Doesn’t every bibliophile do this, buy books and fail to read them? Actually no—or so I learned halfway through those 19 years of owning Love and Loss, when I started dating the person I would eventually marry. This man reads every book he acquires. If a friend writes a book, he gets to it as soon as he can; if his father randomly sends him a biography of some musician, he’ll read that; I myself am hesitant to ever give him a book, knowing that it represents an obligation that I would never feel in his place, namely to read the thing from start to finish.
For such a compulsive—er, scrupulous—person, the bookshelves trace a straightforward history of his reading life, one kind of intellectual biography. Meanwhile, living with him, I’ve become conscious of the alternative biography my books represent, a history of stray intentions, youthful aspirations, old interests that have run their course but not quite expired, since there’s always that chance I might decide to learn at last about portrait miniatures, or neuroscience, or the Battle of the Alamo. (Part of the problem is that I’m someone who would genuinely like to know more about those subjects but who reads mostly in bed, at night, and by then I’m less interested in new information than in a bedtime story.) While I’ve amassed plenty of unread novels, it’s the neglected nonfiction volumes, with their weighty titles and untouched pages, that stand out and reflect back at me the younger selves who purchased them.
Sometimes “porn” is used as an accusation, as when you call out some artist who takes photographs of impoverished foreigners for making “poverty porn.” The comedian Alex Moffat teased an audience last year for its obsession with “impeachment porn” — and everyone knew exactly what he meant. But other kinds of porn seem just fine.
This new, generic sense of “porn” is catching on because it’s useful. It gives a name to a specific kind of relationship we can have with images and other media. It’s worth getting clear about the nature of that relationship. For once we understand it, we may discover that we have cultivated some porn-y relationships in some unexpected places.
On what was to become the momentous day in February 2017 when he visited One Fish, Two Fish, his local aquatics store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, though it was in fact an hour away from his home in Truro, Joey Mullen had sworn off making any impulse purchases. He’d gone to take a look around, pick up a few nerite snails and some otocinclus catfish and a pearl stingray he’d had his eye on, and to film a tour of the store for his YouTube channel on which Mullen goes by the name “The King of DIY”. But something about this particular fish, in a tank by himself, made him stop. It was a young flowerhorn cichlid, around six months old and three inches long. It seemed to be looking right at him. When he put his finger to the glass the fish followed it, looping and doubling back, even doing back-flips. “He’s just loving you,” said the store manager. “I think he wants to come home,” said Mullen.
Mullen knew better than most what he was letting himself in for. The flowerhorn cichlid is one of the most divisive fish in the aquarist hobby today. It is a man-made carnivore, a hybrid, created around 20 years ago in Southeast Asia, whose popularity, thanks to the internet, and social media in particular, is now growing around the world. It is notoriously aggressive, even towards potential mates and is, to some eyes, unspeakably ugly. Where climates are tropical, it can be a threat to native cichlid species, not to mention to other, meeker fish. But it is also a highly sought-after breed, with prices for the finest specimens rumoured to reach many thousands of dollars. In Asia and America, and even in Britain, they are considered a sign of status, a luxury item.
The Muppet Movie is 40 now. And I could tell you that makes me feel old, but it doesn't. It oddly makes me feel just right. The music has been with me from when I was little until right now, and I can still listen to it and discover new things. How could you not? It has "Rainbow Connection" in it.
Venice grew to power in the divide between East and West. This unique circumstance overwhelmingly conditioned her art. At first, she was drawn naturally towards the East, as the stronger culture. But then, with the decline and eclipse of Byzantium, Venice acquired extensive mainland territory towards the West. For a thousand years, the city kept her independence under an unbroken line of doges, only to be upended by Napoleon who nicknamed the Piazzo St Marco “the grandest drawing room in Europe.”
Whether you arrive by train, bus or boat you’re bound to be transfixed by the sudden cinematic entry into a foregone world. No cars, just boats, water, and imposingly impossible beautiful buildings. All worldly concerns disappear as you are invited to take part in this historical stage, and it is always with a wistful heart that I depart.
But as a light thriller, “The Escape Room” delivers all that it promises. It is a sleek, well-crafted ride to a surprisingly twisty conclusion, posing a satisfying and unexpected question at the end: What if escaping the escape room means changing who we are?
Taddeo embedded herself for eight years with three different women, capturing in rotating chapters their relationships, sexual preferences, lust, obsessions and, in some cases, rapes and trials, literally and figuratively. The word “embedded,” used in the jacket copy but also usually associated with reporters who experience combat alongside soldiers, is no accident. Sex is a war, at least some of the time. With ourselves, with men, with a grand perception that women’s desire is a side dish to male desire, or best ignored altogether, especially when it’s not hetero monogamy.
O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean