Good morning, and happy Saturday. I don’t know how you’re planning to make sense of the world this weekend, but can I suggest buying a book (or, if your agenda is more kitchen-focused at this particular moment, see what chefs have to say about the best knives).
If you just want to stay put and have a good think, sit down with these stories – some of the most interesting I saw around the Guardian this week. Tell us what you make of them: fivegreatreads@theguardian.com
1. ‘A chance at redirecting history’
“History is long, and short,” the Palestinian-American writer Ahmed Moore’s essay begins. “For many supporters of Israel, history appears to have commenced on 7 October 2023. For me, and for many others steeped in the acid bath of Palestine-Israel, history is a long brine. Conversations with ourselves begin to change in texture. In time, our arguments are prone to spoilage.”
Amid the carnage, and the many changing and often conflicting viewpoints, he sees “a new chance at redirecting history” – but only, he says, if policymakers can accept what he sees as some basic realities. He lays them out here.
A harrowing parallel: “Palestinians and Israelis are not unique,” Moore writes. “Rwanda and South Africa, where genocide and apartheid were perpetrated, have sought a return to life through truth and reconciliation commissions, which seek to identify harm and repair it.”
But he adds a sobering postscript: “In reality, we are light years from truth and reconciliation commissions, a harrowing effort in the best of times. Today we are Rwanda in 1994, bathing still in frothy blood.”
How long will it take to read: about seven minutes
Further reading: you can find our full coverage of the crisis in Gaza here.
2. ‘How Alzheimer’s undid my dazzling, creative wife in her 40s’
I don’t really know where to start with this one. But Michael Aylwin’s beautiful, heartbreaking and exceptionally honest piece about the “brutal and unanswerable” loss of his wife, Vanessa, to Alzheimer’s covers it all: the false hope, the frustration and fury that comes with being a carer – and the guilt of deciding to stop, the terrible cost, and the “twisted genius” of a disease that “smuggles itself in under the cover of other conditions”.
“It comes for the very soul of you,” he writes.
***
“There is no point worrying about dementia. One in 14 of us will develop it if we live beyond 65, one in six if we go beyond 80. There are various lifestyle choices we can make to lessen our risk (public health officials have identified 12), of which it pays to be aware, but worrying is not one of them.” – Michael Aylwin
How long will it take to read: about 15 minutes
3. Meeting Cindy Sherman
A startlingly memorable Cindy Sherman reference in a novel I read this week (out soon – watch this space) had me thinking about the artist. As it happened, Nadia Khomami recently met up with the “pioneer of the selfie” herself in Athens, to talk art, AI and dressing up.
In response to a spike of violence against women in Greece, the Museum of Cycladic Art decided to stage Sherman’s first exhibition in the country: a big show of Sherman’s early – and sensationally debated – work, which interrogates the social shaping of women’s identities, roles and treatment.
What Sherman is like: “Soft-spoken, kind and far more accommodating than you’d expect from someone with her level of success.”
What her work is like: “I see my work as feminist but I don’t see it hammering a message over somebody’s head,” Sherman says. “It’s subtle, because I’m a subtle person … I think everybody’s going to interpret things differently, and I can’t control how somebody’s background in art history is going to affect how they see [it].”
How long will it take to read: less than four minutes
4. A really good tip for listening to people you care about
This week’s modern mind column is a primer on “emotional validation” – or, how to listen to people close to you without judging or dismissing (or trying to “solve”) what they’re feeling … even if you don’t necessarily agree with the reasons for it. A recent trend for therapised conversation templates is, I think, rightly mocked – but this is the sort of sane, practical, kind advice I want to send to everyone I know, including myself 15 minutes ago.
How do you do it? Gaynor Parkin and Amanda Wallis have made this really easy, with a list – here in shortened form:
Give the person your full attention
Use body language to show you’re staying engaged
Acknowledge and articulate the emotion they’re expressing
Legitimise its context – for them – in the circumstances
Show you understand it goes deep
Give all this a bit of time to soak in before you “move on”
How long will it take to read: a quick one – less than two minutes
Further reading: It’s often hard not to make this newsletter just a list of advice; we publish a lot of it, and I’m always curious to see what wiser people suggest – notwithstanding that “seeing it” generally stands in for “doing” it (yes, I would prefer to avoid cancer; yes, I would like one memo that could save me a lifetime of regret; no, I will not be waking up at 5am unless needs absolutely must; yes, I am very interested in “antidotes to despair” from top climate journalists).
5. Secrets of location scouts
How do film-makers decide where to shoot? Rebecca Liu has all the details – including the fun story of how they found the medical clinic for the James Bond movie Spectre. (The location scout spent weeks visiting “pretty much every single mountaintop building” in Switzerland, France and Italy – until they found an architectural drawing of a soon-to-be-opened restaurant in Austria.)
What you need for this fun-sounding job: photography skills, knowledge of architectural periods and “a remarkable mental roster of houses, woods, beaches and more” (one person here can apparently identify a UK stately home just from a photo of its facade). It also doesn’t hurt to have the kind of temperament that can deal with plans changing.
How long will it take to read: five or so minutes
Further reading: Michael Hogan on the sudden rise in penises on TV – it’s called showbiz, baby.
Thanks as always for reading, and have a lovely weekend.
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