a daring and ambitious novel from a major figure in world literature.

175915728. No One Writes Back by Eun-Jin Jang
Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque novel. No One Writes Back is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly for three years, from motel to motel, meeting people on the road. Rather than learn the names of his fellow travelers—or even invent nicknames for them—he assigns them numbers. There’s 239, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a coma; there’s 109, who rides trains endlessly because of a broken heart; and 32, who’s already decided to commit suicide. The narrator writes letters to these men and women in the hope that he can console them in their various miseries, as well as keep a record of his own experiences: “A letter is like a journal entry for me, except that it gets sent to other people.” No one writes back, of course, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some hope that one of them will, someday…

Have you read any of these?  Which have piqued your interest?  I am also keen to make this ‘Armchair Travelling’ a mini series on the blog, so please let me know if you’d like recommendations from a particular country.

‘A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym’ by Hazel Holt *****

After Barbara Pym’s death, American author Anne Tyler wrote: ‘What do people turn to when they’ve finished Barbara Pym?  The answer is easy: they turn back to Barbara Pym.’  Although I have not quite completed her oeuvre, I very much appreciate this perspective; Pym’s novels have so much to offer, and her strength of place and character, as well as her delicious wit, are worth revisiting over and over again.

I realised some months ago that there are many authors whose work I have greatly enjoyed, but whom I know very little about as individuals.  Trying to remedy that, I requested a copy of Hazel Holt’s biography A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym from my local library, and settled down with it on a peaceful afternoon. 20590911

In this biography, says the blurb, ‘… we come to know a person whose humour and sharp observation were uniquely combined with a compassionate acceptance of human nature – qualities that made her such an outstanding novelist.’  It is promised that Pym ’emerges from these pages as an entertaining companion with an insatiable curiosity and an unquenchable delight in the eccentricities of her fellows.’

Holt was a good friend to Pym, and also acted as her literary executor, before passing away in 2015.  In her introduction, Holt writes: ‘It seemed right… to try to put Barbara into her own setting, to define the manners and mores of the social scene around her (one day her novels will be a rich source for social historians), to describe her friends and colleagues, and to show how her books were moulded by her life, as well as the other way around.’  The book includes many entries from Pym’s private papers, as well as a lot of her correspondence; this is particularly true in the case of the friendship between herself and poet Philip Larkin.  Even in the briefest correspondence, Pym writes beautifully and compassionately to her intended.

Rather than focus entirely on Pym, Holt gives some of the rather colourful history of her parents and grandparents.  Pym’s own childhood, in a small market town in Shropshire, was ‘comfortable and conventional’, quite by contrast to the life of her illegitimate father, and filled with ‘a great deal of quiet affection’.  When she moved to Oxford to study English Literature at University, however, Pym became somewhat more alive.  She kept a diary, which she regularly filled with ‘sightings’ of men whom she liked, and certainly had a great deal of adventures with them.  Whilst at University, Pym occasionally attended Labour Party meetings, but ‘more for the young men than for the politics’.

Holt continually asserts how important Pym’s imagination was to her; she often preferred her conjured fantasies and imagined relationships with others to whatever was happening in reality. Holt follows Pym through various love affairs; here, she observes, Pym often ‘made the mistake of expecting more than the other person was prepared to give, of building a great romantic castle on shifting sand.’

In some ways, Holt writes, Pym was rather naïve, and this was particularly true when it came to politics, or the problems of the wider world.  When she moved to Poland to work as a governess in the tumultuous days of 1938, she largely ignored the threat of war: ‘Although she notes without comment that the Germans had entered Prague she gives equal space in her diary to the fact that she had been served fried potatoes with yoghurt.’   Holt captures, quite vividly, Pym’s travels around Europe, which become extensive following the Second World War, as well as the war work which she completed in Naples, Italy.

In A Lot to Ask there is, as one might expect, a lot of commentary about Pym’s books and her writing practices, which I found rather enlightening. Holt quotes at length from many of Pym’s books, in order to further illustrate points.   It is clear that even as a teenager, Pym was already developing her signature prose style, capturing scenes and individuals in such vivid detail in just a sentence or two.

Pym wrote thirteen novels, four of which were published posthumously, after her untimely death from cancer in early 1980.  There was, however, a painful fourteen-year period in which Pym could not find a publisher for her books, and which impacted her greatly.  She is a novelist who has thankfully, and deservedly, risen to prominence once again in the twenty-first century, and I for one feel grateful that I still have several of her books yet to read.

First published in 1990, A Lot to Ask is a biography of the loveliest measure.  One can tell how fond Holt was of Pym, yet the biography still feels as considered and far-reaching as it would be had the pair never known one another at all.  Like her subject, Holt writes with a great deal of warmth and understanding.  So absorbing, and highly readable, A Lot to Ask has so much depth to it, and feels entirely harmonious.  Holt’s biography is a sheer delight, both charming and satisfying.  I would dearly like to read more of her work, as well as the remainder of Pym’s correspondence in the near future.

Five Great Memoirs

I have always delighted in learning about the lives of others, and have tried to incorporate as many memoirs into my reading as is possible.  I enjoy reading about individuals, particularly women, whose lives are very different to my own, and always find this a highly enriching experience.  With this in mind, I have gathered together five wonderful memoirs of women which I have read of late, and which I would highly recommend.  There are illness narratives, translated books, works set during wartime, and quiet meditations in the list, and I dearly hope that you find something new to pick up.

34104392._sy475_1. The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs *****
An exquisite memoir about how to live–and love–every day with “death in the room,” from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air.  Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer–one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.  How does one live each day, “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?  Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, even as she wrestles with the legacy of her great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nina Riggs’s breathtaking memoir continues the urgent conversation that Paul Kalanithi began in his gorgeous When Breath Becomes Air. She asks, what makes a meaningful life when one has limited time?  Brilliantly written, disarmingly funny, and deeply moving, The Bright Hour is about how to love all the days, even the bad ones, and it’s about the way literature, especially Emerson, and Nina’s other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. It’s a book about looking death squarely in the face and saying “this is what will be.”  Especially poignant in these uncertain times, The Bright Hour urges us to live well and not lose sight of what makes us human: love, art, music, words.

2. When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew by Hendrika de Vries 45480725._sy475_****
Born in the Netherlands at a time when girls are to be housewives and mothers and nothing else, Hendrika de Vries is a “daddy’s girl” until her father is deported from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to a POW camp in Germany and her mother joins the Resistance. In the aftermath of her father’s departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem “inferior” and those who do not obey.  As time goes on, Hendrika absorbs her mother’s strength and faith, and learns about moral choice and forced silence. She sees her hidden Jewish “stepsister” betrayed, and her mother interrogated at gunpoint. She and her mother suffer near starvation, and they narrowly escape death on the day of liberation. But they survive it all—and through these harrowing experiences, Hendrika discovers the woman she wants to become.

50403465._sy475_3. The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui ****
Award-winning journalist Delphine Minoui recounts the true story of a band of young rebels in a besieged Syrian town, who find hope and connection making an underground library from the rubble of war.  Day in, day out, bombs fall on Daraya, a town outside Damascus, the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. In the midst of chaos and bloodshed, a group searching for survivors stumbles on a cache of books. They collect the books, then look for more. In a week they have six thousand volumes. In a month, fifteen thousand. A sanctuary is born: a library where the people of Daraya can explore beyond the blockade.  Long a site of peaceful resistance to the Assad regimes, Daraya was under siege for four years. No one entered or left, and international aid was blocked.  In 2015, French-Iranian journalist Delphine Minoui saw a post on Facebook about this secret library and tracked down one of its founders, twenty-three-year-old Ahmad, an aspiring photojournalist himself. Over WhatsApp and Facebook, Minoui learned about the young men who gathered in the library, exchanged ideas, learned English, and imagined how to shape the future, even as bombs fell above. They devoured a marvelous range of books–from American self-help like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to international bestsellers like The Alchemist, from Arabic poetry by Mahmoud Darwish to Shakespearean plays to stories of war in other times and places, such as the siege of Sarajevo. They also shared photos and stories of their lives before and during the war, planned how to build a democracy, and began to sustain a community in shell-shocked soil.  As these everyday heroes struggle to hold their ground, they become as much an inspiration as the books they read. And in the course of telling their stories, Delphine Minoui makes this far-off, complicated war immediate. In the vein of classic tales of the triumph of the human spirit–like All the Beautiful Forevers, A Long Way Gone, and Reading Lolita in TehranThe Book Collectors will inspire readers and encourage them to imagine the wider world.

4. These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards by Jean Sprackland **** 49569565._sy475_
Graveyards are oases: places of escape, of peace and reflection. Each is a garden or nature reserve, but also a site of commemoration, where the past is close enough to touch: a liminal place, at the border of the living world.  Jean Sprackland’s prize-winning book, Strands, brought to life the histories of objects found on a beach. These Silent Mansions is also an uncovering of individual stories: vivid, touching and intimately told. Sprackland travels back through her own life, revisiting graveyards in the ordinary towns and cities she has called home, seeking out others who lived, died and are remembered or forgotten there. With her poet’s eye, she makes chance discoveries among the stones and inscriptions: a notorious smuggler tucked up in a sleepy churchyard; ancient coins unearthed on a secret burial ground; a slow-worm basking in the sun.  These Silent Mansions is an elegant, exhilarating meditation on the relationship between the living and the dead, the nature of time and loss, and how – in this restless, accelerated world – we can connect the here with the elsewhere, the present with the past.

49114654._sx318_5. Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul by Taran N. Khan ****
For most Indians, Kabul is a city that is near, yet far-familiar, yet unknown. When Taran N. Khan arrived in Kabul in the spring of 2006, five years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, she was earnestly cautioned never to walk. Her instincts compelled her to do the opposite: to take that precarious first step and enter the life of the city with the unique, tactile intimacy that comes from being a walker. She didn’t stop until 2013, when she returned to India.  In Shadow City, Taran N. Khan paints a lyrical, personal, and meditative portrait of a city we know primarily in terms of conflict and peace. As a Muslim woman raised in a small town in India, Taran discovered that she had access to parts of Kabul uncharted by travellers before her. The result reads like an elegiac prose map of the city, rich with surprises-from the glitter of wedding halls that shine like a bizarre version of Las Vegas; to the mental health hospital where women are abandoned and isolated but exist in a rare space of freedom and solitude; to the bookseller behind The Bookseller of Kabul, who sued Åsne Seierstad for her portrayal of him and then published the rebuttal which he displays proudly in his shop window.


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An Interview with Dan Oakes

Dan Oakes is a former attorney from southern California. He has tutored and taught LSAT classes for six years now, and written extensively on it. His own LSAT score was in the 99th percentile, and he knows much more about the test now than he did when he took it himself. He’s helped hundreds of students prepare for the exam, and his former students are now practicing attorneys and law students scattered across a variety of law schools including upper tier-1 schools. He has reinvented himself numerous times, and is a former standup comic, bartender, journalist, teacher, bridge club owner, and more. He’s also a magician member of Hollywood’s famous “Magic Castle,” a United States Chess Federation expert, an American Contract Bridge League silver life master, and a mediocre but avid curler. He’ll be breaking a 47+ year streak by getting married on April 30, 2016. His LSAT tutoring website is

Q & A

Q: How did you study for the LSAT when you first took it?

A: Very haphazardly. I took the LSAT on a whim. I asked a friend what he was doing one weekend in late 2001, and he said, “I’m taking the LSAT on Saturday; you should take the LSAT.” As it happened, I was in a bookstore that weekend and noticed “One L,” Scott Turow’s account of his first year at Harvard Law. It’s a book that talks people out of law school, for the most part, but I found it fascinating and intriguing. I kicked the idea around for a couple of weeks, then signed up for the December LSAT. I went to Barnes & Noble and picked up the Princeton Review book, which…how shall I say this…wasn’t any better then than it is now. I knew absolutely nothing about the test before I bought the book; I worked through it for a few weeks, then took the test. Not recommended! But I was lucky; I had a little philosophy in my background, and I had done things that coincidentally happened to be great training for the LSAT – I had worked in journalism, and I was a competitive bridge/chess/poker player, which is great applied formal logic training: “If he had the king of diamonds, he would have played a spade; he didn’t play a spade, so he must not have the king of diamonds.”

Q: Why did you decide to become an LSAT tutor?

A: Shortly after I had been laid off from the firm I worked at as an eminent domain attorney, I started my own solo practice, and a friend asked for a help with a couple of logic games. She was taking a class…either Kaplan or Blueprint. I helped her out, and told me I had explained it better than her instructor, and she had paid some ridiculous but typical amount for the class…maybe $1,200 bucks?

I had absolutely no idea that people paid that much for prep courses. When I took the test, I didn’t even look into prep courses. I thought it was something I could do on the side, so I printed up some business cards, she got me a couple of referrals, I started advertising online, and it just built up to the point where I could do it full-time, and I stopped renewing my bar card and practicing. That’s the how; the why is basically that I enjoyed it, and I was good at it. I set my own hours, I don’t have to wear a coat and tie and deal with judges and attorneys, and I get to help people achieve their dreams. I enjoyed law school, and I enjoyed being a lawyer, but I didn’t have the lifelong passion for it that some of my students do – it’s really important to them that they become attorneys, and I love being able to help make that happen.

Q: If you had a chance to give just a bit of advice to every student studying for the LSAT, what would it be?

A: Focus on conditional logic and get it down cold or close to cold before you start worrying about anything LSAT-specific, like game diagrams, LR question types, etc. Give yourself a long enough time horizon; improvement is incremental. Focus on accuracy – thinking your way through the games and arguments. If you’re doing the process correctly, timing will improve organically. Finally, only three things really suck in between now and becoming a lawyer – the LSAT, your first semester finals, and the bar exam. So keep your eyes on the prize and do the work.

Q: What do you see as the key to Logical Reasoning mastery?

A: When it comes to LR, at first pay specific attention to flaw questions and questions that ask you to find the conclusion. Conclusion questions because on every passage that has a conclusion – which is the vast majority – the question will revolve around that conclusion in some way, and if you can’t find it, you’re in trouble. Flaw questions because every argument you see will be imperfect. Syllogisms make for bad LSAT questions – there’s no flaw, they can’t be strengthened or weakened; they’re 100% certain, there’s no assumption being made… So LR questions are about imperfect arguments, and there are only so many ways that arguments can go wrong. Learn them by getting flaw questions down solid, and you’ll see the knowledge pay off on the other question types.

Q: What do you see as the key to Logic Games mastery?

A: First, you’ve got to learn just a few basic but essential diagram types. These are the tools in your toolbox. When you’re diagramming to test an answer choice, don’t confuse the 100% certain stuff with the possible-but-not-necessary stuff; that’s a recipe for disaster. Similarly, keep in mind the important difference between the could-be questions and the must-be questions. If you have a must-be-true question, it does you no good to know that an answer choice could be true; but if you know it could be false, you can eliminate it.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who are thinking of starting their own LSAT tutoring business?

A: Lots! LOL. Take it seriously; don’t add LSAT just because you kind of understand it better than most people and you want to add a subject to your general tutoring business. If someone gets a C instead of a B in the algebra class you’re tutoring them in, it’s probably not a big deal; he or she passed, anyway. If someone gets an LSAT score five points lower than they could have, it could cost him or her tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money; it could keep him or her out of a higher ranking law school, which in turn can lead to fewer job opportunities. Work through all of the past available LSAT exams, buy and read the available commercial test prep materials – you’re responsible for your own Continuing Education. You could probably count the number of weeks I haven’t thought about the LSAT at all over the past six years on one hand. Be familiar with the conventional wisdom from the tutors and writers who have gone before you, and see if you can develop some ideas of your own, too.

Force yourself to discover new things about the test. Most of my students have taken a prep course taught by a major test prep instructor who’s on script – you either get it their way, or you don’t. They need someone who can explain the same idea in different ways, if the first way doesn’t work. If you haven’t taken an actual timed, proctored, scored LSAT, sign up and do so. It’s good for your skill set, and it’s good for your business, as far as credibility goes.

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Theme Parks and Obstacle Courses – A Novel

“And I kept drinking. Probably for about another month or so. Until one day…” Pat stopped briefly and took a breath. He was giddy with exhilaration. “And I have no memory of this, I was told about it at the hospital – they found me. Outside. Behind the dumpster.”

He could feel the momentum of his listeners, as if all of them were tilted on the lip of a wave. He took another breath; maybe for resolve, maybe for the shame.

“The people who owned the laundromat a few doors down found me. I was squatting, sodden from the rain, in the shadow of a dumpster. My hands were over my ears like I was trying to block out a sound. I had black shit oozing from my ears and my nose and mouth and I was screaming my lungs out.

“Just one note. I’d scream and hold it like my body was some kind of demented tuning fork. I must have screamed holes in my vocal chords – speaking to the doctors, my voice was like gravel for days.

“Drink had chased me across the world and into a dungeon under a pub. And finally, when it came down into the cellar, I put up my hands and surrendered.”

He stopped talking, finding himself exhausted, with no more words in his mouth. There was no response other than respectful, conciliatory silence from the roomful of strangers.

“I’m so glad I don’t know any of you,” he said. “The thing I am most frightened of is telling people I know. My friends have no doubt been wondering where I have been; what I’ve been doing. I’m back in Australia, I’m in my early thirties, and even my clothes don’t fit me properly.” He found himself without anything else to say. He gathered his jacket around him.

“Thank you, Patrick,” said Draga, quietly. Not knowing what else to do with himself, he slouched back to his seat. “Welcome,” she said.

Pat tried to listen to the next speaker, a fidgety young woman in her mid-twenties, but couldn’t hear or concentrate. He found himself shivering, as if from cold. The one thing he couldn’t shift, no matter how much encouragement or therapy or medication he underwent, was the shame.

He felt heavy and lethargic when he left the midday meeting, but the sun was out and the wind in abeyance and soon, his mood lifted. That afternoon, Melbourne felt like it could have been Paris. Cold wind trickled over the hard, pale stones. Crystalline, brittle sunlight gilt the trees that were marooned on their small islands of earth in the footpath.

He walked down Collins Street, past the Athenaeum Theatre and continued over Swanston. He looked in a few shop windows, admiring the Mont Blanc pens and other gentleman’s accoutrements. He had a vague feeling of being a stranger amongst all the business people, but that had become a constant feeling. Most of all, he wanted to walk this way because it was the way he used to walk Rita to work. Years ago.

Pat went to the Myer sports department and bought a pair of bottom-of-the-line Asics running shoes, and a heart-rate monitor. This was not quite the bottom-of-the-line; the base model was only a heart-rate monitor, so he spent an extra forty dollars for the model that also had a stop-watch and a digital clock.

Having a watch was exciting; it made him responsible again. Out of the hospital and back in society, he now had to do things like catch planes and turn up to a paying job.

The walk back through the city was mid-afternoon quiet; the traffic at a three PM lull before peak hour kicked off at four PM. Back at The Re:Public Johnny was gone, as was his car, and Wally had gone to sleep with his feet on the desk in the office. Pat changed into a pair of shorts and a baggy jumper.

He laced up his new runners that were so white that the panels of leather seemed to glow. He strapped the heart-rate monitor onto his wrist and, sitting on the bed, looked at his reflection in the mirror. He used his key to undo the oversize screws and put it down the back of the wardrobe, deep, so not even the incidental daylight could catch it.

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text:
Headlinse Edition

Thursday headlines: You only get one shot

US regulators find the single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to be safe and effective, paving the way for it to be authorized within days. / BBC News

A sweeping new Covid-19 data platform offers access to more than 5 million anonymized records from 160 countries. / STAT

Helen Lewis: The scarcity of memorable pandemic photographs says something about this crisis. / The Atlantic

Stories from community healthcare facilities in rural Mississippi with deep ties to the civil rights movement. / The Bitter Southerner

An investigation finds that recent high-profile crimes with Asian American victims in Oakland were more likely about opportunity than racism. / Oaklandside

See also: A deep dive into the Nashville bomber. / The New York Times

Congressional leaders are divided over a commission that would investigate the Capitol attack. / Punchbowl News

An intelligence report expected today finds that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. / Reuters

A photographic tribute to Tehran's rugged Alborz mountains. / Manuel Diestro

Mark Bittman: Small-scale farmers are bearing the most acute consequences of climate change. / The Bittman Project

No coal was burned this summer to generate any portion of the UK’s energy supply, something that hasn’t happened since 1882. / The Economist

A heroin-using neuroscientist argues that science and the media pathologize drug use far beyond the evidence. / Nautilus

"TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle." When algorithms know you're queer before you do. / Mashable

Why the next wave of boxers are social media influencers: everyone loves a sideshow, and boxing's always been about money. / Sports Illustrated

Front offices across baseball swear by a book about cognitive psychology written by a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. / The New York Times

White paper of the week: Duke University goes to absurd lengths to block other people’s trademark applications. / Marginal Revolution

A French student and his father found a secret message inside the Perseverance rover’s parachute. / The Morning News

Expect to see a new kind of mail truck prowling your neighborhood in the next couple years. / Jalopnik


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 Alien Hunter (2003) starring James Spader, Janine Eser, John Lynch, Nikolai Binev, Leslie Stefanson, Aimee Graham, Stuart Charno, Carl Lewis directed by Ron Krauss Movie Review

Alien Hunter (2003)   3/53/53/53/53/5

James Spader and Janine Eser in Alien Hunter (2003)

Cliche Hunter

I knew what to expect when I sat down to watch "Alien Hunter", well any movie on one of the lesser channels being shown when most people are sleep is usually going to be poor and little more than a slot filler. So when "Alien Hunter" turned out to be a routine sci-fi movie full of cliches I wasn't disappointed because it is what I expected but I was bored. There is nothing original in this movie as we end up with a group of people in Antarctica where an Alien object has been discovered and all hell breaks out.

56 years after a radio operator in the New Mexico desert goes missing after hearing a strange sound pattern on his equipment the exact same sound is heard again. This time it is coming from Antarctica where a research facility have uncovered something frozen in the ice which is emitting this sound pattern and why former SETI worker and now cryptology lecturer Julian Rome (James Spader - Secretary) finds himself there investigating. What he believes is that within the ice is an extra terrestrial object trying to communicate with either them or someone else but all hell breaks out when one of the researchers decides to try and open up the device.

Carl Lewis as Grisham in Alien Hunter (2003)

It is really hard to be enthusiastic about "Alien Hunter" because it is all very ordinary and in a way the best part comes right at the start as we watch a radio operator in 1947 discover the strange radio signal and investigate before disappearing a in a flash of white light. After that it all becomes routine from Julian Rome being a lecturer called upon to decipher the strange message to the chaos at the research facility when the Alien gets out. Even a subplot surrounding a Government cover up does little to make it any more exciting as shady men in Washington make big decisions.

I'm trying to find some sort of positive to give you a reason to watch "Alien Hunter" but it is difficult despite actually not being a bad movie. Maybe that is what it needed to be, bad enough to be entertaining for the wrong reasons rather than just ordinary. I suppose I could say that the special effects aren't bad, there is some nice CGI effects which don't look too cheap and have an almost "The Abyss" like quality to them but even then they aren't exactly great.

And adding to the continuous stream of ordinary is the characters because there is not an original character in the entire movie, in fact they are all so typical they end up for the most anonymous. Of course the only one who isn't is that of Julian Rome and that is purely because it is James Spader playing him but the actual character is as ordinary as everything else. Probably the only thing about the casting which will surprise you is when you realise that it is Olympic great Carl Lewis playing a stereotypical character.

What this all boils down to is that "Alien Hunter" is an ordinary, cliche filled sci-fi movie which brings absolutely nothing new to the mix. It's not bad but just ordinary and that makes it ultimately boring.


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 The Judgement (1968) starring Stuart Whitman, Percy Herbert, Randy Boone, Jill Townsend, James Stacy directed by Robert Butler Movie Review

The Judgement (1968)   3/53/53/53/53/5

James Stacy in The Judgement (1968)

A Hard Stay in Hardesty

When a group of rowdy cowhands head to the bank in Hardesty they end up causing trouble when the owner refuses to cash their cheque and are on the verge of robbing the place when their trail boss Joe Bravo (James Stacy) steps in and stops them. It leads to Marshal Jim Crown (Stuart Whitman) arresting the entire gang along with Bravo when they arrive in Cimarron having heard of their escapades in the neighbouring town. Whilst Bravo is an old friend Jim knows he has had a dodgy past but decides his punishment will be to serve 90 days as Deputy Marshal in Hardesty. But it isn't going to be easy for Bravo as a judge with a vindictive streak decides to put the cowhands in jail for longer than Crowe recommends whilst a disgruntled cowhand has plans of their own.

So for those who aren't aware "The Judgement" is actually episode 15 of the 1960s western series "Cimarron Strip" which starred Stuart Whitman as Marshal Jim Crown who controlled things in Cimarron. But these episodes which come in between 60 and 90 minutes are frequently shown as stand alone movies here in the UK and they work as whilst we have a group of central characters who appeared in each episode there was no real storyline which spanned the series and instead each episode had their own individual story.

That brings me to "The Judgement" which serves up this entertaining storyline which sees a friend of Crown's with a dodgy past given a chance to go straight but having to go up against the criminals who were his friends. But this is elaborated on because we have the judge who causes trouble and the plans of the disgruntled former cowhand who plans to rob the bank. It makes for an interesting story with some surprising moments of depth especially when it comes to Jim's understanding of how troublesome cowhands need to be treated and how over punishment can just lead to rebellion and more trouble,

What this all boils down to is that "The Judgement" is not only another decent episode of "Cimarron Strip" but another episode which works remarkably well as a standalone movie with an entertaining performance from James Stacy lifting this.


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The ‘WHY?’ Behind Empowering Africa

Believing in the potential of a developing market

One of the things MOYO stands for is the empowerment of the local market by purchasing and producing locally. We love combining African prints with plain fabrics and make sure it is all ethically sourced. This has led to us getting to know the market quite well and see its great talent, one that is not being encouraged or developed due to a strong sense of disempowerment.

                                  Fabric Sourcing in Eastleigh, Nairobi

The African market – I’ve come to learn in my journey of starting a sustainable fashion brand in Kenya – is one of amazing potential. When walking around the Kenyan markets and streets, you see countless beautifully handmade items.Both the ability and the willingness are there. There are many artisans producing anything from jewelry to furniture, showing how much potential there is, yet most people still buy imported goods.

When seeing these promising items of Kenyan craftsmanship, one wonders WHY is there so little ‘made in Kenya’. Why so many opportunities are wasted, why so much is spent on import when locals are desperate for a job opportunity.  Why so little stimuli for the local market.

As time passed and I got immersed into the culture, I’ve come to know that the root of the answer to these questions lies in a latent feeling of powerlessness in Africa, with the explanation found in its own history. We are all the products of our past and that is no less true for the African culture. Wangari Maathai (Nobel Prize winner and Rescuer of The Karura Forest in Nairobi) explains the problem of disempowerment in one of her books – The Challenge for Africa. Following is an excerpt on the above:

“While poverty is at the root of many of the pressing problems Africa faces, so is the poor’s apparent powerlessness. During the last forty to fifty years, most African states have come to believe that they cannot act on their behalf. Self-determination and personal and collective uplift, values embraced by the vast majority of Africans in the period after independence, have been eroded.” (LINK)

Disempowerment – whether through lack of self confidence, apathy, fear, or an inability to take charge of one’s own life – is perhaps the most unrecognized problem in Africa today. To the disempowered, it seems much easier or even more acceptable to leave one’s life in the hand of third parties, whether government, elected leaders, or, in some cases, aid agencies and faith-based organizations.

Somewhere on the way from colonialism to this emancipated Era, many Africans have lost the confidence in their potential either because of being told how to do things or due to constant help that has been provided along the past decade. This constant help is of no use, though if there is no proper education or a good foundation to build upon.

       Nairobi schoolgirl (prior to Corona)

This feeling of disempowerment that has developed along the past decade has partly lead to and partly been caused by other aspects that are at the root of Africa not being part of major economic activities and creative initiatives. According to the founder of the first car manufacturing company in Kenya, there are three main problems in the country’s current situation: absence of skilled labor, no employment opportunities and mass-produced, imported goods.

Recognizing these problems is a first step into the start of the markets’ rehabilitation. Constant help without proper education is not a sustainable solution to the problem. What we should do if we want to offer help is guide Africa to solve problems from the inside out, not outside in. In terms of production, help the local craftsmen believe in their potential and have them produce things at a high quality level.

In terms of education, create awareness and actively getting involved in the local production by sharing knowledge among other things. In terms of imported goods, make whatever it is we need locally and encourage our entourage to do the same in order to make locals aware of the importance of local production for the country’s economy.

       David at work on a new piece – The MOYO Trenchcoat

At MOYO, we want to believe in Africa and empower its locals, starting with where HQ is, in Nairobi, making them really feel  like ‘YOU CAN DO IT!’ It takes lots of undoing and redoing and coming and going. This is like laying a first stone on a foundation that could redefine Africa’s involvement in economic activity.  It’s time to believe they can because ‘it’s amazing how far you are willing to go when someone believes in you.’

When we see two such different cultures coming together creating a most unique piece by combining European minimalism with African print we are double proud – we’ve not only done it, but we’ve done it together  and proved that Africa can do it!

       MOYO Rhapsody Dress combining African print with up-cycled fabric

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Monetta Core Growth Fund renamed Monetta Young Investor Growth Fund (MYIFX)

WHEATON, IL, April 28, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ — Monetta Financial Services, Inc. (“Monetta”) announced today two changes to the Monetta Core Growth Fund (MYIFX). On April 30, the fund’s name will become the Monetta Young Investor Growth Fund and its minimum initial investment will lower from $100 to $25 with an automatic investment plan.

Only the fund’s name and minimum investment are changing. Its objective, philosophy and strategy remain the same. The fund employs a diversified indexed component together with an actively managed portfolio of large-cap growth stocks.

“The genesis of the Monetta Young Investor Growth Fund was our desire to provide all investors with a diversified fund, consisting of a passive portion that tracks the performance of the S&P 500 index and the balance invested primarily in large-cap growth companies that most investors recognize,” said Monetta Founder and Chairman Robert S. Bacarella. “In addition, for young investors, there are educational and college tuition program offerings that teach basic financial life skills and help families save for college.”

Monetta is dedicated to commonsense investing and financial literacy:
• Visit for fun and engaging articles about investing and personal finance.
• Sign up to receive the quarterly Monetta MoneyTalk family edition e-newsletter. Thought-provoking, colorful articles explore successful entrepreneurs and offer valuable investment lessons. Don’t miss the laugh studio and quarterly puzzle for young investors.
• Learn about earning credits toward college tuition through Monetta’s partnership with SAGE Scholars, Inc.

About Monetta

Monetta Financial Services, Inc. is a boutique Registered Investment Advisor founded in 1984 and headquartered in Wheaton, Ill. The firm launched the Monetta Fund in 1986 and the Monetta Young Investor Growth Fund in 2006. Learn more at

The fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The summary and statutory prospectuses contains this and other important information about the investment company, and may be obtained by calling 1-866-964-4683, or visiting Read it carefully before investing.

Mutual fund investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. The portion of the Fund that invests in underlying ETF’s that track the Index will be subject to certain risks which are unique to tracking the Index. By investing in ETF’s, you will indirectly bear your share of any fees and expenses charged by the underlying funds, in addition to indirectly bearing the principal risks of the funds. The Fund may make short-term investments, without limitation, for defensive purposes, which investments may provide lower returns than other types of investments.

Diversification does not guarantee a profit or protect from loss in a declining market.

The Monetta Funds are distributed by Quasar Distributors, LLC.

For the original version of this press release, please visit here


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News State Tasmania News Libs “sniffing out” deal with PUP: Govt

Libs “sniffing out” deal with PUP: Govt

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· Clive Palmer ready for jail ‘like Gandhi’
· Greens eye opposition leader’s job

The Tasmanian government has accused state Liberals of “sniffing out” a power-sharing deal with the Palmer United Party, prompting Opposition Leader Will Hodgman to reaffirm his party’s commitment to majority government.

“It looks as though the fix is in, and the Liberals are busily sounding out potential minority government partners,” Labor MP for Bass, Brian Wightman, said in a statement headed “Liberals Sniffing Out Deals with the PUP”.

“Either Mr Hodgman is being undermined by being kept in the dark by his own party’s secret agenda, or he is trying to cover it up before the election,” Mr Wightman added.

They didn’t want to be identified but they wanted to talk to us.

Premier Lara Giddings used Twitter to suggest a potential power-sharing deal was afoot.

“Senior Liberals already talking to PUP about a coalition. Will Hodgman denies knowledge of it. Is the leadership challenge on already?” she tweeted.

Labor’s claims come after PUP state leader Kevin Morgan earlier on Thursday said Liberal Party “associates” had approached him about working together.

He said the people who approached him weren’t members of parliament, but “were people that were associated with the Liberal Party”.

“They didn’t want to be identified but they wanted to talk to us and they wanted to see whether we would be prepared to work with the Liberal Party,” Mr Morgan told ABC Radio.

Mr Hodgman was quick to label Mr Morgan’s comments “complete and utter nonsense”.

“We are serious about giving Tasmanians the choice and the options of majority government,” he told ABC Radio.

“It’s just what Tasmania needs, a government with a clear agenda that speaks with one voice.”

Tasmanians head to the polls on Saturday, and after 16 years of Labor rule, a change in government seems likely.

The last state election in 2010 resulted in a hung parliament, and Labor formed government with the Greens.

Ms Giddings on Thursday emphasised Labor’s pledge to go it alone in government this time around.

She said another power-sharing deal with the Greens would mean “those Labor voters who are feeling disillusioned now would never come back to the Labor Party”.

She also said a dip in the state’s jobless rate showed the economy has “turned the corner” ahead of this weekend’s election.

Tasmania recorded an unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent for February, down from a seasonally adjusted 7.5 per cent in January, according to ABS data out today.

“We have now seen 1900 jobs created over the past four months, which is indisputable evidence that Tasmania’s economy has turned the corner,” Ms Giddings said in a statement.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that automated pre-election phone calls from the Palmer United Party had been made to the triple-zero emergency line in Tasmania.

The so-called robocalls were made to the emergency services this week, angering the firefighters’ union and possibly breaking the law.

Palmer United Party senator-elect Jacqui Lambie said the call was “inappropriate and disgusting”.

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Sport AFL AFL chief Gillon McLachlan targets October grand final

AFL chief Gillon McLachlan targets October grand final

Gillon McLachlan AFL
Gillon McLachlan is increasingly confident the 2020 premiership season can be completed by the end of October. Photo: AAP
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Gillon McLachlan has set a target of October 31 to complete the 2020 premiership season and the AFL chief is increasingly confident long-term hubs won’t be required to achieve that goal.

All contracts finish at the end of October with grounds available until midway through October.

Some players have baulked at the prospect of going into an isolation hub for up to 20 weeks, but McLachlan moved to allay fears that would be required in a teleconference with the 18 club captains on Friday.

The meeting was convened after national cabinet approved a set of guidelines for community and professional sport that envisages a three-stage approach to return to competition.

However, shorter-term hubs are still in play to get the season restarted, with McLachlan confirming Queensland has given the AFL permission to fly teams in and out of the state without going into quarantine.

The decision is consistent with the permission granted to the NRL.

-with AAP


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Planet Of The Apes Director Explains Why Fans Of The Last Trilogy Shouldn’t ‘Fear’ About The New Sequel

Depart a Remark

Andy Serkis in War for the Planet of the Apes

It’s no secret that film followers get protecting when beloved trilogies are tampered with in any type. When it was introduced a fourth Planet of the Apes movie could be a continuation of the trilogy with out Matt Reeves on the helm, it involved some.

The Maze Runner director Wes Ball shall be helming the brand new Planet of the Apes sequel, and not too long ago teased that the Planet of the Apes sequel wouldn’t be a reboot however a continuation. Now he is opening up concerning the upcoming film, reassuring followers that they’re in good fingers. Right here’s how Ball put it,

We’ve got a take. We’ve got a manner of staying within the universe that was created earlier than us, however we’re additionally opening ourselves up in with the ability to do some actually cool new stuff. Once more, I’m making an attempt to watch out right here. I’ll say this, for followers of the unique three don’t fear – you’re in good fingers. The authentic writers and producers that got here up with Rise and Daybreak, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, they’re additionally on board with this. Josh Friedman is penning this factor, lots of the identical crew is form of concerned. We will really feel like we’re a part of that authentic trilogy, however on the similar time we’re in a position to do some actually cool new stuff. It will likely be actually thrilling to see on the most important display attainable.

Nicely that is considerably reassuring. Whereas administrators are likely to get the brunt of reward or displeasure with a film’s efficiency, it’s reminder {that a} manufacturing entails a whole workforce to achieve success.

Wes Ball is primarily identified for steering The Maze Runner trilogy, a young-adult dystopian thriller based mostly off of the novels. Sadly, that trilogy noticed diminished returns critically and on the field workplace with every installment. Aside from the Planet of the Apes trilogy, he additionally helmed the large finances adaptation of the Mouse Guard for 20th Century Fox earlier than Disney halted the manufacturing. However in line with his feedback to DiscussingFilm, the brand new film is in superb fingers.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes ended the trilogy with crucial fanfare. After finalizing the manufacturing with a bang, Matt Reeves left to pursue writing and directing The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson because the caped crusader. Battle of the Planet of the Apes‘s ending seemingly completed Caesar’s arc in a last manner, making some query if there could be one other film in any respect.

With out Caesar, it’s troublesome to see the place Wes Ball and his workforce may take the Planet of the Apes franchise. Caesar was very a lot the center and soul of the lat three motion pictures. However, at this level, we’ll simply must take Ball at his phrase that he has a strong course to take the collection.

Up Subsequent

Rating The Planet Of The Apes Movies, From Worst To Greatest

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