Good morning, welcome to February and to Five Great Reads. It’s your summertime, morning tea wrap of great writing, big ideas and polar bears, spotted through the spyglass by me, Alyx Gorman, Guardian Australia’s lifestyle editor.
As the holiday break period draws to a close, you might be more interested in reading the news as it happens: the live blog is the place for that. Alternatively, you could just ditch work today and spend the next several hours trying to recreate Rihanna’s pregnancy announcement photograph. Who could blame you?
1. Polar bears at home in an abandoned Soviet weather station
It took wildlife photographer Dmitry Kokh almost two years to prepare for his trip to Wrangel Island, one of the few places where polar bears can be found in large numbers. When bad weather forced the expedition to stop near the small island of Kolyuchin, they discovered the bears had taken up residence in the island’s ruins.
Is this a Phillip Pullman novel? Maybe, Kokh does say he “felt as if I was in a parallel universe”.
What are the bears doing there? “No one knows why,” Kokh writes “but once every nine years the floating ice remains near the shore in summer. Consequently, the bears do not travel far to the north with the ice, as usual, and take up residence in the abandoned polar station.”
How long will it take me to read? Two minutes, but the pictures will stay with you.
2. Are phones creating an intimacy famine?
Developmental psychologist Michelle Drouin described her phone as “probably the most demanding entity in my world”. She’s not alone in this – through her research she and her collaborators discovered that 72% of couples experience technological interruptions in their relationship on a regular basis.
Notable quote: “Through my responsiveness to my phone’s demands, I have nurtured it as well,” Drouin writes. “I carefully wipe its screen to remove smudges (social grooming). I carry it with me everywhere I go in either my purse, hand or pocket (skin-to-screen bonding). I get nervous if I cannot find it (separation anxiety). We are bonded, and I am smitten.”
Is she going to tell me to switch to a flip phone? Mercifully, no.
How long will it take me to read? Three minutes if you can get through it without checking Instagram.
3. Australia’s Cool Runnings curlers
Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt are about to become the first Australian curlers to compete in the Winter Olympics. This remarkable achievement is made even more so for the fact that there’s not a single dedicated curling rink in the country; and they both have day jobs.
Notable quote: “There is a lot involved: the precision, the power and endurance from sweeping as well,” says Hewitt. “And the strategy behind it is huge, the mental game is really important. It’s chess on ice, but we have to play really quickly – you’re on the clock.”
How long will it take me to read? Two and a half minutes.
4. The earnest enthusiasm of Toastmasters
Katherine Collette is a second-generation Toastmaster. Having written a novel in an “eerily familiar but not copyright-protected setting”, she shares the appeal of the public speaking club.
What’s the appeal? “The stories people tell,” she writes. “A woman whose daughter disappeared – went to school one day and never came back. A man interrogated by soldiers in his home; someone else performing emergency surgery in a barn. Weddings, natural disasters, death.”
How long will it take me to read? Two minutes.
5. Your February watch list
Each month, Guardian Australia critic Luke Buckmaster pulls together a list of the best new TV shows and movies streaming in Australia. February’s bringing in 90s revivals, a chilling indie horror hit, and a generous helping of Noni Hazlehurst.
Anything else good? Absolutely – we’ll also be getting Shadow, a film Buckmaster calls a “visually ravishing epic” and “the best action movie of 2018”.
