In library news: Dutch libraries lend out people. Oh, they're wacky free thinkers in the Netherlands aren't they? To my mind, there's something a tiny bit creepy and patronising about lending a token minority out to a 'normal', but if everyone's willing then I don't suppose it will do any harm. But even libraries at their most traditional can help to counteract fear and prejudice - the more you read, the more you absorb different experiences and cultures (although for those who score out the swear words with angry blue pencil there may be no hope).

Edit: The Swedes too?? Or is the interweb just lying. Again.

Tags: libraries

13:34

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Book 51: One Pill Makes You Smaller by Lisa Dierbeck
You don't have to be a genius to think up the concept: refashioning Alice In Wonderland into a trippy coming of age parable about sexual awakening and psychological trauma. Here Alice is an eleven-year-old with the body of a sixteen-year-old, a dislocation which leads to experiences she can't begin to understand - mirroring all the confusing growing and shrinking and strange encounters of the original Alice. Easy target notwithstanding, it's a pretty good read.

Book 52: Small Island by Andrea Levy
As good as everyone told me it was. The story is told by four different narrators, and what makes it so gripping is how real their voices sound, somehow. It could have been just a grim tale of war and racism, but it never feels like that because you believe in the characters and they are shown in every different mood and situation, being carefree and stupid and strong and weak and prejudiced and generous and miserable and ecstatic.

Tags: 50 Book Challenge

15:42

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The most stupid statement I've heard in the increasingly rage-making saga of Jean Charles Menezes' murder was made by a Met Police spokesman* on Radio 4 the other day. He said essentially, yes this is awful that an innocent man died but LET'S ALSO REMEMBER ALL THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO DIED ON JULY 7TH.

I do bloody well remember thank you very much, and if you think for one minute that it makes me feel BETTER to know that ANOTHER innocent person is dead, then you should resign right now because you don't understand enough about human decency to hold the position you do.

You can't try to make yourself look better by pointing out that you only killed ONE person while the suicide bombers killed scores of them - one is one too many when the killers are meant to be upholding the law. And his life was NOT a price worth paying for the (illusory) sense of security that the police are supposedly seeking to regain for us.

* Actually I'm pretty sure it was Sir Ian Blair himself, but my fuzzy morning ears may have deceived me on that point and I don't want to be libellous.

Tags: 7/7

13:50

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