Filed under Reading

Quote of the day: On fullness

I’m currently reading Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog),” the bloggiest book of the 19th century. Since it concerns the adventures of three 19th-century bachelors and a dog rowing a small skiff down the Thames and camping along the way, there is unsurprisingly a lot of emphasis … Continue reading »

On Twilight, romance, and antifeminist ideas

The other day, Sweet Machine alerted me to a new study about the influence of media on relationship ideals. According to BBC News, the study found that people who watch a lot of romantic comedies have unrealistic and harmful ideas about relationships — they were more likely to believe in destiny when it comes to … Continue reading »

Yes Means Yes is out!

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti is in stores now! I contributed an essay, “How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman?” to it, and I just got my copies the other day — the book is awesome. (Even though I realize now that I said … Continue reading »

So that weight loss book thing…

Paul and Marianne have already covered this story about a study of 9 to 13-year-old girls involved in one of Duke University’s weight loss programs, which found that girls assigned to read a book with a weight loss story line (“Lake Rescue”) lost a little bit more weight than girls who read a non-diet book, … Continue reading »

Book Review: Box Office Poison

I know that book reviews are traditionally about new publications, but you should see some of the new publications that approach us for reviews (one piece of dreck, the wretchedly mixed-messagey Embracing Your Big Fat Ass, is still trying to spam us with astroturfing comments). According to this link from Shapeling Arwen, fat protagonists are … Continue reading »