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Tag: Zadie Smith

Links, links, links! A Links Round-Up

Tap tap, this thing on? I thought I’d actually share some links, for a change! I hope everyone reading this is staying safe at this absolutely idiotic moment in our climate emergency. I guess like, stay cool, get air filters, and call your elected representatives to demand that they take action to fix the goddamn planet. The always-great Angelica Jade Bastien reviews the new The Little Mermaid. At the close of the inaugural #EndOTWRacism campaign (but hopefully there are many more iterations to come!), Stitch reflects on what fandom needs. “The music of a bygone time, a simpler, better era,…

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Review: Swing Time, Zadie Smith

Two biracial girls grow up in the same bit of northwest London, attending dance classes together. Tracey has real talent, and our unnamed narrator does not, and Swing Time is about the unexpected paths their lives take as they grow into adulthood. Content warning, there is very little dance school in this book. The narrator pretty quickly stops taking dance, so if you were going into Swing Time singing a little song to yourself like “dance school dance school dance school dance school,” you might end up disappointed. That’s not what I was doing or anything. It’s just something I…

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NPR BOOK CONCIERGE TIIIIIIIIME: A Totally Chill Links Round-Up

Good morning! I have started a new thing that I wanted to tell you about, where I thank journalists when I read a story that I particularly like. There is every reason to do this (especially under the new administration, which we already know will be very hostile to journalists) and no reason not to. Try it! The NPR Book Concierge has arrived once again! Every year I get zillions of recommendations from this thing, and you should too! How fantasy movies portray the experience of oppression in near-totally white terms (by the fabulous Zeba Blay). Vann R. Newkirk II…

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The Intimidating TBR Tag

And now it’s time for the walk of shame. The beautiful and brilliant Renay has tagged me to talk about my TBR list, and I hang my head woefully and confess my TBR sins. 1. What book have you been unable to finish? Future Crimes, by Mark Goodman. I started it a while back, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t into it, but you know how if you kept getting lice as a kid because that one girl in your class had a crunchy granola mother who I guess didn’t believe in Nix Shampoo and wouldn’t do anything about her…

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Reviews: Watching the English and Changing My Mind

Watching the English, Kate Fox I have a confession to make, y’all.  I am a sucker for pop psychology, and also pop sociology and yes, pop anthropology.  It’s all, you know, it’s all readable, and there are interview excerpts, and people talk about what they think and why they do the things they do.  How could anyone not love that?  I love that so much! I know that Kate Fox’s Watching the English is observational and subjective and thus Not Proper Science, and maybe it was a tiny smidge repetitive…and yet I do not care.  Because it got me all…

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