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Life of Outcasts with tainted nobility who scrub and clean the stains of our consumer society

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Canadian writer, social worker, and sociologist, Simon Paré-Poupar who did his first round as garbageman in Montreal as a teenager in “Trash” writes “The Garbageman is the Sisyphus of our consumer society. My fellow garbagemen and I scrub clean the stains of our consumer society.” He says he has personally shifted nearly 70, 000 tonnes of junk, but he and his peers are given a wide berth by the households they serve, “people thank the courier… the mover, and the small carrier. But they barely see the garbageman. They wish we could be invisible, just as they hope their garbage … Continue reading Life of Outcasts with tainted nobility who scrub and clean the stains of our consumer society

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Nigeria’s economic romance scammers providing Consistent undivided attention to lonely Westerners

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Spanish journalist, Carols Barragán’s “The Yahoo Boys” is about four young romance scammers in Lagos, Nigeria, exploring how and why they scam, and moral dilemmas they face. When is mother started emailing with a handsome American soldier who promised to send gold bars to her Madrid apartment, Barragán came face to face with the human toll of online romance fraud. After tracing the emails to an IP address in Nigeria, he travelled to Lagos to find his mother’s scammers and stumbled on a bigger story. There, in a crowded and impoverished neighbourhood in the midst of Africa’s largest city, he … Continue reading Nigeria’s economic romance scammers providing Consistent undivided attention to lonely Westerners

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Reganomics effects on Harlem

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Colin Whitehead, two-time Pulitzer winner and #1 New York times bestselling author’s Cool Machine is an entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in his Harlen Trilogy.  1918 New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Regan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, however, successful business owner/master fence  for stolen goods which keeps dragging Ray Carney violently into the criminal underworld which requires delicate balancing act, but this concept of “constant turbulent change”, has kept him moving. Just as Carney moves between different worlds, Whitehead … Continue reading Reganomics effects on Harlem

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Empress Matilda: Female Lord of the English

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Henry I of England, King from 1100 to 1135, towards the end of his reign, had notoriously  at least 20 illegitimate offspring,  and found himself in a predicament related to the succession. His marriage had been unfortunately less fruitful. His first wife, the pious Anglo-Saxon princess Edith Matilda, produced only two babies before she “ceased to either have offspring or desire them”.  And his second, the much younger Adeliza of Louvain, failed to produce a replacement for his heir presumptive, William who drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120.  Consequently, Henry’s only legitimate  child was a daughter Matilda,  who in 1127 was formally recognised as … Continue reading Empress Matilda: Female Lord of the English

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Life-or-death jeopardy

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New York Times bestselling author, Ruth Ware’s follow-up to multi-million mega-hit The Woman in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe. When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel – owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann- arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to re-establish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago. … Continue reading Life-or-death jeopardy

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Struggle for acceptance, greatness, capacity for self-destruction, guilt and freedom.

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East of Eden is a 1952 family saga novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Exploring themes of depravity, beneficence, love , the struggle for acceptance, greatness, capacity for self-destruction, guilt and freedom. Featuring the lives of two families, the Trasks and the Hamilton, and their interwoven stories. The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck’s maternal grandfather. Steinbeck carefully establishes the setting with the description of the Salinas Valley in Central California. The story between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of … Continue reading Struggle for acceptance, greatness, capacity for self-destruction, guilt and freedom.

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New body sexualising it for the very first time

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New York Times bestselling author Sigrid Nunez has become one of the contemporary fiction’s most distinctive voices producing nine penetrating, profound novels celebrated by fans and critics alike. Ordinary and middle-aged women, living in cramped New York apartments feature in “It Will Come Back to You”. Elderly women, living in memory care facilities, somewhere upstate. Teenage girls, spending their summers in Connecticut, alienated by their parents. Divorcees, single mothers, daughters and grand-daughters. Women of the American middle class, women of the American proletariat. Women of the 1970s; women of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nunez who has always been a New York … Continue reading New body sexualising it for the very first time

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Golden age of England’s intellectual aristocracy as the upper echelons of the civil service

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Colin Kidd’s Twilight of the Dons, is about the rise of power and eventual fall from grace of the Oxbridge intellectual. After World war the powerful acdenucs if Cambridge and Oxbridge dons of the 1950s a patrician elite, who formed a progressive force university-based establishment reshaping Britain’s postwar society by connecting intelligentsia. Unlike intellectuals in other countries, often anti-establishment outsiders, the dons of Oxbridge enjoyed secure and even cosy connections with those in power.  This is a intriguing history that charts the decline of the “golden age” of intellectuals amid Thatcherite market forces, and how their influence waned when Oxbridge’s links … Continue reading Golden age of England’s intellectual aristocracy as the upper echelons of the civil service

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Gambling revenues vitally lubricate the machinery of Britain’s favourite sport

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How did a new wave of gambling brands hijack sport on a global scale, Darragh McGee travels the world to tell the incredible revelatory exposé story of the digital brands that unleashed this new era of sports gambling on a new generatin of fans- and got very rich doing so. From the tech hubs of London to betting markets in Africa and arenas across Canada, McGee uncovers why sports fans, parents, policymakers, and anyone interested in the intersection of tech and politics should take urgent action to protect against the harm and human misery that gambling leaves behind by the … Continue reading Gambling revenues vitally lubricate the machinery of Britain’s favourite sport

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Sir Garfield Sobers dies at 89

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West Indies cricket legend Sir Garfield Sobers who held Test record of 365 not out against Pakistan in 1958, for 36 years, passed away aged 89. Between 1954 and 1974,  left-hander Sobers whose stroke play attracted huge crowds, turned out in 93 Test matches for the Caribbean side, totalling 8032 runs and claiming 235 wickets.  His contribution in cricket earned him a Knighthood in 1975, and he was later honoured as one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the twentieth century/ Tributes came from Sunil Gavaskar who described it as a perhaps the most sorrowful day cricket has ever witnessed, calling Sobers the … Continue reading Sir Garfield Sobers dies at 89