IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
A profile of James Cameron, as he gets ready for the latest Avatar film to hit cinemas.
(GQ, approx 31 mins reading time)
It would be fair to call him the father of the modern action movie, which he helped invent with his debut, The Terminator, and then reinvent with his second, Aliens; it would be accurate to add that he has directed two of the three top-grossing films in history, in Avatar (number one) and Titanic (number three). But he is also a scientist—a camera he helped design served as the model for one that is currently on Mars, attached to the Mars rover—and an adventurer
Matt Blake buys a new home – only to discover it has a dark past.
(The Guardian, approx mins reading time)
“Houses with horrible histories can be challenging to sell,” says estate agent Reuben John, sales director at M&M Properties in north London. “Some people really care and won’t go near it; others pretend they care just to get a discount. But the truth is, a nice property will always sell, especially in London.”
The story of an extraordinary flood that caused over $13 billion dollars’ worth of damage in British Columbia.
(Hakai, approx 15 mins reading time)
Schmidt quickly noticed a difference. Earlier, the Nicola had looked swollen. Now it had an air of menace. The water barreling through the near-desert landscape seemed unreal. “The river beside the road was three times as high. It was flowing really quick,” Schmidt would later recall.
4. Wednesday, the millennial icon
A look at how Wednesday Addams inspired a generation of cynics.
(Longreads, approx 8 minutes reading time)
But the beauty of Wednesday — or at least the version portrayed by Christina Ricci in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values — is that she wasn’t a maladapted goth waif yearning to find someone who truly understands her. Instead, she brought to the screen a morbid self-acceptance that set her apart, and became a crucial blueprint for a generation of girls developing their own gallows humor.
5. The origin story of the Talkboy
Remember the Talkboy from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York? Here’s the story behind it.
(Vanity Fair, approx 10 mins reading time)
Indeed, the Talkboy was actually an eleventh-hour creation dreamt up by producer-screenwriter John Hughes and a handful of toy-company executives just weeks before the movie started filming. And its ascendance—from Macgyvered prop to the hottest (and hardest to find) holiday toy, to its eventual discontinuation and later comeback as a cherished collector’s item—is the stuff Hollywood legends are made of.
David Botti wants to find out more about his family history. Here’s how he used his online sleuthing skills to discover something wonderful.
(New York times, approx 5 mins reading time)
I knew virtually nothing about my family’s history before the turn of the 20th century, when they immigrated to the United States. Their time in America is well documented in census records, citizenship papers and family photographs. But their prior lives in Italy were nothing more to me than the names of towns and ancestors on a family tree.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
A piece of short fiction by Nora Ephron about phone booths.
(The New Yorker, approx 7 mins reading time)
Something has happened to telephone booths in New York. No one knows when it happened, and no one knows what it is that happened, but something has happened. Telephone booths in New York are different. They have changed. There are people who say it has to do with what they look like, and there are people who say that it has to do with whether they are out of order, and there are people who say that all that is beside the point. What matters, they say, is that something has happened to telephone booths in New York.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in questi
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