Reading etc.

I got this from Dot.

1. What was the last book you read?

“The Help” by Katherine Stockett

2. Recommend a book.

“What I Loved” by Siri Hustvedt.

3. Recommend a children’s book.

“The Giant Jam Sandwich” Story and pictures by John Vernon Lord with verses by Janet Burroway

4. My guilty pleasure is:

Well, I wouldn’t call it guilty precisely but I am a big Georgette Heyer fan.

5. This one was rubbish:

Where to begin? “Man and Boy” by Tony Parsons.

6. If you wrote a book, what would it be? (Adapt as desired if you are writing or have written a book.)

Fiction. I haven’t really thought this through, have I?

Off you go and do it yourself.

His and Hers

This is lovely. It’s a documentary film about women’s relationships with the men in their lives. It’s a series of interviews with women from very small girls to little old ladies. We never see the men they are talking about. It was, in a funny way, a description of everywoman. Or, at least, every Irish woman. All of the interviewees are from the Irish midlands. All of the interviews take place in the women’s homes and as well as the women, the varied styles of interior decoration favoured by the Irish public also played a supporting role. It was a little bit too long and sad at the end but still really great. I wonder will it travel? Have a look at the trailer and see what you think.

Greenberg

One whole evening I will never get back. This is directed by the guy who did “The Squid and the Whale”. If you liked that film, do not let this tempt you in. Really. Ben Stiller is an annoying 40 year old who is really nasty. He has a relationship (in the broadest sense of the word – or as the description in the cinema magazine put it, “he forges a connection”) with a 23 old girl who is slightly clueless. I knew that I was doomed when I found myself thinking, “My God, what would her poor mother think if she could see her lovely daughter being abused like this?”

Twilight – Latest Installment

Oh God, the tedium.

Toy Story 3D

Michael was traumatised and wept throughout but the others loved it.

Couldn’t get in to “Inception” on Saturday night. Probably for the best. We went for a walk along the quays and watched the sunset instead.

This from the book I am reading:

“[Radical publisher of Paine’s “The Rights of Man”] Rickman had loudly advertised his radical affiliations and literary affections by baptising one of his children as Paine and calling the others Washington, Franklin, Rousseau, Petrarch and Volney.”

I mean, really, I have seen nothing in the Irish Times to rival this one. I hope that they were all boys.

Like a lot of the internet, I pasted some text into this box so that it would tell me who I write like. I appreciate that these things are not very accurate but would you say my description of our holiday below reminds you in any way of “The Godfather”? Off you trot to investigate yourself, you know you want to.

Why is it that no one has relatives who die any more?

People have “loved ones who have passed away” instead.

I heard a daft drama on Radio 4 which was set in World War II. Our heroine was in danger of losing her “loved one”. Really, was that usage common, in 1942? Speaking of one of the other characters she wondered: “What does he bring to the table?” What indeed, we will have to see, going forward.

If you would like to mention your pet irritations in the comments, feel free.

I had to mind the children and was unable to attend a talk entitled “Assessing Unequal Treatment: Gender and Pay”.

Specifically, the paper which I missed (but a copy of which I have in my sticky little paw) covers several enticing areas including “measuring the gender pay gap: quantile regressions and the glass ceiling” and “measuring the ‘family gap’: evidence on maternity breaks”. It will come as no surprise to any woman who has ever had children that the author, Professor Mary Gregory, says that “the emergence of a substantial gender pay correlates closely with women’s childbearing and childcare years” and that “family status directly explains 40-50 percent of the gender gap in the US and the UK, with a further 30-40 percent attributable indirectly, through the effect of employment interruptions on human capital”. The author comments that in “a number of countries, but not universally, the market has generated its own response to women’s wishes to combine work with family, in the form of the growth of part-time jobs.” However, alas, in Britain (though who knows what the situation is here – I’m sure its all good on this side of the Irish Sea) “..while women in full-time work have been narrowing the gender pay gap through their rising educational attainment, labour market attachment and occupational diversity, women working part-time have conspicuously failed to match this progress.” “occupational downgrading [is] an important concomitant of the switch to part-time work in Britain, with major adverse implications for future earning trajectories, even following a return to full-time employment.” Oh I can’t stand it any more. I’ve picked out depressing highlights, there are encouraging trends in..um…Sweden. You can read the lot here.