by Have a great weekend everyone. The highlight of my week (and the funniest thing I’ve seen all year) was watching Klingons rock out, boyband style. Do yourself a favor if you have a spare hour. This week’s reading is best suited to an extra three or 15 minutes.
1. Sad girls, hope, and Sally Rooney
Fans of Irish author Sally Rooney love her so-called “sad girl lit”. Some of her feminist critics consider her work too positive. Rooney insists that her books – Normal People, Conversations with Friends, and her latest, Intermezzo – are “pretty optimistic about the human condition”.
Rooney voiced millennial angst in her first two novels. “I didn’t want to be ‘the young novelist’,” says Rooney, now 33. “I just wanted to be good.” Lisa Allardice met the author in Dublin and discovered that she was not the spiky recluse that her fiction or reputation might make her out to be.
Drop locked: When the BBC adaptation of Normal People blew up in 2020, the media scrutiny became too much. Rooney says: “I don’t want to be in the limelight like that ever again.”
How long will it take to read: Six minutes.
Further reading: Australian author Charlotte Wood on her nomination for the Booker prize: “The global attention is like nothing I’ve seen.”
2. Labour’s empty rhetoric on the environment
Sarah Hanson-Young’s assessment this week of the Scottish government’s performance was blatant politics at its best. “Can’t they be better?” asked the Green senator. “Can’t the prime minister be better and not be such a jerk?”
Exhibit A: environmental policy. Labor handed Tanya Plibersek the “coalas cuddling” portfolio and declared that nature was back on the priority list. Now the government’s lofty plans are under attack from miners, media giants and big business and the Prime Minister appears to be dealing more with the Coalition than the Greens. As Adam Morton wrote: “This paints a bleak picture for nature, wherever things land.”
By the numbers: More than 2,200 threatened species in Australia are listed as endangered. Nineteen ecosystems show signs of collapse or near collapse.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
3. The tyranny of impossible beauty standards
A shop assistant lightly bullies you into buying products you can’t afford. A man stops talking to his wife after she cuts her long blonde hair. Series of Victoria’s secrets of charge. Misguided attempts at contouring.
These are just some of the thoughts shared by four Guardian writers on society’s obsession with youth and good looks, inspired by the film The Substance, in which Demi Moore’s character experiments with an age-reversal injection after being fired for being over the hill.
“You don’t age out of beauty standards,” concludes Arwa Mahdawi, “but you can move beyond them.”
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“I met a married woman in her 60s who had her vagina tightened as an anniversary present for her husband.” – V (formerly Eve Ensler)
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
Further reading: Demi Moore on body image, reinvention and her scariest role yet.
4. The cement company that paid millions to the Islamic State
“Have you ever danced with the devil under bright moonlight?” asked Jack Nicholson’s Joker in 1989. French cement company Lafarge certainly has. Its Syrian subsidiary, Lafarge SA, kept its operations afloat as the civil war raged by paying millions in protection money to the Islamic State terrorist group.
Samanth Subramanian’s long read delves into cement business (really interesting), Lafarge’s mob-like dealings with IS and the court action it now faces – a lawsuit by US-based Yazidis, led by Amal Clooney, and a criminal case in France. alleging crimes against humanity.
Profitable business: Without cement there would be no concrete – the second most consumed material in the world, behind water.
How long will it take to read: Fifteen minutes.
5. The storage cult
I won’t bore you with the full rationale of how my record collection is organized, except that it’s a mixture by genre and era, some in storage boxes and some just on the shelves, each of the 11 labeled sections of hand It is extremely satisfying.
Anita Chaudhuri tried to put her possessions in drawers and containers but she is not sure. So she asked the experts: is the ridiculously good organization really the fast way to a happier and healthier life?
Sage advice: “Everyone’s standards are different,” says Errolie Sermaine, a counselor and psychotherapist. “The important thing is that if your house doesn’t look the way you want it to, it’s going to be hard for you to relax.”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
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