Hottest 100 The top 10

“[T]heir beauty fades as a tree in winter.”

'Beauty Fades as a Tree in Winter'

A woman among my readers has been “dipping into,” as she says, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and finding treasure. “Under all the learning and the Latin quotations,” she writes, “is a lot of insight into human behavior. [Robert Burton] was like an intelligent psychologist.” She’s right. The book is more than a quaint and heavily learned curiosity. Overlook the theory of humors -- black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, blood – and you discover an anatomist of our nature (especially our ruling passions, vanity and folly). My reader savors this lovely metaphor from the Third Partition, Member V, Subsection III:
“[T]heir beauty fades as a tree in winter.”

In U.S. Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019 - Gallup – “Visiting the library remains the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far. The average 10.5 trips to the library U.S. adults report taking in 2019 exceeds their participation in eight other common leisure activities. Americans attend live music or theatrical events and visit national or historic parks roughly four times a year on average and visit museums and gambling casinos 2.5 times annually. Trips to amusement or theme parks (1.5) and zoos (.9) are the least common activities among this list…Men and woman report doing most activities at about the same rate, but there are a few key differences:

• Women report visiting the library nearly twice as frequently as men do, 13.4 to 7.5 visits.
• Men are more likely than women to visit casinos, attend sporting events and visit national or historical parks…”
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What If Stephen King Were Treated Like A Latinx Writer?

Combining recent controversies – a statement King made about the Oscars and the reaction to American Dirt – author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez explains what publishing is like for many Latinx writers. “MODERATOR: Hello, ladies and gentleman! Thank you for coming to the event today. As you can see, we have here with us today one of the nation’s leading white voices, the white male ‘writer,’ Stephen – hold on. I’m not sure how to pronounce your last name. Do you say it with a British accent? (Purses lips like the Queen’s arsehole, LAUGHS.) ‘King.'” –Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Salma Hayek Apologizes For Praising ‘American Dirt’

As controversy continues to swirl (for instance, as HuffPostrecounts the waysAmerican Dirttakes passages from Latinx writers’ nonfiction books on immigration) and as the book itself climbs the bestseller charts, Selma Hayek apologizes for praising the book without having read it – thus, perhaps, exposing the celebrity book endorsement for what it truly is: A PR racket. – The Washington Post

Measure the health of the publishing industry by the books, and the diagnosis is grim. Symptoms include stultifying, plodding, overlong work  

Have 21st Century Writers Fallen Out Of Love With Marriage?

Perhaps writers are out of love with romantic love, not only marriage. “If the romance fantasy was long doled out to women as a compensation for powerlessness elsewhere, contemporary writers are increasingly turning the marriage plot on its head.” –The Guardian (UK)

The rise of the collapsologues. Are they developing a new science, or merely predicting imminent societal breakdown?... The rise of the collapsologues. . .
“I’ve got a writer’s block as big as the Ritz and as stubborn as a grease stain on a gabardine suit,” admitted Ralph Ellison. It was “like a bad case of constipation 

Fair for steer and painting

These are the top 10 songs of the Hottest 100

The top 10 had a strong female bent, with five songs by female solo artists. Here they are, including tracks from Billie Eilish, Mallrat, Tones and I and more.

How Shakespeare's Macbeth is helping stop an ancient language from becoming extinct

A new play featuring in the Perth Festival joins an Indigenous language Wikipedia as some of the creative ways WA's Noongar people are keeping their ancient language alive.