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.
1. The highs and lows of loving Game of Thrones
Are you a GoT nut? And if you are, are you sometimes annoyed with yourself for how much you love it, despite its flaws? Then you’ll enjoy this.
(Vice, approx 18 mins reading time)
So it’s a curious thing, really, to consolidate those dual feelings. On one hand—Game of Thrones is for nerds and liking it in any way makes you an awful nerd: this we have mentioned. On the other hand: it’s our once-in-a-generation HBO show, it is our Sopranos, our The Wire, this is the show people will bingewatch in one go in a decade’s time and will ask us—old and wizened by then—”How did you wait a week between each episode? How did you manage ten months between the seasons?”
Before the game, The Guardian profiled Conor McGregor – and it’s a lot different to ESPN’s controversial profile.
(The Guardian, approx 20 mins reading time)
“The second time I went down to spar Conor at his new gym [on Dublin’s Naas Road in 2015] he was very good, very snappy. We sparred for 20 minutes and he held his own. He had a bit of weight on me but I was letting my punches go and he was taking them, moving, picking me with a jab, southpaw coming in with the left. He made me miss. He could box.”
Earlier this year, Michelle Carter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after her boyfriend took his own life. But did her texts drive him to it and what was going on in her mind at the time? (Contains details some may find upsetting.)
(Esquire, approx 32 mins reading time)
Not long after the funeral, Conrad’s little sister, Camdyn, received an email from Michelle. “Conrad did not kill himself because of bullying like everyone assumes,” Michelle wrote. “I know the real reasons.”
Back in… Irish boxer Robert Gorman fought Floyd Mayweather. Then he effectively disappeared from the world of boxing. Here’s his fascinating – and at times very sad – story.
(The42.ie, approx 51 mins reading time)
His name adorned every boxing forum on either side of the Atlantic; ‘Robert Gorman – the little-known Irish amateur who broke Floyd’s ribs’. But after a solitary amateur fight on his return home to Ireland, Gorman – the iron-pawed, body-breaking paladin – was never heard from again.
Tattoos are very personal things, meaning different things to different people. They can also help people deal with body image issues, or just make them feel more comfortable in their skin, as these interviews show.
(Refinery29, approx 18 mins reading time)
To celebrate this new era of inked freedom, and inspired by this tweet, we decided to talk to seven different women about why they got tattooed. Because, while we may be in the golden age of tattooing, women’s bodies are still under cultural surveillance. We are still encouraged to make permanent changes based on ideas of womanhood – to lose weight, remove ‘unwanted’ hair, correct blemishes – but permanent changes outside those parameters are somehow toopermanent and therefore seen as unfeminine.
Have you ever heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe? She broke lots of barriers in her time, and this short version of her life story is worth reading.
(NPR approx 10 mins reading time)
Although Tharpe’s distinctive voice and unconventional style attracted fans, it was still the mid-1930s. Female guitarists were rare, and even more so was a musician who pursued both religious and secular themes, a fact that alarmed the gospel community. But Tharpe — young and innovative — was determined to keep experimenting with her sound.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
You might love watching movies, but do you know how to read one? The late, great Roger Ebert explains what you can learn from looking closely at movies.
(Roger Ebert, approx 15 mins reading time)
In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left. The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background. Symmetrical compositions seem at rest. Diagonals in a composition seem to “move” in the direction of the sharpest angle they form, even though of course they may not move at all.
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