Sacred Treasure
- John Crace at his hilariously trenchant best, reducing Steve Jones’ The Serpent’s Promise to 600 words.
- Culture, Class and the Decline of Marriage by Ross Douthat. Very helpful insights into the wider context of recent gay marriage debates on both sides of the Atlantic. While Brendan O’Neill sees the whole issue as a case study in conformism.
- Intriguing, if frustrating, discussion between Christian Paul Kerensa and Atheist Mitch Benn about religion and humour.
- Chris Green on keeping it real in the pulpit
- Are humans naturally evil? Flippant question, interesting answers
Topical Treasure
- If you’re one of the 4.5 people on the planet to have missed out on Chris Hadfield’s space tweeting, a nice overview is here.
- Can’t make up my mind what I think of this: a geography of hate tweets; and here’s another controversial map: global racism survey in the Washington Post. (HT Ross H)
- Taking your own medicine: an imaginative approach to child discipline
Quirky Treasure
- The demands of the divas: the food musicians are contractually obliged to receive
- US & UK English – the transfer of Britishisms
- Footage of London in 1927 by Claude Friese-Greene. Lovely (HT Lex Loizides)
Finally, because i’ve been feeling in the mood to give my books some love, here is some
Bookish Treasure
- Some veritably quirky and wonderful poetry from book spines! Here are 3 of my favourites:
- Don’t make fun of renowned writer Dan Brown… hilarious! Then up comes John Crace to unpick the Divine Comedy of this one; and the 8 worst Dan Brown sentences – they’re so bad they’re good
- While we’re on authors, here are some fascinating planning outlines for famous novels.
- Here Henry Miller has the perfect means of repelling unwanted groupies or hangers-on
- Deborah Moggach has 12 helpful rules for writing
- And the 100 best closing lines of books
