Glad someone started this thread!

I feel your pain - I have the opposite! My waist is really low so dresses with a "normal" waistline hit my lower ribs, and if I wear pants then my legs look really short.

I love love love The Thirteenth Tale! It's one of my favourite books and every time I reread it I find more to love. I don't really have more to add... I agree with everything you said, especially about pushing your own boundaries. I'm trying this year to make sure 20% of the books I read are by people of colour…

Yeah, I was thinking about my "number" and realizing that the last month it's only been maybe three times, but near the start of the year I remember having a week that was every day, two or three times a day.

This is probably too nitpicky for many many people but it was just the right amount of nitpicky for me. I very much enjoyed your analysis.

I can't get past "sleeping in a Maasai hut in Africa, in a yurt in Mongolia, on the sands of Sudan." Africa is not a country, and Maasai people live in Tanzania and Kenya. To then mention a specific (different) African country in the same sentence makes it seem especially dense.

Agreed. She's so beautiful in this dress and obviously comfortable, too. Well, maybe not literally comfortable because it looks a little scratchy, but mentally comfortable and confident :)

There are indoor ski slopes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

We all ate things when we were six that we don't like to talk about now. #cheezwhiz

Thanks! It is possible that the double-buttering is Mr Penguin's crazy family/village tradition as opposed to a generally acceptable Newfoundland practice. They live a couple hours from Gander, and from his reports rely heavily on pig fat for frying. And a couple friends called touton "Newfie pancakes" which is where…

If you're being had then we both are. According to Mr Penguin they take a water cracker, butter one side, then turn it over and butter the other side. It was part of a conversation about how everything in Newfoundland is deep fried or cooked with lard. Like their traditional "pancake" is dough fried in pig fat.

This was my takeaway, too! I was definitely not this aware and alert to these issues as a teen. I'm still not this well spoken in situations where I feel frustrated and know that I'm right. My response would probably have been "Argh! Fgdgiglbrrr. Oh no bra! Fuck you. Ha!"

Kind of - it's sort of a world of its own that didn't join Canada until 1949. They don't have the same reputation for racism that Quebec has, but definitely have their own way of doing things - including a dialect that many people (me!) can't understand. My partner lived there on and off until he was 17 and constantly…

I read the first book and really enjoyed/appreciated it but chose not to read the rest because my sister told me "They're all really good. Just keep in mind that everyone you like will suffer and die horribly."

Have you read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter? She retells fairy tales and reimagines the women's roles. They still sometimes get a happy ending, but with more (usually creepy) control over their fate. The stories are fairly brutal, so you experience the women's suffering rather than the superficial storytelling…

I cannot cope with H&M. I got a gift card for there and tried three different times to find a cute dress or coloured jeans or nice top and wtf? I was a 12 in jeans and a 6 in dresses?!? I'm used to ranging over a few sizes, but that seems excessive. Eventually I just bought two cardigans for work because everything…

#notallmillennials

I've lived in five countries on four continents and never heard someone say America when they meant the continent. Maybe in languages other than English?

What on earth do these USTA weirdos see when they look at her? She looks really fit to me. I get that she's not a size six, but she doesn't look out of shape - she looks strong! She looks like a similar body type to Serena Williams, who was pretty good at tennis last I checked.

We had (have?) our own Canada's Next Top Model show but it probably doesn't have quite the same international impact. And I'm pretty sure they do mean the U.S. - no one in the world says America and is including Canada in that. North America, sure, but as soon as you drop the North you're referring to the country not…