Bits #21
Things to read, watch, listen to, chew over
Three weeks worth of Bits for you today, so buckle up, babies!
I hope you are reading this somewhere warm: it’s so incredibly cold in London (I can see my breath in my office) that I am alternating between one of those ridiculous single boot foot warmers, a hot hugger that my husband fell for on Instagram and my adorable If Only If hot water bottle. If you have little kids, I rec these sweet balaclavas I found on Vinted.
Via Adam C Sharp, “zero fucks given" in other countries: I don’t give a cucumber (Spain), I don’t give a cabbage (Italy), It’s sausage to me (Germany, obviously), It interests me as much as a kilogram of shit (Finland), It hurts me precisely in the pen (niche, Bulgaria) and I slap my balls on it (bien sur, France)
I loved this interview with Kieran Culkin by Charlotte Edwards for The Guardian. In fact, I love everything about him — the 15 (?) multi-coloured beaded kids bracelets stacked up his arm — not least how he demythologises Macaulay and the whole mysterious Culkin family a little
The most controversial dress since the blue/gold dress of 2015: a ‘tradwife’ milkmaid dress by far-right magazine, Evie (whose cover Ballerina Farm recently graced) who regularly publish misinformation about contraception. It’s Dôen by way of Shein. My favourite bit is that they felt the need to note in the comment section that their model has F cup boobs
Gen B are in the house! The first baby of the new gen was born on Dec 31st in India. Generation Beta will be the first AI natives. Pulling my cobwebbed shawl of doom closer around me as I write that
Freddie deBoer raises some excellent points on the conundrum of book review culture. It’s long, so I won’t TLDR it too much: but one of his main arguments is that readers want to read about the buzzy books, which means that reviewers feel like they have to write about the buzzy books, and so where is the time to write about all the unknown ones? He notes that despite being over 700 pages long, if you hadn’t read A Little Life in 2016, there was no point reading the books pages
This might have been my favourite listicle I read over the festive perineum: Tom Barrie on the 7 most overrated films of the 2020s. I’m ambivalent about Barbie, agreed with every thing he wrote on Stutz (and Jonah Hill’s toxic therapese), and laughed reading his increasingly befuddled review of Poor Things
My sister gave our family this heavenly book for Christmas, Storytellers Word of the Day, which not only teaches you a word each day (say, ‘demolish’) but gives you the word pairs, the synonyms, how to use it in a sentence and my favourite bit, the % of stories it’s used in (4.3%). It’s for ages 7-12 but it’s fun for everyone tbh
Possibly the most viral post of December on Substack and for good reason: Anna Wharton’s piece, What Would A Woman Do To An Unconscious Man If She Thought No-One Would Find Out? is wise and timely. “I think she would take his shoes off, let him sleep in his socks.” Unsurprisingly, she had to close the comment section
If you haven’t yet watched the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, where have you been? No, I don’t care that you don’t like James Corden, hearing him yell “Gaviscon” down the phone is pure poetry
Lament lament lament, Miss Sixty is back with ‘00s fashion super-fan Bella Hadid as its face. It reminds me of being 14 and squeezing myself into their ridiculous low-riders with poppas up the side (M&S thong poking out the top) and being ashamed for having hips/ a bum/ any ounce of flesh