Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (639)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
40x40

Eilidh G Clark (177 KP) rated Nasty Women in Books

May 13, 2017  
Nasty Women
Nasty Women
404 Ink | 2017 | Essays
10
8.3 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
Honest, tragic, brilliant and brave (0 more)
Nothing (0 more)
Nasty women is hard-hitting, eye-opening, and unashamedly honest.
‘Sometimes the role model you need is not an example to aspire to, but someone who reflects back the parts of yourself that society deems fit.’ -
Becca Inglis

Nasty Women, published by 404 ink, is a collection of essays about what it is, and how it feels to be a woman in the 21st century. When I first picked up the book, I assumed, like I think most readers would, that it would be an easy book to just pick up and put down whenever I had a spare ten minutes. Wrong, I was sucked into this book right from the beginning, and read it all in a day. That doesn’t mean it was an easy read, or perhaps easy is the wrong word – it isn’t a comfortable read - and it isn’t meant to be. Nasty women is hard-hitting, eye-opening, and unashamedly honest.
The book opens with ‘Independence Day’ by Katie Muriel. A story of mixed race and identity in Trump’s America, Muriel discusses her experience of inter-family racism, heightened by political differences, ‘This is not the first, nor is it the last family divide Trump will leave in his wake, but I refuse to think of him as some deity who stands around shifting pieces on a board in his golden war room.’ The anger in this piece is clear, but it is the rationalism and clarity of the writer that speaks volumes. Race, racism and xenophobia, is a prominent feature in these stories. Claire L. Heuchan, for example, talks about ‘Othering’ a term that readers will see repeatedly in this book, ‘Scotland,’ she writes, ‘is a fairly isolating place to be a black woman.’
Survival is a key trope in Nasty Women. Mel Reeve, in ‘The Nastiness of Survival,’ talks about being a survivor of rape and emotional abuse, ‘I do not fit the ‘right’ definition of someone who has been raped.’ This statement alone is filled with irony.
I was particularly drawn to Laura Waddell’s essay, ‘Against Stereotypes: Working Class Girls and Working Class Art.’ Laura talks about the difficulty of both gender and class inequality, and, in particular, the lack of working class writers and working class fiction being published, ‘I have read a lot of fiction’ she says, ‘I have read almost none from housing estates such as the one I grew up on. These stories are missing, from shelves, and from the record.’ As a Scottish fiction writer from a working-class background myself, these words resonate deeply.
Alice Tarbuck’s ‘Foraging and Feminism: Hedge-Witchcraft in the 21st Century’, is almost fun to read in a deeply devastating way. There is a desperate tone in this piece, and a desperate need to escape society. ‘There is beauty and bounty around us if we look for it, and perhaps that is all the magic we need. Or perhaps, what we need is real magic, whether that comes in the form of resistance and community or the form of blackthorn charms and skullcap tinctures, and howling to the moon.
I loved this book. This book gives women a voice. And it is loud! Well done 404 Ink, and all the contributors, for bravely breaking the silence.
  
40x40

James Koppert (2698 KP) rated Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle in TV

Nov 13, 2019  
Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle
Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle
2016 | Comedy
10
7.0 (7 Ratings)
TV Show Rating
Absolutely, utterly, incredibly hilarious (0 more)
I wish this was a series not just a one off (0 more)
Go to the bathroom first. You could wet yourself
Alan offends the working class on air so goes to seek redemption and we get a documentary delivered in his acutely awkward way. It is patronising, difficult to watch and so funny I had to keep rewinding it as I was still laughing from the previous scene.

Oh, if you don't like Alan Partridge you won't like this. Why you don't, I don't know.
  
40x40

Nadine Shah recommended Little Voice (1998) in Movies (curated)

 
Little Voice (1998)
Little Voice (1998)
1998 | International, Comedy, Drama
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"A film that absolutely nails the experience of really wanting to perform – that feeling that you’re weird to do so when you’re not being encouraged – and of music being a brilliant form of escape. Even though I’m not working-class, the story described a world and an attitude to women I knew well. It’s also about finding your identity through music, how you can find your own voice through singing other people’s songs. I used to do that myself as a child, trying to become Tina Turner by singing Private Dancer!"

Source
  
40x40

James Koppert (2698 KP) rated The Push Man in Books

May 9, 2020  
The Push Man
The Push Man
Yoshihiro Tatsumi | 2012 | Comics & Graphic Novels
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Genius at work
After reading his autobiography I thought I'd try his work. It is easy to see why the man is do revered. Fascinatingly he is not influenced by the genre he created, instead his influence came from watching the working class men in the inner city around him as well as the seedy crime stories from the newspaper. It makes his work an absolute contrast to the innocence of the man which makes the stories more absorbing. The stories are like snapshots of lives that tell large stories and are absolute genius