Writing Worth Reading
Last updated 11 pm GMT
Writing Worth Reading
The contract should be brought into line with current usage. "A system providing a marital licence for a fixed period—to be renewed, or not, every 10 years, say—would bring a healthy element of jeopardy to this jaded institution"
Photo gallery of London's East End in the 1960s. "My father was a docker – everyone worked in the docks, did a bit of boxing or they were villains. I used to meet my mum after work, and you couldn’t see the next street in the fog"
"I call it American Roulette. You arrive at the golf course solo, without a tee time, and leave your fate to the starter." You may get a partner with anger management issues, or worse. In LA, you may also get a movie star
Foundation builds daisy chains of kidney donors. You get one for your spouse or child, you give one of your own to another recipient. "The most worrisome risk was that donors would renege once their loved ones received kidneys"
"IVF is highly political. It’s unpleasant, tiring and time-consuming. It’s bloody expensive. In all these respects, it’s perhaps not bad practice for the down-sides of parenthood. And at least it gives us a chance"
Excerpt from Shadid's forthcoming memoir in which he reflects on his family's roots in rural Lebanon, and the long-abandoned house that he determined to rebuild
American Psychiatric Association is wrong to view grief associated with bereavement as just another kind of depression, treatable with antidepressants. Grief is a healthy, normal, even necessary response to loss of a loved one
Will no one speak up for pleasure? "We tiptoe around the heterosexual woman’s unsightly libido, and end up with a strangely euphemistic rhetoric, a defence of birth control that seems to involve no sex, desire, sperm, or men"
Sarajevo-born writer fondly remembers his family's Irish setter, Mek. Survived the Bosnian war despite scrapes with military trucks, checkpoints and trigger-happy drunk soldiers. A persuasive advertisement for dog-owning
Heartbreaking letter from Richard Feynman to his late wife, penned two years after her death. "I have met many girls and I don't want to remain alone—but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me"
What is it about physical books that people like? And how does that relate to the core characteristics of literature as a medium, an art form? Could it be that ebooks bring us closer to the essence of the literary experience?
Online dating doesn't work for you? No surprise. It's a false market. Main structural fault: Asymmetrical information. Sellers know everything, buyers only what they're told. Known in the economics trade as a "market for lemons"
Image from the Flickr Commons library
Felisa Rogers, on aphrodisiacs
"Humans tend to get turned on by three categories of food: extremely expensive food, food that is risky to acquire, and food that resembles genitalia"
