The vital art of talking to strangers | 4 reasons to put down the cotton swab and love your earwax | In Stephen King’s Latest, Beware the Kindly Old Professors

View online | Unsubscribe (one-click). For inquiries/unsubscribe issues, Contact Us

You Might Like � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium The vital art of talking to strangers - The Economist    Hello, Stranger. By Will Buckingham. Granta; 336 pages; £16.99The Power of Strangers. By Joe Keohane. Random House; 352 pages; $28. Viking; £16.99Fractured. By Jon Yates. Harper North; 348 pages; $28.99 and £20 ATTITUDES TO STRANGERS tend to follow a familiar pattern. Children are taught never to speak to unknown grown-ups, especially those regarded by their parents as untrustworthy. The onset of adolescence and young adulthood brings a bursting desire to interact with all sorts of people, particularly the kind who might not elicit family approval. Whether the resulting encounters are sexual or social, they confer a thrilling frisson of escape. Social circles generally narrow again as people find life-partners, form households and produce offspring of their own. Time becomes scarce; new friendships are often based on sharing the burden of child care. Some people never recover the youthful zest for unforeseen liaisons. Professional duties swell even as parental ones diminish, and the inclination sags. In old age, even if curiosity and charisma remain undimmed, frailty makes new serendipitous connections harder to establish. Continued here 4 reasons to put down the cotton swab and love your earwax - Popular Science    Whether flaky or syrupy, your earwax has helpful health benefits. So stop picking it out of your ears. By Lauren J. Young | Published Jan 5, 2023 6:00 AM EST As a child, I loved it when my mom cleaned my earwax. It was a regular ritual: I would lay my head in her lap as she shined a flashlight down my tiny ear canal. Very gently, she scraped and scooped my goopy earwax with the curved end of a thin bamboo stick decorated with a cute little doll, called a mimikaki in Japanese. For thousands of years, ear cleaning in many Asian cultures has been an act of affection. But this intense fascination with ridding our ear holes of the stuff is pretty universal: The ancient Romans created specialized ear tweezers, medieval Europeans made metal spoons, and the Vikings cleaned their ears with picks of gold.  Continued here In Stephen King's Latest, Beware the Kindly Old Professors -     His new novel, “Holly,” charges into thorny contemporary debates with a pair of unassuming fiends. A friend of mine has become a scaredy-cat since having a baby. She has been forcing herself to watch horror movies through parted fingers, hoping they will steel her nerves for the frights of everyday life. I thought of my friend’s experiment while reading “Holly,” the new mystery from Stephen King: Here is a thriller scary enough to test its readers’ mettle — and toughen them up. Holly Gibney, a private investigator, is attending her mother’s funeral when a woman calls asking for help finding her missing daughter. From a classic hard-boiled premise, the investigation unspools in rich, generous storytelling, its tone more color-saturated than noir. Like Kate Atkinson in her Jackson Brodie series, King writes a procedural with Dickensian scope: In “Holly,” we encounter reversals of fortune, a surprise inheritance, and a wide cast of friends and adversaries. Continued here

You are receiving this mailer as a TradeBriefs subscriber. We fight fake/biased news through human curation & independent editorials. Your support of ads like these makes it possible. Alternatively, get TradeBriefs Premium (ad-free) for only $2/month If you still wish to unsubscribe, you can unsubscribe from all our emails here Our address is 309 Town Center 1, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 - 433006120