Doha, a city of roughly 3 million, eagerly awaits the world. Later this month, the capital of Qatar will host the FIFA World Cup, and around 1,000 flights are expected to land in the days prior to its opening.

In Doha, anticipation accompanies ambition: a slate of government-funded projects is transforming the desertscape into a destination capable of dazzling the jet-setting class. The city’s cultural district already includes the newly renovated Museum of Islamic Art, a vast blue-chip public art park, and the National Museum of Qatar. Qatar Creates, a year-round “cultural movement” managed by the state-body Qatar Museums, is busy organizing accompanying programming.

Forthcoming institutions include the Art Mill Museum (AMM), set to open in a converted flour mill which, as of writing, is still operational, and Lusail, a dedicated museum of so-called Orientalist art.

Lusail, which is due to break ground in 2030 on Al Maha Island, a major entertainment destination in Doha, will offer “insight into the movement of ideas and perspectives to reveal complex layers of perception, power and politics, which continue to frame how different people around the world understand each other today,” according to its press materials. 

The team behind Lusail, including director Dr. Xavier Dectot, has organized a teaser exhibition called “Tales of a Connected World.” It includes 247 objects, assembled by Qatar Museums, spanning paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography, most of which are hung in a dense 19th-century Salon style.  

One of my favorite lines of reality TV dialogue belongs to the Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kenya Moore, who once told an adversary, “I’m Gone with the Wind fabulous,” snapped her fingers, twirled the tail of her peach-colored chiffon dress centrifugally like a tipsy Wonder Woman impersonator, and eventually spun out of the scene on a dime. Presumably, this was a nod to Scarlett O’Hara, the quintessential Southern belle, a prototypical Georgia peach. Ever since the episode aired in 2012, the line has been memed to death by pop culture nerds and reality TV obsessives, probably with much the same fervor that movie buffs have parroted Rhett Butler’s famous closing quip to O’Hara from the 1939 film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. (When O’Hara asks Butler what she’ll do with her life if he walks out on her, he replies, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”) I love how ridiculous the reference is, especially in the context of a petty poolside skirmish. I dig the layers of racial commentary in the comparison, whether intended or not. What does “Gone with the Wind fabulous” actually mean, on a scale of style? Does it speak to a propensity for overwrought fashion, melodramatic flair, Southern grandeur? A tendency to leave devastation in one’s wake? If that’s the case, then maybe it’s Butler, not O’Hara, to whom Moore alludes when she sashays away from her rival. Viewers of the scene are left with the image of the sway of silky fabric, and her winsome Miss USA wave—the gesture reminiscent of a done-in O’Hara, who clutches a large plantation doorframe as her man storms out.

—Niela Orr, contributing editor

Faced with the stress of releasing and promoting a book this fall, I needed a stupid new distraction for my downtime. This is how I began watching the incredible, probably unethical Bravo reality show Vanderpump Rules, the spin-off Real Housewives series best known for its low-rent setting and the gleeful promiscuity of its cast. Other writers have already rhapsodized about the timelessness of its emotional arcs, which blend the savagery of I, Claudius with the camp of, well, the Housewives franchise, but what kept me watching solidly for the last month and a half is its startling darkness: rarely has a reality show starred quite so many genuinely cracked and frightening people, with Jax Taylor, a self-described “number-one guy,” being the most cracked and frightening of all. Taylor, a steroidally buff model-turned-bartender with the cold gaze of a shark, may be the most obvious sociopath in reality TV history; a philanderer and gaslighter par excellence, he is even better at lying than he is at finding reasons to remove his shirt. (If a fan video of him overlaid with Patrick Bateman’s opening monologue from American Psycho does not currently exist, this is a grievous oversight.) It shouldn’t feel like sinking into a warm bath to watch the televisual equivalent of bear-baiting, but then maybe I’m a little bit of a dead-eyed sociopath, too. Additionally, Vanderpump Rules features some of the best dialogue ever committed to the screen. Even Shakespeare did not think to have Macbeth exclaim that seeing Banquo seated at the table was “like seeing a ghost, but like, a bitch ghost—like a ghost that’s a bitch”—but then again, Shakespeare never worked a shift at SUR. 

The U.S. edition of German dealer Johann König’s memoir, which was to be released next week, is currently on hold, its publisher confirmed Friday.

Titled Blind Gallerist and written with Daniel Schreiber, the book was originally released in German in 2019. It has also appeared in an English-language edition that was released in the U.K. that same year.

A representative for Sternberg Press, the book’s publisher in the U.S., wrote in an email to ARTnews that the pause in the book’s release had come after the publication of accusations of sexual harassment against König.

“In light of the allegations against Johann König we have decided to temporarily halt the shipping and promotion of Blind Gallerist,” the spokesperson said.

A representative for König Galerie, the Berlin-based gallery that König founded in 2002, did not respond to a request for comment.

Marcus, Jim, Vish and Andy look ahead to Scotland’s inevitable takeover of the Premier League, as their valiant soldiers fly into tackles with all the reckless abandon of a nation not at the World Cup. 

There are some tasty ties to take a look at, as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang hosts his beloved Arsenal and Harry Kane marches to provincial war with Jurgen Klopp. Plus, moose pitch invasions and the return of the FA Cup proper! 

Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***

We know that the same books show up again and again in these bans and challenges across the U.S. Beyond the copycat effect, what’s driving this push for specific titles to be pulled are book ratings systems created by groups like Moms For Liberty, Utah Parents United, and others. These book ratings systems are homegrown creations, developed my volunteers affiliated with these groups. The volunteers are ostensibly parents, though we know from a year and a half of increased book censorship that many are not. They have no formal training in child development, in literacy, or in determining text appropriateness. These volunteer book evaluators go in with their agenda and rate the books with them, absolutely undermining the professional judgment, training, knowledge, and experience of educators and librarians. In some cases, these book review systems are trickling into school boards. In other cases, these volunteers are using their experience in developing these databases as proof they’re capable of sitting on boards and on committees to evaluate the books in schools and libraries.

Without question, if school boards continue to be influenced by right-wing, Christian nationalists, these ratings systems will continue to infiltrate public education, devaluing the professional experience of school and library employees. (This is, of course, a step in the plan of destroying public education at large.)

Let’s take a look at several of the biggest databases out there, as well as who they are affiliated with. This is by no means comprehensive, but instead, a way to make sense of where these challenges are coming from and a way to see where book challengers are getting their copy-paste arguments.

All of these databases are accessible to the public, with the exception of one, which is very easy to gain access via Facebook. Though these are separate systems, many of these groups work together and collaborate, utilizing power in numbers.

None of these sites are linked for reasons that should be pretty obvious, but they are very easy to find.

Book bans in prisons are nothing new. In fact, censorship thrives in the prison system. Whether the prison is public or private and part of a state-wide system or independent impacts the materials allowed to be sent to individuals (and the method by which they can be sent) and the materials allowed in prison libraries (if those libraries exist at all).

Now, Florida prisons have banned a book by a writer who formerly experienced incarceration about her experience.

Keri Blakinger is a reporter for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news source covering all things relating to the criminal justice system. Corrections In Ink follows Blakinger’s experience growing up as a competitive ice skater who, when her skating partnership ended, began experimenting with drugs. Nine years of instability in her life involved time living houseless and struggling with substance abuse, and just when she was about to pull her life together, Blakinger was arrested. She spent two years in a state prison, leaving sober. Corrections in Ink not only tells her story but offers insight into how she used her privileges as a white woman to help others who were in positions not dissimilar to hers.

The Prison Book Program attempted to send her book to a person inside a Florida prison at Okaloosa, and it was impounded. It is up to the Florida Department of Corrections’ Literature Review Committee to determine whether or not the book can be inside the facilities, but in the mean time, it is banned from every Florida state prison.

As you mark your calendar for November events, remember to have your plan to vote in place and a nice stack of books to read, or admiringly stare at. Collecting unread books is also valid — you do you! For this month I’ve got a wide variety of moods and crime books. I’m doing my best to keep up with publishing dates changing so you may remember a book from a couple months ago that got moved for real (hopefully) to this month.

There’s a lot of great reading to be had this November in many different tones and sub-genres! There’s the start to a new police procedural set in Colorado; a dark academia mystery; a short story collection set in countries around the world; a cozy mystery; a story collection with the theme of “witness” with proceeds going to a good cause, a page-turning murder mystery with plenty of suspects; a vigilante historical fiction; a true crime murder that looks at the ethics of genealogy companies’ privacy rules; a past campus murder mystery; a woman who returns home to help her tribe being threatened by frackers; a new Inspector Gamache novel, and two new entries in fun series: one a psychic paired with a detective and the other a loosely tied mystery series for fans of the genre and its tropes.

There’s a chill in the air, color in the leaves, and we’re all breaking out our blankets and sweaters. If you’re here, you like snuggling up with a good book especially as the weather turns colder, and comic books are no exception. There’s no better time to grab a hefty omnibus than when I have the padding of a blanket on my lap. As Jack Frost starts his work, I can read about heroes and villains with fire abilities to warm me up.

Of course, there are hundreds of comic book issues that come out every month and November is no exception. Most of them are the newest issue of a long- or short-running series, which makes them very hard to jump into. Continuity is both one of the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of comics. This list focuses on #1 issues, collections, and graphic novels.

November has it all in the world of glossies. Superheroes old and new, vampires, Eisner Award nominees, spies, and science fiction. Each one is either standalone or a great point to jump into a new series. Check this list and call your local comic book shop because you need these new comics in November on your pull list.

Once upon a time, space was only something that humankind could gaze upon and dream about. People wrote outlandish stories about what might be up there, but for most of recorded human history, no one actually knew. Sure, they could see stars and moons and planets, but no one could visit. That all changed in the mid-20th century, when we started actually being launched into the sky. The people who went to space were named astronauts, and as little kids, many of us have lofty goals of being one, but few actually get to touch the stars. That’s why reading about astronauts is so fascinating, hence this list of 30 great astronaut books.

Below, you’ll find stories by and about people who have flown in shuttles, walked on the moon, and visited space stations, as well as a few stories of the people who helped get them there. We may have only explored a fraction of space, but every story about it is exciting and new! There are also several great novels of space exploration, and several fun kids’ books on astronauts, too! The observable, explorable universe is finite, but you’ll never run out of books about space. And with this handy list, you’ll be flying among the stars in no time!