FYI #32
Photography Elliot Sheppard, for The Modern House
The impeccably organised, grass-roofed, book-lined home of literary editor, Gail Pirkis, via The Modern House. The owner of this house is co-editor of the quarterly literary magazine, Slightly Foxed. I’m looking forward to dipping into their podcast archive.
Architect Laura Dewe Mathews shares the secret ingredients of her 'gingerbread house', a short film, also via The Modern House.
In my last FYI post I mentioned the PBS Newshour’s summer reading recommendations. One of the guests, writer/bookshop owner Ann Patchett, recommended Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest book, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. I really enjoyed it. I did some reading about the author, including this New York magazine interview by Giri Nathan, ‘The Mr. Rogers of Columbus, Ohio: The poet Hanif Abdurraqib is as idiosyncratic as his unclassifiable new book.’
I was reading an ABC News piece about the impact of ‘gentrification’. It mentioned that the term was coined by a British sociologist, Ruth Glass (1912 - 1990), in 1964. I was not familiar with her work.
Lovely to see the launch of Lola Giuffré’s new venture, STUDIO LOLA. A talented jeweller, artist and mechanical engineer, based in Rotterdam, who made me a beautiful pendant.
Writer James Fallows on the first US Presidential debate, Election Countdown, 130 Days to Go: A Bad Night for America.
Memex 1.1, John Naughton's online diary. Naughton writes a column on technology for The Observer.
Program for this year’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas (#FODI), August 24 - 25, at Carriageworks (Sydney). In a session chaired by Ann Mossop, artistic director of the Sydney Writers Festival, David Runciman will deliver the Hitch keynote address, on giving children the right to vote. Runciman hosts the history of ideas podcast, Past Present Future. I enjoyed his two-part episode on George Elliot’s Middlemarch in his Great Political Fictions series.
Podcast listening highlights this week:
Designer, magazine editor, and filmmaker Scott Dadich on Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Writer Salman Rushdie on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day
Playwright David Hare on Ruthie’s Table 4, with Ruthie Rogers.
Carina del Valle Schorske, in conversation with Merve Emre on The Critic and Her Publics, via the New York Review. She has a debut essay collection, The Other Island, coming out.
Emily Nussbaum on the LARB Radio Hour talking about her new book, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV
Writer Sheila Heti on the Granta podcast
Rachel Schwartzmann speaking with poet Victoria Chang on Slow Stories