Weekend Reads #301
Weekend Reads
‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman. (The Conversation)
Fear and hope in Springfield, Ohio. (Slate)
That cardboard box in your home is fueling election denial. (ProPublica)
Kathy Griffin’s voice in comedy won’t be silenced by Trump trauma, ageism or destroyed vocal cords. (Los Angeles Times)
Billie Jean King to become the first female athlete to receive Congressional Gold Medal. (WMAR)
We all want more time with our friends, but we’re spending more time alone. (The Atlantic – gift link)
If you're looking for a truly wide calf boot that is chic and quality, too, have you seen the latest from Dolce Vita? And I was fed an ad for Fillies and Boots and they too carry quality truly wide boots!
Avoid a hotel stay from hell: How to master booking websites, mapping apps, and other info to find an overnight sensation. (The Souvenirist)
The Sentinel. (Washington Post – gift link)
Parents are not OK right now. Here’s what they can do. (CNN)
A Hopkins doctor is using diabetes medicine to help Black women fight hair loss. (The Baltimore Banner)
I think I need this dress in my life. Or would I get more wear out of this skirt?
It's passé to talk about Nike's downfall. The more interesting conversation is how Nike comes back. (Monologue)
The science of cuteness: why fashion has fallen for the cuddly toy. (The Guardian)
Eight takeaways from the 2024 Menopause Society meeting. (The Vajenda)
See/Hear/Read
Having my fill of Elin Hilderbrand for the moment, I went to the Libby app to find a fiction audiobook based solely on its availability and the look of the cover. I picked The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and wow wow wow.
There are mixed reviews about this book; I think I benefitted from hearing it instead of reading it. The narrator did a great job creating different voices for each character, and a lot of characters had accents and used slang and words from centuries ago and I appreciated hearing how they would sound.
I love Gillian Anderson, and I love how she is normalizing women's sex lives and fantasies. I pre-ordered her latest book, Want, a collection of anonymous women's fantasies. Inspired by Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden, Anderson created an online portal to gather modern-day fantasies of women and nonbinary individuals from across the globe, different religions, income levels, races, relationship statuses, and ages.
Care warning: there are some fantasies about exploitation and r*pe, the other concerning fantasies found in Friday's book are not in here. I am not finished, I have hardly started, but this book is like The Vagina Monologues for fantasies, and it may make you feel more normal and less alone.
For Your Entertainment
Rüfüs Du Sol is an Australian award-winning dance/electronica trio consisting of Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George, and James Hunt. The group started in 2010 with the name Rüfüs, but changed it to Rüfüs Du Sol in 2018 as there was already the funk band named Rufus here in the U.S. They have been nominated several times for a GRAMMY, winning one in 2022 and have been nominated and won several Australian music awards. Rüfüs Du Sol is releasing their fifth album next month, and “Music is Better” is their latest single from the upcoming Inhale/Exhale.
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You’ll probably get more wear out of the skirt, but the dress is really nice. I just got the new Cupro one from Universal Standard in the abstract animal print and I really like it. The fabric is a bit heavier than the Cupro dresses they had earlier this year, and it feels really nice.
The Cathy Horyn piece is so interesting, and I lol’d at the “superagers” one. Great collection this week!
What an interesting collection of articles this week. I do relate to the article on parents in crisis, though I feel it is not a new phenomenon. I’ll be 70 next month. My “kids” are 38 and 44. My first was born shortly after a move following graduate school. I knew no one in our new community. I found new motherhood to be extremely isolating. My husband and I were down to a single car. We could not afford to repair mine on my husband’s paltry teaching salary and what I made as a private music teacher. My only conversations were with school-aged children and my husband. My husband was virtually no help with caring for our daughter when she was a baby. Was I isolated and stressed? Yes, indeed! As time went on, I bonded with women in La Leche League, though I did not make any close friends. I began to see that though our country gives lip service to parenting being the most important job in the world, parents are not treated well. I began to realize that jobs traditionally held by women, especially teaching jobs, are poorly paid BECAUSE they were considered women’s work.
I have seen very little improvement in the lives of parents in the 44 years since my eldest was born. Parenting is still fraught with difficulties that our society does little to ameliorate. I am now a grandmother of two who still teaches private music lessons. My husband and I have been the sole source of child care for our two grandsons. Our divorced daughter would have been unable to make ends meet without our help. (By the way – she divorced because her husband was emotionally abusive to her and the kids.) My youngest grandson is now 9. My grandmotherly duties have decreased now that he is in school. There was a time when he was a baby and later when he was a toddler that he spent more of his waking hours with me than his mother. Why? Because our modern society is still not designed to make it easy to raise children and work.
I’ll stop typing. Obviously, entire books have been written on some of the issues I touched upon. I am glad that the surgeon general is highlighting the challenges that parents in the U.S. face.
I love Weekend Reads!
The CNN article made me crazy, though. I know they acknowledged that legislation and cultural change are needed, but the tips sounded so much like “why don’t you just…” advice. Random people are not about to start offering to babysit.
Reading your weekend reads has become part of my weekend morning routine (along with a good cup of coffee and chihuahua snuggles).
Dr. Gunter’s round-up of menopause research is so fascinating and grounding! – it’s so easy to get swayed by health influencers that convincingly share misinformation. Thanks for sharing.