Remembering where you were

The British Education secretary announces a 27 million pound scheme to give bags of free books to children up for four years. The Guardian reviews "Mediated: The Hidden Effects of the Media on You and Your World" by Thomas de Zengotit, which I read as a brilliant excerpt in Harpers last winter. This is a book of awareness, not conclusions, as the review states, and leaves you wondering, "If I am a sponge, an assemblage of images, sounds and influences, always looking out for my 15 minutes of fame, always rehearsing what I'll say if a camera pokes its head round my doorway or a producer from reality television comes knocking with a contract, then where is the real me, the inner core, not the outer show?" The by now well documented story of how Stella's groove was mislaid. Today I learned the word salubrious, which means healthy, good. Naomi Wolf compares a recent book about Mary Woolstonecraft to Edward Klein's new biography of Hillary Clinton, both of which demonstrate "the collective unconscious of our culture at work, throwing up vivid, even lurid fantasies that emerge out of the shifting balance of power between women and men." (The Klein book was excerpted in Vanity Fair recently, and it was godawful). And here is Daniel Clowes on his new book "Ice Haven." In further news, I've started "Small Island" by Andrea Levy, and my allergy to lake water has resulted in something horrible occurring on my eyelid. Most importantly, today we bought a mattress.