Doctor Sleep by Stephen King review

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  1948 words  |  Delta Gatti

Stephen KingReviewStephen King's sequel to The Shining contains some real, grown-up monsters Interview: Stephen King on alcoholism and returning to the ShiningFor several months, when I was 10 or 11, I avoided windows at night, because I didn't want to see a hideous child vampire staring back at me. I had read Stephen King's 1975 'Salem's Lot, and it had really screwed with my tiny mind. (There's another horrible moment to do with reflections in this new novel. [Read More]

Family of man found dead on Bibby Stockholm turn to crowdfunding to repatriate his body | Immigratio

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  624 words  |  Christie Applegate

Immigration and asylumFamily of man found dead on Bibby Stockholm turn to crowdfunding to repatriate his bodyLeonard Farruku’s family ‘facing a double tragedy with not being able to have his body back home’ in Albania The family of a man believed to have killed himself on the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, say they have had to turn to crowdfunding to bring him back to Albania for burial. [Read More]

Famous drinkers: Calamity Jane | Food

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  178 words  |  Christie Applegate

The ObserverFoodFamous drinkers: Calamity JaneThe original ladette, Martha Jane Canary led a debauched life even by today's standards. Women were not welcome in nineteenth-century South Dakotan bars, but she was a permanent fixture, wearing men's clothes, chewing tobacco, swearing, telling highly improbable anecdotes, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. When she had money, she would burst through the saloon doors and shout 'I'm Calamity Jane and the drinks are on me! [Read More]

Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx review where have all our wetlands gone?

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  972 words  |  Delta Gatti

Book of the dayScience and nature booksReviewIn beautiful prose, the Pulitzer-winning US novelist offers a powerful indictment of human complicity in environmental destruction Hunter S Thompson once said that to get at the truth, especially about something terrible, you had to “get subjective”. He was talking about his sworn enemy Richard Nixon, but it applies just the same to the appalling damage we’re doing to our planet. Newspaper articles, charity reports and activist speeches abound – all earnest and arguably objective, but they somehow fail to capture the true meaning of what’s being lost in the natural world. [Read More]

Jedda rewatched - powerful melodrama with a strong anti-assimilationist message

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  628 words  |  Barrett Giampaolo

Rewatching classic Australian filmsAustralian filmReviewFilmmaker Charles Chauvel’s final production marked a watershed for Australian films and paved the way for Indigenous actors Jedda was the last film made by director Charles Chauvel, one of the few prominent film-makers in the first 50 years of Australian cinema. But this watershed 1955 production is best remembered for heralding a number of firsts: the first Australian film featuring two Aboriginal actors in the lead roles, the first to be shot in colour and the first to compete for the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or award. [Read More]

The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino review

 Posted on April 22, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  684 words  |  Barrett Giampaolo

Crime fictionReviewAn archetypal story of female oppression in the myth of Japan's creationIn bestselling Japanese crime writer Natsuo Kirino's first novel to be translated into English, Out, four women working the nightshift in a bento factory help their co-worker cut up and dispose of her unfaithful husband's body; the women subsequently fall out over the insurance money. Another of her novels, Grotesque, centred on a prostitute and her sister, both of them struggling against the subordinate role of women in Japan, searching for a way to have control over their lives. [Read More]

Do our brains have extraordinary untapped powers?

 Posted on April 21, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1158 words  |  Christie Applegate

Brain scans show that most people with acquired savant syndrome have sustained damage towards the front of the left temporal lobe. Illustration: Sophie WolfsonBrain scans show that most people with acquired savant syndrome have sustained damage towards the front of the left temporal lobe. Illustration: Sophie WolfsonUse your headStudentsIn rare cases, brain damage has unlocked prodigious mental abilities in patients. Now researchers are exploring the hidden potential in all of us [Read More]

Foo Fighters: Wasting Light review

 Posted on April 21, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  494 words  |  Delta Gatti

The ObserverFoo FightersReview(Roswell/ Sony)The seventh Foo Fighters album has been heralded as a back-to-basics sort of record, a direct affair impaled squarely on a set of devil's horns. Perhaps in an effort to contrast with the American rock band's last bloated (and yet Grammy-winning) double album, 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, it was recorded on to analogue tape in main man Dave Grohl's garage. The video for album teaser " [Read More]

How a 1 bikini revealed the changing shape of fast fashion

 Posted on April 21, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1489 words  |  Christie Applegate

Missguided’s £1 bikini was advertised during Love Island and drew the ire of fast fashion critics. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The GuardianMissguided’s £1 bikini was advertised during Love Island and drew the ire of fast fashion critics. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The GuardianThe ObserverFashion industryMissguided’s bargain swimwear made headlines last week, but the episode showed how high-street names have been left behind by nimble online firms It was billed as the bikini that “won’t break your bank balance but might break the internet” because of the predicted stampede of shoppers to get their hands on a skimpy black polyester two-piece. [Read More]

Joan Leigh Fermor | | The Guardian

 Posted on April 21, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  790 words  |  Christie Applegate

ObituaryJoan Leigh FermorMediterranean muse to a master of unconventionalityMuses are chiefly remembered in the dedications of those they inspired, at best rating a column of biographical index entries. They did the living and the giving; and yet, as with Joan Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 91, they are "whittled to shadows" in the works to which they contributed so much. That phrase about shadows is from the preface to The Traveller's Tree (1950), written by Joan's companion of almost 60 years, Patrick Leigh Fermor. [Read More]