Monthly round-up March 2023
What you missed slash some fond reminders
Remember Reader’s Digest? A magazine but the size of a trade paperback so it sorta felt like the reading equivalent of dolls’ furniture. I, a giant, shall peruse you puny humans’ golf jokes. Those ‘Words of wit and wisdom’ by like a dentist or a kiddywink. Abridged stories of gruelling survival between easy crosswords. See this as the substack version of that.
Newsletters you might’ve missed this month
Every dogsbody has its day - in which I have an unnecessarily moist interview for a job with a famous person
Do not ask for whom the banshees of Inisherin wail - a look into what Martin McDonagh’s latest film was actually about (timed in anticipation of Colin Farrell winning an Oscar that he didn’t).
Imitations of Life - on The Sopranos, bears in the woods and The Last of Us
When Italo Calvino got his destinies crossed - why write a novel yourself when you can fortune-tell one for you?
Other critical blasts from the past
The Anti-Singularity: the open secret of 2001: A Space Odyssey - anyone even remotely impressed by large language models should read this feature.
A short story
Words can’t express - lol we all know a form like this!