Weve rediscovered the joy of reading: how customers are rescuing UK bookshops
BooksA bookseller in Kent has gone viral after tweeting a picture of her empty shop. Here, other retailers explain how they are surviving – even thriving – when many people are counting every penny
A vase of hydrangeas sits among a crop of the latest releases, including What Writers Read and Blake Morrison’s Two Sisters. There is a cosy rug and a bright window display. It looks like a lovely bookshop.
Emma and Carl Jung in Vienna, 1903, at the start of their marriage. Photograph: Harper CollinsEmma and Carl Jung in Vienna, 1903, at the start of their marriage. Photograph: Harper CollinsThe ObserverCarl JungReviewEmma Jung’s role in the growth of psychoanalysis – and her scandalous life with Carl – is revealed in this absorbing new biographyIn 1899, 17-year-old Emma Rauschenbach, one of Switzerland’s wealthiest heiresses, fell in love with Carl Jung, a penniless Irrenarzt, or doctor of the insane, then the least respected of all medical disciplines.
Americas next top striker: who will be Berhalters first choice in Qatar?
USAThe USMNT have rebuilt nicely after a disastrous World Cup qualifying campaign four years ago, but the race to be Gregg Berhalter’s No 9 is wide open
By this time next year, the 2022 World Cup will have come and gone. Soccer’s great and good will have descended on Qatar for the most controversial tournament in the sport’s history, and they’ll have left again. New world champions will have been crowned.
Archaeologists in Mexico identify first Mayan slave ship | Mexico
Mexico This article is more than 3 years oldArchaeologists in Mexico identify first Mayan slave shipThis article is more than 3 years oldShip had been used to take Mayas captured during an 1847-1901 rebellion to work in sugarcane fields in Cuba Archaeologists in Mexico have identified a ship that carried Mayan people into virtual slavery in the 1850s, the first time such a ship has been found.
Mexico’s Amlo proposes referendum on prosecuting country’s ex-presidentsRead moreThe wreck of the Cuban-based paddle-wheel steamboat was found in 2017, but wasn’t identified until researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History checked contemporary documents and found it was the ship “La Unión”.
Barbie review a riotous, candy-coloured feminist fable
Mark Kermode's film of the weekBarbieReviewBarbie takes a ride from her dream house to reality as Little Women writer-director Greta Gerwig takes another cultural icon and lovingly subverts it
Writer-director Greta Gerwig’s cinematic reinvention of Mattel’s most (in)famous toy comes on like a sugar-rush mashup of Pixar’s Toy Story 2, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, the cult live-action feature Josie and the Pussycats and the Roger Ebert-scripted exploitation romp Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Mapping the body: the natal cleft
Mapping the bodyHealth & wellbeingIt's one of the more obscure parts of our body – and prone to a particularly embarrassing condition"What's the weirdest bit of someone's skin you've ever operated on?" a particularly chatty teenage girl asked me last week, as I cut a mole out of her arm. I told her that I couldn't think of a single part of the body that escaped the surgeon's knife. I'm not sure where her mind took her in the ensuing silence but I found myself thinking of a very obscure part of a person's anatomy.
Rereading: Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
RereadingFictionFamous for his novellas, popular histories and biographies, Stefan Zweig wrote only one novel, a study of nostalgia and disillusionmentWhen Stefan Zweig, forced into a peripatetic life by the rise of Nazism, arrived in New York in 1935, he was persistently asked to make a statement about the treatment of the Jews in Germany. He refused to be drawn out, and said in correspondence that his reason was that anything he said would probably only make their situation worse.
Dear doctor | Health & wellbeing
Health & wellbeingDear doctorThe effects of ecstasy, postnatal depression and bowel movements Drug culture
Q I take ecstasy once or twice a week when clubbing or out with friends. Is it going to damage me mentally in the long-term?
A Ecstasy (MDMA) is a powerful, potentially dangerous drug which can damage the nerves in the brain that produce serotonin, one of the chemical messengers within the nervous system. Animals who are given MDMA end up with low serotonin levels, which don't recover for years.
Hollywoods historic Egyptian Theatre to reopen after Netflix restoration | Los Angeles
Los Angeles This article is more than 2 months oldHollywood’s historic Egyptian Theatre to reopen after Netflix restorationThis article is more than 2 months oldStreaming giant planning to use the lavish location as a venue for premieres and events after $70m renovation
Hollywood’s 100-year-old Egyptian Theatre is reopening this week after a $70m renovation from Netflix, with the streaming giant planning to use the lavish location as a venue for premieres and events.
How Game of Thrones drew on the Wars of the Roses
Fantasy booksNew video traces the origins of HBO’s hit TV series in the bloody feuding of 15th-century England’s dynastic civil warsA new video by TED-Ed, the education initiative of the ideas-driven nonprofit, situates the story of HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones in its proper historical frame. George RR Martin, the author of the bestselling fantasy novels that inspired the television show, says that though his tale of medieval intrigue and war draws from a range of historical sources, it clings “closest” to England’s 15th-century Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic civil wars that lasted three decades.