In my experience, you’re either an Austen or a Bronte fan. Bronte fans find Austen devotees insipid, and Austen acolytes don’t get what’s so romantic about dreadful people torturing each other on some grim moors.

That sounds AWESOME. I never really thought the books were that romantic tbh- at least, not past Northanger Abbey. The sense of dread and relief around the romantic matches or lack of them drowns any of that out, I think. It’s why Charlotte is one of my favorite characters- she really demonstrates the reality of…

Right. I mean, people can believe what they want, but if we’re making exceptions to their professional responsibilities because of said beliefs I think they need to hold up to some kind of rationality. They should proceed from some widely held consensus among people of a similar faith, or/or be a reasonable…

But even then, that would be your sin, not hers. Her sin in this equation would be equivalent to, I dunno, NOT stoning an adulterer. That’s a pretty minor sin by any logic except possibly Kim Davis’ logic.

Also, wouldn’t the Christian God be capable of understanding her position and forgiving her? He’s already forgiven her for her multiple marriages/divorces, so it should be a snip for him to forgive her for this. I kind of thought that was the whole point.

I like the Guardian despite it’s middle-class london-centric tone. The comment sections are a mixed bad and vary between really funny (puns. So many puns) and dire (don’t read anything BTL on articles about women or sexism). The BBC has skewed pretty conservative for the last few years, but I still go there for…

I honestly think the only shocking thing she could do now is dye her hair back to her natural color and start wearing chunky knitted sweaters with jeans. She has circled the shock spectrum so thoroughly that she’s now fairly mundane.

My husband couldn’t remember my address during our interview. Mind you, I was so stressed out that I temporarily forgot my last name, so.

This is a good take. I don’t think Catherine comes off well here, but we’re only getting her aunt’s side of the story. For all we know her aunt freely offered to co-sign her niece’s loan, Catherine’s been unable to secure full-time employment (not unheard of WITH a college degree, let alone without one) with which to…

This. I feel like a huge part of being a decent reporter is judging a the mood of the person you’re interviewing and building your questions around them, especially when they’re obviously under pressure from whatever it is that meriting the interview in the first place. You’re not going to get a good response being…

I even took the essay to my supervising professor and asked him how I was supposed to handle it. He just got this look on his face like he was 1000 years old and confirmed that I basically had to give him the A. but no-one said I had to feel good about it.

One of the hardest days of my teaching life was when I had to give a student an A for his creationist essay. The exercise was to write a good essay, not a factual one, and it really was a well-structured piece of brain vomit. He was so happy when he came to collect it and I had to repeatedly shut him down. “I don’t…

Was that the series where the mum basically has a breakdown in their confessional room because every damn thing is so hard and she never gets to go outside or see anyone or listen to the news? I felt so bad for her.

My thoughts exactly. These people are just turbo-hipsters, cherry-picking from a picturesque past and pretending it makes them better than everyone else. All this jabbering about “mindfulness,” ughhhh. And I’m amazed she seems to be completely oblivious to the enormous environmental repercussions of the Victorian era…

“These people don’t have antibiotics!”

This is such a good series! It’s worth noting too that only Ruth spends a full night there, and they’re all very upfront about how much work everything is. I think Ruth has it the worst, because we expect things like raising sheep to be grinding physical labor, but going through all the steps necessary to get a loaf…

They’re old money. They’re known for loving the country, dogs, their grandfather’s Land Rover,* ponies called fidget and calling any woman under the age of 50 “gel.”

Starkey is typically very good at what he does. He’s a compelling story-teller and his books are extremely readable.
He’s also a complete troll and a bit of a fossil. He’s slagged off women historians for paying too much attention to Henry VIII’S wives (Starkey actually produced one of the most widely-read books on…

Excellent summation. It’s been a while since I left the land of my forbears, so I have to ask: do they still have their resident whipping-girl, Carol, I think it was? The one who was single and didn’t want kids and they always made jokes about her being a total bitch because she was single and didn’t want kids? Not…

All terrible examples of what I think of as fashion overshoot. Most people could probably get behind flared jeans again (I remember saying they’d never get me into skinny jean. Time makes fools of us all!) but ankle-length , dip-dyed flares? Someone didn’t know when to say “Stop, this may be too many trends for one…