Denmark Has 24 Hour Libraries! Critical Linking, April 8, 2019

Sponsored by –The Fall of Crazy House

Imagine a public library where you can check out a book at 7 in morning or go and work at 9:30 at night, every day of the week. That’s the way almost half of Denmark’s libraries operate now. They are called “open libraries.”  Staff are present only some of the time — or in some cases, none of the time — and some are even open 24 hours.

Moves “visiting Denmark” up on my list.

“Can I say nipples in here?” Rai continued. The audience giggled. “Many, many years ago, when I first started writing, someone said to me: ‘Oh, this is the first book where the heroine had brown nipples, like on the page,’ and I was like: ‘What? That’s crazy!’ She was a long-time romance reader. I thought about it. I’m pretty sure nipples come in all shades, but they’re always, like, pink on the page, or berries, or some kind of pink fruit.”
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By this point, the audience was guffawing and Jenkins was bent over with laughter. “What happens is, it goes into one book, it goes into 10 books, people read those books and write their own books, and suddenly, everybody’s got pink nipples,” Rai said. “And they forget about the fact that that’s not reality.”

Here’s my long read for the day–a deep dive into the romance genre and the very long fight against racism.

I remember soon after her cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, came out in April 2017, a friend pressing it into my hands like something illicit. “You have to read this.” Around the Bon Appétit office her name wasn’t Samin; it was “Samiiiin [sigh].” Then her four-episode cooking- and-travel show based on the book appeared on Netflix, and it seemed like everyone was talking about those soy-braised short ribs or that miso egg. My friends who didn’t cook were posting photos of homemade focaccia. Something was happening.

I absolutely adore Samin Nosrat and always need more of her.