litterae et libri II

Okay, so on Friday I was whining about how difficult the week had been, and quite frankly, I was feeling rather depressed about the whole life-thing. Now, on Sunday, I'm beaming and relaxed and generally happy. Turns out all it takes to make me happy is meeting up with some of my favourite people for ice-cream, Lush facemasks, tiny food, alcohol, bizarro novels and general love. I haven't seen some of these people for over a year (if at all!), so this was incredibly happy-making and
wonderful. I will have to post the photos soon, which are uniformly of beautiful girls doing rather strange things, like reading out Carlton Mellick III's The Haunted Vagina (!), checking our privilege and duckfacing like mofos. Despite the need to write about 8,000 words by Friday, this weekend has left me feeling really relaxed and happy and inspired by the generally amazing women who I'm lucky enough to know. I will have to spend some time soon putting together the photos to reconstruct the funtimes, but until then, here are some of the things on t'interwebz which have caught my attention this week.

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On my mum's side, I'm technically a quarter-Jewish, since my grandfather's family were Jews who lived in Vienna before the threat of Hitler's invasion forced them to flee to New York. I've not actually been to Vienna that I can recall, but I now have a very pressing need to, since there is now a cat cafe in Vienna. I love the idea of getting a coffee and doing some university work with a purring cat beside me. Basically like home, really! 

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Really interesting article about tea, coffee and writing, which was quite timely considering my friend Ashley just wrote an article about the history of coffee. I quite like the idea of tea being for readers and coffee for writers, but I don't know quite about I feel about this. Maybe this is how I can tackle Tarquin: more coffee? I suppose I could try it, it's not like I'm obsessed with coffee or anything...

[Image from article: link below.]

Cambridge archaeologists have discovered a lost language. The article is fascinating, it's incredible that in this day and age we can still discover things lost in time for so long.

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Hilary Mantel wrote about Anne Boleyn, who she rightly calls 'one of the most controversial women in history'. It's a really interesting read - I particularly like her bluntness about how little we can reliably know about Anne due to the backlash which both destroyed and romanticised the truth beyond reconstruction. 'The fact that some antique hand has written her name on a portrait does not mean that we are looking at Henry's second queen. Her image, her reputation, her life history is nebulous, a drifting cloud, a mist with certain points of colour and definition.' Also, Margaret Atwood reviewed the Wolf Hall sequel, which did make me squee a little, I must confess!

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Jessica Valenti wrote a brilliant piece about the feminism of the sadly deceased Adam Yauch. What I find really interesting is the fact that he so publically recanted his earlier homophobic and sexist lyrics and tried actively to promote equality - it's fantastically inspiring, and a reminder of how sad his untimely death is.

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Cicero's brother, wrote a manual about how to win elections in the first century B.C. - it's fascinating to know it's still used today! Never say that politics isn't cyclical. 

 [Picture from article: link below.]

Liberty University has a code of conduct which forbids abortion, witchcraft and female immodesty. It's both hilarious and terrifying that raping someone gets the same punishment as drinking alcohol or spending a night in a hotel room with someone of the opposite sex. This makes me thankful I live in the UK, where extreme religiosity just makes everyone uncomfortable.

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Neil Gaiman wrote a tribute to the late Maurice Sendak, which really epitomises everything I love about his writing: it's very short, but very evocative.

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Literary figures and their favourite cocktails is basically an article combining my favourite things. It's rather appropriate now, since I spent the weekend drinking mojitos out of jam jars (so quimsical!) with, among others, my friend Candy, who is getting a kitten called Hemingway. Coincidence? I think not.