The Internet Personified: Non-book reading recommendations
I mean, this isn't called The OFFLINE LIFE Personified
Not a real letter, but some links I liked recently.
Part three is where this gets twisty.
Re: Helsinki, this was a funny/sad piece which confirmed a lot of my ideas about Finland as well.
I just started watching this show last night and I had to make myself stop. Based on a book (which I read year before last) from the POV of the least explored Bennett sister, the book was a bit tedious actually, but the show is delightful.
Speaking of Bennett, here’s Alan Bennett (unrelated) on libraries he’s loved. Long time readers will know about my passion for the Berlin city Bibliotheks, but it also brought to mind one very humble and exciting library I loved in my childhood. It was a small shop with dozens of books packed high and wide, everything giving off dust, about a two block walk from my grandparents’ house in Hyderabad. It was called Mughal Library and for a handsome some of 50 or a 100 rupees a month—not cheap—you could take out as many books as you liked a week, or one a day. My favourite part about Mughal Library was that it was stuffed with absolute TRASH: every single Mills & Boon ever written for one, and in my case, many exciting bound volumes of Archie comics. I didn’t have an endless supply of this elsewhere in my life, Archie was an “imported” comic then so too expensive for such a short reading time, is what I always figured. So this was a special summer treat, walking down to Mughal library, choosing my comic with care and walking back home again.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the Brooklyn Beckham drama as closely as I have (a Spice Girl! My only football crush! A nepo baby!) but my Berlin book club group chat has been all over it. And now a delicious long read dissecting the whole thing? YES PLEASE.
Animal breeders are sort of… creepy, as this old article on exotic looking domestic cat breeders from 2014 will prove. (The cats are domestic yet look exotic. Not the breeders, who are average looking, I guess.) I did a story on a cat show in New Delhi ages ago which also you might find interesting.
“Cut to: Catherine and Heathcliff are now sexy adults. In spite of the fact that Cathy dies as a teenager, Margot Robbie is clearly Margot Robbie, a woman in her mid 30s. Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff comes up to her and tells her about how their seventy-year-old drunken father has beaten him again. He being a character played by a 29-year-old actor with a beard and a body like Hugh Jackman. It is extremely unclear how old they are actually supposed to be even though I’m pretty sure the movie told me exactly how many years had passed. Then they witness Joseph, who in the book is a religious maniac so zealous that he abhors music—even Christmas carols—fuck a woman in the stables with a horse bridle on.” - Everything I read about the Wuthering Heights movie makes me glad I didn’t watch the Wuthering Heights movie. (I actually haven’t read the book. I KNOW! I’m just a Charlotte Brönte woman, leave me in peace.)
As someone who frequently finds herself wanting to buy presents for small people, this investigative feature about what exactly the (American) kids are into is v useful.
Fun read on that dated old subject: Berlin’s nightlife. (To be fair to the article, it came out about a decade ago but I just now found it.) (I haven’t been to Berghain, no. I’ve actually barely been to any clubs, I’m not huge on electronic music nor super late nights, but I’ve done one or two day time parties which were fun for being during the day.)
Indian Chinese has been analysed many times in the past so I was delighted to see this essay on Indian ITALIAN, yes, it’s a thing.
The chimpanzees of Uganda are having a civil war.
You might’ve already read this piece on why all AI writing sounds the same but I just came to it. (And v sad that it began using my third favourite punctuation mark—the em dash—for its own gain.) (You didn’t ask but my top five go: 1) the Oxford comma; 2) the semi-colon; 3) the em-dash; 4) the digression bracket; 5) the full stop.)
Loved this. More of these please!