A hack that gives you access to the FULL Netflix library
No more AP book reviews
As, for example, Dan Kennedy reports at his Media Nation, The Associated Press tells its book critics that it's ending weekly reviews.
The AP note to their book reviewers is printed here -- finding:
Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews. AP will continue covering books as stories, but at the moment those will handled exclusively by staffers.
AP reviews were widely re-published -- but, yes, I can certainly attest to the fact that: "the audience for book reviews is relatively low".
But, hey: "AP will continue covering books as stories" .....
The tiny Pyrenean villages winning Michelin stars Three restaurants in villages of fewer than 200 people are turning Huesca into Spain’s latest inside-track destination
“I focus on trying not to repeat myself,” the 74-year-old says.
Playing Gracie Darling
On 15 January 2025, the series had entered production receiving funding from Screen Australia and Screen NSW, with filming taking place in New South Wales' Hawkesbury Riverregion.
Scientists may have found the tiny DNA switch that made us human ScienceDaily Lordie. They can’t bring themselves to say “mutation” in the headline?
Simon Kuper seeks out the rural good life in the village crowned ‘France’s favourite’
Every year, in a TV programme on the France 3 channel, viewers choose “The Favourite Village of the French”. After Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye made this year’s shortlist of 14, its inhabitants packed the village’s salle des fêtes for the finale on July 2. One man recalls thinking, “If we finish eighth, that’s good.” Coastal villages had an unfair advantage compared with inland Saint-Antoine, which its own mayor, Maryline Longis, describes as “lost in a corner of France”, an hour’s drive west of Grenoble.
Yet the underdog triumphed. While the villagers in the hall chanted, “Ma-ry-line!”, on screen Longis told the TV presenter, “I am so pleased that . . . it’s hard to say how pleased I am.”
Fast-forward one month. Now Longis, sitting in her Mairie on Saint-Antoine’s main square, the medieval Grande Cour, confides that many villagers are unhappy to have won. These people don’t want tourists, or possibly any economic development at all. “And we have elections next year,” she frets. Since Saint-Antoine’s politicians don’t have party affiliations, they run on their reputations.
Does she really worry she’ll be voted out for winning “Favourite Village”? Longis, blessed with the mobile face of a French comic actress, widens her blue-mascara’ed eyes for emphasis: precisely! On the other hand, she reflects, “My husband would be pleased.”
Tierra del Fuego: the wild archipelago at the end of the Earth
Beauty, mystery and a story of colonial folly in the pristine wilderness at the southern tip of the Americas
The old school stood a few streets from my house. Today it is a church hall, but in its arched windows and stern facade you could get a mood of long-ago term times: of severe masters and heavy desks, the blackboard and the cane. Generations of pupils had passed through its gates: three were unlike the others.
International buyers are moving in on Italy’s heel — lured by its whitewashed baroque towns, renovation opportunities and favourable tax regime
