(Winsome doesn’t think Hazel should be in their reading group)

She and the reading group had a big argument, no, it wasn’t no argument, it was a debate, the other day, about whether a poem was good because they related to it, or whether it was good in and of itself

Bernadette said it was up to the literature specialists to decide what was good, they only knew whether they liked something or not

Winsome agreed, she wasn’t no expert

Celestine said poetry was made deliberately difficult so that only a few clever people could understand it as a way to keep everyone else in the dark

Hazel said novels was better value than poetry books because they had more words in them, poetry books was a rip-off
(Winsome doesn’t think Hazel should be in their reading group)

Dora said there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something’s good because it speaks to you
it is
why should Wordsworth or Whitman, T. S. Eliot or Ted Hughes mean anything special to we people of the Caribbean?

Winsome made a note to go to the library to look those names up

B. Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019), 253-4

It is from the house of a coward that we point to the ruins of the house of a brave man

If an arrow is pointed at the chest of a defenceless man, that man must do as he is told. To do any different in the face of indefensible danger is folly. The valiant fathers say that it is from the house of a coward that we point to the ruins of the house of a brave man.

C. Obioma, An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), 136

Time is divine – an entity to whose will man must submit

One of the most striking differences between the way of the great fathers and their children is that the latter have adopted the White Man’s idea about time. The White Man reckoned long ago that time is divine – an entity to whose will man must submit. Following a prescribed tick, one will arrive at a particular place, certain that an event will begin at that set time. They seem to say, ‘Brethren, an arm of divinity is amongst us, and it has set its purpose at twelve forty, so we must submit to its dictates.’ If something happens, the White Man obliges himself to ascribe it to time – ‘On this day, July twentieth, 1985, such-and-such happened.’

C. Obioma, An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), 40

Having a fast food restaurant within 0.1 miles of a school would result in 5.2 per cent increase in child obesity rates

The nearer you live to fast food restaurants, whether as an adult or a child, the more likely you are to have obesity. One study from 2010 looked at the weight outcomes of living near a fast food restaurant for three million children, and three million pregnant women in the US, The researchers, led by Janet Currie of Columbia University, found that having a fast food restaurant within 0.1 miles of a school would result in 5.2 per cent increase in child obesity rates.

B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019), 223

A dense overworked phosphorescent ring of disappointment

But now, food colourings are back with a vengeance with the 'rainbow' food of Instagram, notably rainbow bagels. What's a rainbow bagel? It is, as one online critic puts it, 'a dense overworked phosphorescent ring of disappointment'. A rainbow bagel is made from dough dyed from seven different food colourings and baked into a ring-shaped brad roll that would look too garish even at a five-year-old's birthday party. Only on Instagram could such a thing seem better than normal bread. It is an idea of joy, rather than actual joy. 

B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019), 193-4

Bread used to be central to our lives

Bread used to be central to our lives, largely because it gobbled up so much of our incomes. In the nineteenth century, an average British farm worker in the county of Somerset spent more than twice as much on bread as on rent (£11 14s per annum as against £5 4s).... Bread's lowly status [now] can be seen from the fact that so much of it is discarded. Our ancestors used up every scrap of a loaf, and put any stale bits to good use: think of the thick, oily bread soups of Italy and Portugal or the bread stuffings of America

B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019), 116

It makes no sense to presume that there has been a sudden collapse of willpower across all ages and ethnic groups and each sex since the 1960s

A survey of more than three hundred international policymakers found that 90 per cent of them believed the personal motivation - aka willpower - was a very strong cause of obesity. This is absurd.

It makes no sense to presume that there has been a sudden collapse of willpower across all ages and ethnic groups and each sex since the 1960s. What has changed most since the sixties is not our collective willpower but the marketing and availability of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods 

B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019), 6-7

Man hardened clay into a bowl before he spun flax and made a garment

Probably no one in the Five Towns takes a conscious pride in the antiquity of the potter's craft, nor in its unique and intimate relation to human life, alike civilized and uncivilized. Man hardened clay into a bowl before he spun flax and made a garment, and the last lone man will want an earthern vessel after he has abandoned his ruined house for a cave, and his woven rags for an animal's skin

Arnold Bennett, Anna of the five towns (1902; Penguin 2016), 113

Modern composers, if spoken of at all, were referred to as 'freaks', an opinion with which, in some cases, I am still inclined to agree.

These two splendidly lively and intelligent ladies were a real eye-opener for me, for the ordinary and comfortable middle-class Berkshire circles in which I was then living contained no intellectual ladies of any sort. Nobody narrowed their eyes at one and talked about Proust. Tea-table chat did not include a mention of the Russian Ballet designs of Bakst. Modern composers, if spoken of at all, were referred to as 'freaks', an opinion with which, in some cases, I am still inclined to agree.

A. Marshall, Life's rich pageant (1984), 84

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch ... We had been burying, I am sad to say, my father and I mean no disrespect to the dead when I suggest how greatly preferable the aftermath of a funeral is to that of a wedding.

A. Marshall, Life's rich pageant (1984), 1