This is a very cool history, but it’s also sad to think of how this “coaching tree” model is essentially dead in the current age of TV

😎😎😎😎 GOOD THINGS CAN STILL HAPPEN 😎😎😎😎

Thank you to the fabulous @jlloydgeorge.bsky.social and @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social for this Q&A on my new book, JUST PILLS, chronicling the extraordinary history of abortion pills—and of feminist networks putting these pills into women's hands despite the odds!
lareviewofbooks.org/article/pill...

"The review of mifepristone marks the second time in less than a week that the Trump administration has marshaled false medical claims and junk science in an effort to constrain the freedoms of pregnant women and curtail their access to relief," writes Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan.

It’s going to break your heart how many people you know, love, and respect will turn out to be cowards. Prepare yourself as best you can. You are not alone, but you are your own center. Be a strong center.

it’s pretty nuts that 9 months into trump 2.0 we need a whisper network just to get a fucking covid vaccine

I wrote about Laila Lalami's "The Dream Hotel", a dystopian novel I still think about every time I have to sign a service agreement, for @thetls.bsky.social

Loved this @nplusonemag.com essay on the TV novel and the “uneasy, mutually needy relationship between writing (or reading) fiction and making (or watching) television” www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...

“A review is whatever a work of art brings to mind; everything is criticism.”

I’ve read a lot of “defenses” of criticism from the past decade or so, and this Brody essay is the best by a country mile. What a knock-out.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Reviewed a director's memoir for the first time. 'Twas a challenge! Though I'll never complain about watching films as "homework." www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...

I had so much fun reading and re-reading Christopher Bollen's "Havoc", a thriller set in an Egyptian hotel during lockdown, for @thetls.bsky.social. If you're sad about "The White Lotus" ending this Sunday, this might be for you!

I wish people hated fascism half as much as they hate feminism

A reminder that fiction — books, film, games, what have you — is always political. The willful absence of “politics” in any work is itself a political choice and a political act. Who gets to tell (and sell) stories is political. It might be an undercurrent — covert, not overt. But it’s there.

I honestly believe our most powerful position in a toxic time that feeds on cynicism, apathy,& despair is to genuinely care and act for a better world.

Cynicism is our enemy. We should check it, incl. on the left. It’s not intellectually superior. It’s the virus they’re trying to infect us with. NO

Thinking about the time some guy was trying to convince me that RFK Jr was “carrying the torch for the Kennedys”

Wrote my first book review for @thetls.bsky.social! Feeling very thankful www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...