Bitch, Bust and Wanderlust

It’s the school holidays so my posts my be erratic over the next two weeks.

Okay, disclaimer over. We had a day in the big smoke yesterday. Oh the joys of escalators and lifts for my poor deprived children! We started off at the Public Library, where I finally got an “out of towner” card. I checked out a copy each of Bitch and Bust magazines and a copy of Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. I’ve heard a lot about both Bitch and Bust and wanted to have a good look and compare the two. Bust is nice and glossy and it’s latest issue has Flight of the Concords on the cover (gotta be good!) but Bitch does seem to have a lot more substance. Ah well, why can’t a feminist have her cake and eat it too?

I came across Solnit through an article she wrote called “Men explain things to Me”, which really struck a chord with me. I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of her before but I’m looking forward to reading Wanderlust.

Here’s an extract from the blurb:

“What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories - of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores - to create a portrait of the range of possibilities for this most basic act… Solnit’s book finds a profound relationship between walking and thinking, walking and culture, and argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in an ever more automobile-dependant and accelerated world.”

We might all have to do a lot more walking when the oil crash comes!

In a lovely piece of synchronicity, a small square of paper fell out of the Bust magazine as I flicked through it. It had a web address on it. Go on, have a look, you know you want to!