Elizabeth I never marrying or having kids is the least mysterious things about her yet historians are like βWas she too ugly? Infertile? A control freak? Frigid?β Not a psychiatrist but your dad beheading your mum to marry 4 more women might make you question the institution.
What's so amazing about Jim Henson as a puppeteer is that he could literally be explaining that Kermit is made out of felt and ping pong balls and yet Kermit still feels alive the whole time he's doing it! pic.twitter.com/Lt109Cvr51
Several years ago I worked my way through John Green’s fiction writings, then more recently I was recommended his podcast and youtube channel, both run with his brother, also author, Hank Green. I’ve enjoyed their chatter, and when I heard about this book I thought it’d be an interesting read, very different from his other stuff.
Let’s start with a definition, the Anthropocene is a proposed term for the current era of Earth’s history. This book comes out of a podcast of the same title, and is a set of essays which are all fundamentally reviews of different things, as Green used to write book reviews for a living before he became an author.
Some chapters were more serious than others, I think I’d assumed the whole book would be a bit more tongue in cheek, which is maybe why I didn’t give it as high a rating as I expected to. I learnt about some really interesting things, such as the Lascaux cave paintings, and the Champion’s League final 2005. There were also chapters on Diet Dr Pepper, Scratch’n’Sniff stickers, and the world’s largest ball of paint.
My paperback edition had a couple of extra bonus essays at the back, one of which felt very much like it was repeating an earlier story he shared, but who knows if it was just something I’d recently heard elsewhere as it wasn’t personal to him!
Of course, there were quotes to repeat:
“Never predict the end of the world. You’re almost certain to be wrong, and if you’re right, no one will be around to congratulate you.”
“Humans are already an ecological catastrophe […] for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.”
“It’s no coincidence that the scientific revolution in Britain coincided with the rise of British participation in the Atlantic slave trade and the growing wealth being extracted from colonies and enslaved labour.”
[Discussing how we can’t look directly at the sun] “In the Book of Exodus, God says, ‘You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’ No wonder that Christian writers have for centuries been punning on Jesus as being both Son and Sun.”
“Colour is a fiction of light.” – Tacita Dean
“What’s news isn’t primarily what is noteworthy or important, but what is new.”
“It’s been my experience that almost everything easy to mock turns out to be interesting if you pay closer attention.”
“Cholera continues to spread and kill not because we lack the tools to understand or treat the disease as we did two hundred years ago, but because each day, as a human community, we decide not to prioritize the health of people living in poverty. Like tuberculosis, malaria, and many other infectious diseases, cholera is only successful in the twenty-first century because the rich world doesn’t feel threatened by it. As Tina Rosenberg has written, “Probably the worst thing that ever happened to malaria in poor nations was its eradication in rich ones.”
“Even the most extraordinary genius can accomplish very little alone.”
“Almost everything turns out to be interesting if you pay the right kind of attention to it.”
Apologies in advance for the amount of [anti] Trump content this week – it’s been quite a week!
I have not been following the news closely today but as I understand it one of the Beckham children has sent a letter to the Nobel committee demanding he be allowed to get married on Greenland to a woman from the Chagos Islands.
The best way of describing someone whoβs all talk and no action that Iβve ever heard in the UK, by far, is βtheyβre all wardrobe and no Narnia.β
I wanted to love this, and it wasn’t awful, but it maybe wasn’t quite as fun as I was hoping for. It definitely had it’s moments, don’t get me wrong, but maybe a bit more earnest/preachy stuff than I expected. Overall I enjoyed it, I maybe just went into it with too high expectations.
The best bits for me were:
When he listed his (many) nemeses including Alan Sugar, people who say holibobs, and the Nissan Qashqai (and there’s space in the back for you to do the same)
When his wife Bella lists boring things he does and he tries to defend them.
His recounting in the last chapter of his meeting with Paul Chuckle and his wife. The warmth and affection he spoke of him with was just lovely.
What I didn’t enjoy was his attitude towards Christians and Christianity. Granted he did talk about respecting what people believe in one sentence, but in the next said it was bats**t crazy. Not great. There were a couple of other similarly insulting references in the book too.
But if I just let them go over my head, then the book was worth a read once, it just might end up in Oxfam rather than my bookcase.
And as per usual, some quotes:
“Growing is largely seen as a good thing. I suppose it is. Trees growing big and strong is nice. Same with people. But I know loads of happy short people. I’ve also seen loads of happy tiny trees. Conversely, ‘growing’ is bad if it’s Japanese knotweed. Or verrucas.” (though he later says it’s crucial to grow as a person, so who knows)
“A lunchtime bath or a dinner bath are also good. I’ve been known to Deliveroo a pad thai to coincide with the bubbles reaching their optimum altitude. Normalise the pad thai bubble bath please. If you don’t have a bath, earnestly ask a friend who does have one if you can use it for the day. Their reaction alone will be worth it.”
“I can’t believe that there’s an ACTUAL ANIMAL in my house: a weird creature that can’t talk and is just living with us as if it’s the most normal thing.”
I love a good Christmas book, and this was absolutely brilliant. It’s a full blown history of Christmas, from even before its origins, through to more recent traditions and I think literally everything in between! And yes, I know we’re well into January now, but I started this at the end of last year, so it’s ok!
Paul Kerensa is a comedy writer (he’s written on Miranda and Not Going Out), comic, media history enthusiast (he did a whole thing for 100 years of the BBC the other year and has really old copies of the Radio Times), and he’s a Christian (I think he sometimes does Pause for Thought on Radio 2). So he comes at this with all sorts of knowledge, but it feels really well researched on top of that, as well as being easy to read in his light-hearted style.
Here are some of the things I learnt
The immaculate conception refers to Mary’s birth, not Jesus’.
The 12 days of Christmas comes from a compromise between the Western church celebrating on 25th December, and the Eastern church on 6th January.
Good King Wenceslas was only made a king after he died – when he was alive he was a duke.
Christmas pies were rectangular (to look like a crib) meat pies. When Christmas was cancelled in the 1600s, people made them round and put mincemeat in to get around the ban.
Joy to the World was written about Jesus’ return, not His birth.
Knickers, Knickerbocker Glories, and the New York Knicks all trace their names back to a pseudonym used by Washington Irving who popularised the idea of St Nick in America.
Originally there were key differences between Father Christmas and Santa Claus: “Santa brings presents; Father Christmas just brings winter. The American version is child-friendly; the English version less so. Mr Claus wears a two-part suit and hat with white bobble; Mr Christmas wears a long one-piece habit with a hood. To this day the only major difference in appearance is in the subtlety of their headwear – hat versus hood is a handy way to spot an American Santa from an English Father Christmas.”
Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Christmas Cards, and the carol “O Come All Ye Faithful” all appeared within a week of each other in December 1843.
Boxing day used to be the first weekday after Christmas. (And yes, that’s when we’d get a bank holiday now, but we don’t call that day Boxing day).
When a drawing of Victoria & Albert and their children admiring their 15ft Christmas tree was published in the USA, they removed Victoria’s crown and Albert’s moustache.
Dickens was in love with Queen Victoria: “On the royal wedding night at Windsor Castle in 1840, the already-married Dickens protested beneath the newlyweds’ bedroom window by rolling around in the mud.”
The original Miracle on 34th Street film was released in cinemas in May.
Star Wars did a Christmas special in 1978. It seems there’s a reason we haven’t heard about it….
I don’t normally enjoy history, but this was just fantastic, highly recommended if you are interested in where our modern day Christmas with all its quirks comes from.
ineke.co.uk 