Those nice people at Amazon have sent me my weekly reading list.
My Top Picks are
Captain Underpants: Three Pant-tastic Novels in One by Dav Pikey
and The Lost Spells by Robert McFarlane (a nature writer I know is a Good Thing but I find in practice unreadable).
An interesting pairing.
And then come the books specially Recommended for You:
Sweet Sorrow, 'this summer's must-read from the bestselling author of One Day' (er, no thanks),
and Yotam Ottolenghi's Flavour (hmmm).
There we are – another triumph for those all-knowing algorithms.
Meanwhile, down at my local Sainsburys, the Argos concession – which recently declared its proud support of the LGBT+ community with rainbow-coloured bunting – is now using its bunting to declare its equally proud support of Black History Month. Quite what form this support takes, or could possibly take, is hard to imagine – Argos is, after all, nothing more than a retail counter attached to a warehouse. But we should not be surprised by any of this: the Woke agenda has been greedily subsumed into corporate culture and PR (which doesn't make it any less dangerous). It is one of the many ways in which the new managerial elite is reminding us of who is in charge and what attitudes we must strike if we want to get on in this craven new world.
Friday 23 October 2020
My Top Picks, etc.
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So glad I am not alone re Mcfarlane.
ReplyDeleteWell I know where the Captain Underpants recommendation issues from - the rest are pretty baffling tho!
ReplyDeleteKate – How did you know about my secret Captain Underpants habit? I don't want that getting out...
ReplyDeleteZoe – Glad to hear I'm not alone re McFarlane too – it seems to be very much a minority view.
I love the random juxtapositions that turn up on Amazon’s Recommended list. They’re a kind of spontaneous surrealism and remind me of a visit I made to Budapest shortly after the fall of Communism. In those days incipient capitalism took strange forms, as entrepreneurs struggled to get hold of Western goods to sell. One shop, I remember, sold trousers and orange juice. Nothing else – just trousers and orange juice. When I went back, several months later, it had changed its pitch and just sold blouses and garden statues. Nowadays, Budapest even has a Primark. How dull can you get?
ReplyDeleteTrousers and orange juice – what an 'offer'! I think I'd shop there quite happily.
ReplyDeleteAbout a year ago Amazon sent me an email recommending Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' - in Arabic. Even the email was in Arabic. I hasten to add that I cannot read a word of Arabic (alas) nor do I have the slighest interest in Michelle Obama!
ReplyDeleteWow – that is impressively wide of the mark, Hector!
DeleteWe have the cookbook Jerusalem, written in part by Ottolenghi. We haven't cooked out of it much, but what have cooked has been good.
ReplyDeleteYes, his stuff is good, provided you can find the ingredients. He's a master of the aubergine!
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