Bits #20
Things to read, watch, listen to, chew over
Books+Bits publishes twice a week. Tuesday’s letter is free and Friday’s is mainly for paying subs. I always give a taster, but the juiciest stuff - docs, pods, journalism - is nestled below the paywall. You can upgrade your subscription below, or if you’re unemployed, e-mail me and I’ll comp you.
It’s fascinating, the memes that endure. “Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away” begun life as a parodic ditty in the ‘60s, and, as evidenced by my almost 5-year-old trilling “uncle Billy lost his willy” earlier today, it is still going strong
There is art designed to comfort and there is art designed to agitate — and The Substance is the latter. It felt very European, very Triangle of Sadness, with all the prawns and bodily fluids and seasick camera angles. I don’t recommend watching it when you are sick
I don’t recommend watching Subservience when you are sick but also when you are healthy (ergo, at all)
I bought these Loop earplugs for myself and my daughter and they are brilliant. I hard rec for anyone with noise sensitivity
I took part in my first Substack event on Monday, alongside the wonderful Nick Hornby, Hanif Kureishi, Annie Macmanus, India Knight, Dan Jones and Jameela Jamil (pic credit: Jess Littlewood.) I felt very grateful to be there. I joined this platform less than two years ago, with a little bit of hope, and no agenda. I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that almost 60,000 of you now read Books+Bits. I’m always thinking of how I can continue to deliver more of the good stuff — particularly for my paying subs, who are the only reason this show is on the road. Let it be known that I have plans for 2025!
Most of us read from our published work, but Annie misunderstood the brief, for which we were all grateful, because she wrote a stunning piece anew for the evening, about the need for togetherness in the modern world. (Which reminds me, as so many things have done since I read it, of The Serviceberry.)
“… All the answers of how to achieve togetherness as a species lie in nature.
Look to the bottom of a tropical sea, to a school of iridescent pink and yellow fish sliding through the turquoise. They swim close to one another to confuse predators, and to conserve energy. They make perfect sense as a whole.
Look up to the sky at dusk and see a murmuration of starlings, wheeling in unison. There are no leaders, just a huge collective of tiny souls, swooping and diving as one, in complex patterns, without ever colliding. It is harder for birds of prey to target one bird in a hypnotising flock of thousands.”
I hope Gisèle Pelicot is decorated with every order of merit France has. A 71-year-old woman who refused her right to anonymity in order to raise awareness of sexual violence against women and to re-direct the shame away from the victim, towards the perpetrators, “I wanted all of society to be a witness” said Pelicot, at the end of France’s biggest ever rape trial. 51 men were sentenced — but as Sophie Wilkinson notes, the justice is incomplete: 30 men “who turned up to hurt Gisèle Pelicot” are still walking free.
I always felt like Meg Ryan handled that Parkinson interview with bad grace. It clearly stayed with her, because she mentioned it to Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times’ Style, last weekend. “I was like, wow, I didn’t know who that guy was to begin with, and I don’t have to think about him ever again.” (Also obsessed with her referring to Trinny and Susannah as “outfit criticisers”.) And so I re-watched the 2007 interview and, as is often the case, I refreshed my opinion.