Culture

John Updike: A Life in Letters Review – The Man Who Couldn’t Write a Bad Sentence | books

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✨ Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Books,John Updike,Biography books,Culture 📌 Main takeaway: John Updike had the mind of a middle-class American man in the postwar era and the prose style of a literary genius. He was such a master of language that Vladimir Nabokov, famous for his eloquence, gave him a measure of praise. One reviewer, musing on the disproportion between the style and content of Updike's novels, likened it to a lobster with a single greatly enlarged claw. It was a comparison Updike should remember—for all his gentle civility, on display from…

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‘We say yes to what you give us’: A perfect pitch for Rachel, the hit comedy in which its learning-disabled star calls the shots | platform

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✨ Check out this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Stage,Comedy,Culture,Theatre,Disability 📌 Key idea: RAchill O'Mahony is not exclaiming that her cutting-edge theater production received five stars from The Guardian. The show may have won awards, received rave reviews, and made its audience cry hard, but Rachel's joy is what matters. As for anyone else having fun watching? Rachel puts it perfectly. “You're lucky,” she says.You see, this joyful, chaotic and different every time production has been specially designed by Flo, Rachel's younger sister, to suit the tastes of Rachel, 35, who has learning difficulties, loves…

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Smallville Star Who Joined a Sex Cult: This Week’s Best Podcasts | TV and radio

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✨ Check out this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Television & radio,Culture,Mark Bonnar ✅ Key idea: Choose the weekAlison after NXIVMSmallville actress Allison Mack (pictured above) is best known these days for the role she played in the sex cult NXIVM (the HBO series The Vow provides a comprehensive primer). After being sentenced to prison for blackmail, is she someone who should be featured on the podcast? gladly. Natalie Rubymed's CBC series asks tough questions, examining whether Mac is a victim, a perpetrator, or somewhere in between. Hannah J. DavisWidely available, weekly episodesThe coolest shiftHave…

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“Two extra broomsticks, please!” Was Ruben Blades the greatest percussionist ever? | classical music

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🔥 Read this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Classical music,Culture,Music,Radio 3,BBC,Snape Maltings,Benjamin Britten 💡 Main takeaway: SSaturday night and the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings is filled with 300 chatty punters. We're about to record a show that will be broadcast 'live' on BBC Radio 3. This is a one-off surprise: for one night only, in this dramatic documentary, we explore the work of percussionist James Blades. Our setup meticulously combines the most stressful elements of a live show, as well as the key aspect of audience participation Obviously we don't have a proper opportunity…

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The secret of the political killer

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🚀 Check out this trending post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: News / The Weekend Essay 💡 Here’s what you’ll learn: In political events, an assassination is more like a natural disaster than a controlled explosion: it will wreak havoc and often change the course of history, but its perpetrators can never know in which direction. When Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, his goal was South Slavic independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire; What he got was World War I and the slaughter of millions. On the other hand, in 1995, when a right-wing extremist assassinated…

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A Holiday Gift Guide: Tools, Treats, and Trifles for Food Lovers

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💥 Read this must-read post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Culture / On and Off the Avenue,Culture / The Food Scene ✅ Main takeaway: I don’t think I viscerally understood the importance of a Christmas tree, or a Hanukkah menorah, or a St. Lucia’s crown until I moved into an apartment with lots of windows: the night is long and dark out there this time of year, in this part of the world, and adding a little extra light goes an awfully long way toward brightening the mood. It makes sense that the cold months are when we,…

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Meaning of Trump’s presidential pardon

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🔥 Read this trending post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Magazine / Comment,News / The Lede 📌 Key idea: "no Maja Martin tweeted. "He seems to mean this: Trump granted two hundred and thirty-eight pardons and commutations in his first term; and less than a year into his second term, he issued nearly two thousand. In most cases, of course, the person being pardoned has been found guilty of a crime. The pardon economy offers the possibility that, if you're nice enough to the president, a jury's verdict might be set aside. But you have to stay nice:…

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Hanif Abdurraqib talks about Ellen Willis reviewing Elvis in Las Vegas

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🔥 Read this insightful post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Magazine / Takes 💡 Key idea: I have little interest in the music of Elvis Presley, and even less interest in the mythology of Elvis as a prominent figure in American music. What am I? I am The intense interest in resurrection means that there are corners in Elvis' narrative that, when well-lit, I find myself hovering over with fascination, or with a kind of sick pleasure. I was drawn to Ellen Willis's 1969 review of an Elvis concert, the singer's first in nine years.There is no single…

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New New England Patriots

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✨ Check out this awesome post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Sports / The Sporting Scene 💡 Main takeaway: But there were signs during that win over the Dolphins that this year might be different. May completed nineteen of twenty-three passes, for two hundred and thirty yards, throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for another. However, the highlight of the game came at the end, when running back Antonio Gibson returned a punt ninety yards for a score — and Vrabel chased him down the sideline in excitement. When was the last time anyone in New England looked…

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The strange afterlife of Hilma af Klint, the star of the posthumous painting

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🔥 Check out this awesome post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Magazine / Onward and Upward with the Arts 📌 Here’s what you’ll learn: Later, af Klint claimed - implausibly, according to some historians - that Steiner warned her that the world was not ready for what she was trying to reveal, and that she stopped painting for eight years out of frustration. She said that when she resumed her work, she worked on a large scale and with great intensity. But she decreed that the works would remain invisible for twenty years after her death, protecting them…

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