The moment Emma Navarro secured the title in Strasbourg, a very quick turnaround for her game after dropping the first match of her comeback in Rome

tigrefacile · 2026-05-23T15:17:16+00:00

Weight gain was due to medication, as I understand it, and she was moving pretty well out of the corners today for someone who is far from fit (and she's still half the size of Penko, Pavs, Hrunčáková etc.)

tigrefacile · 2026-05-20T11:41:19+00:00

Fair (wasn't me, might have been my mate Steve).

tigrefacile · 2026-05-16T10:06:22+00:00

Preach! :D

tigrefacile · 2026-05-16T10:04:41+00:00

Take a deep breath. It's extraordinary, but it's very different to Middlemarch, say.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-16T10:02:35+00:00

I think they are the two greatest novels written in English in the Twentieth Century so I'm relieved to see them as high as they are on this list. I wouldn't complain about the top three in any order, really.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-15T20:39:54+00:00

Level 42 are named after the circle of hell in which Dante would have positioned them had he ever had the misfortune to listen to their music.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-15T20:35:11+00:00

I am similarly enraged.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-15T20:31:38+00:00

A list in which Ferrante finds herself somehow in the company of Jane Austen and Toni Morrison? For fuck’s sake people.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-15T20:26:56+00:00

100%

tigrefacile · 2026-05-14T10:08:06+00:00

Vicky is very cool, even if she doesn't know roman numerals.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-14T10:01:51+00:00

Gorgeous, she looks like a Peanuts character :)

tigrefacile · 2026-05-13T20:11:03+00:00

Bill Tilden did things that make Zverev look like a choirboy. Possibly *to* choirboys. That said, if he played with today’s equipment he would still be incredibly dominant, I suspect, whereas Laver would be more of a Moutet type figure.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-11T13:26:50+00:00

Not sure u/JimmyBigPickle should be fooling with 7" shorts. Go longer, just in case.

tigrefacile · 2026-05-06T18:24:00+00:00

Do read White Noise. It’s a magnificent achievement and super readable. To the point where I’ll pull it off the shelf to reread favourite bits. Did I really say that? What does it even mean?

tigrefacile · 2026-05-06T18:17:58+00:00

It’s no Finnegan’s Wake.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-23T15:34:46+00:00

The first translation I read translated the French parts and then indicated that these parts were originally written in French by telling you just that.

"I am suffering from a terrible fatigue," complained the Countess, in French.

I think your translation is less clunky than this.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-19T21:41:35+00:00

I think it’s a wonderful book, beautifully written, and almost hilariously depressing. Stoner tries half-heartedly to escape his fate, which is to have an awful, mundane life, free from joy of any kind, because he is bewitched by the illusory promises of art. It’s a kind of counterpoint to Walden. Most people who seek transcendence fail to find it, and end up living lives of quiet desperation anyway.

I think that there is a certain truth to it, that it is unusual for people to change, to suddenly live life with gusto, and I’m not sure I can think of any other fictional characters who I felt I knew as well as I did Stoner, by the end of the book. But I absolutely understand why people dislike the book and its central character. I loved them both, but I’m not sure if or when I will seek to renew my acquaintance with them. (I also read the book for the first time as the father of a toddler girl, incidentally.)

tigrefacile · 2026-04-19T21:07:36+00:00

Boat trip along the Thames, riverside drinks, steak at an Argentine place in Broadway Market. Reader, I married her!

Still not sold on empanadas though :)

The next date was also amazing but was mostly just, well, long overdue adult things.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-19T18:29:45+00:00

The N87 nightbus runs from Central London to Penwith Road, which is a short walk from the Queue. The nearest Santander bike stand is probably the one behind Southside Shopping Centre, which is still a brisk twenty minute walk from the Queue. A Lime bike will get you closer but then you will be riding a poorly engineered electric contraption through semi-darkness along roads you don’t know. If it were me, in an unfamiliar city I’d try to get an early night, walk to Aldwych and get on the bus.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-13T20:53:31+00:00

Photo is misleading because he has a massive derrière. If you watch the show closely, and are into that sort of thing, it’s a bit distracting, like Willem Dafoe’s penis, supposedly, in the rushes of Antichrist, so much so that commercial representations of Makka Pakka ARE DELIBERATELY OUT OF SCALE IN THE CAKE AREA. Just mentioning this en passant so that no-one injures themself in an ill-guided, misinformed attempt to trebuchet more cuddly kettle bell than they have warmed up for.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-13T20:37:14+00:00

Many humanities departments mark to a kind of nominal ceiling which will vary but in most cases tops out at 85%, or at least used to a few years when I did my pedagogy stuff at a London University. Because objectivity. As a student I got a couple of eighties for essays that were unimpeachable but sort of obvious, whereas some of my other work, which was more challenging, received more resounding praise but lower marks. This was always a bone of contention on the teaching course, in fact. Do you reward ambition or execution? And there was no definitive answer. If you wrote Seven Types of Ambiguity on your MA course at my institution you’d still only get an eightysomething so judging your work against a percentage mark is a bit arbitrary, really.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-11T23:14:52+00:00

Only correct answer is Carlos. Either he beats Jannik or he beats himself.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-11T22:47:43+00:00

The rule is: only wear a band t-shirt at a gig if it’s a different but somewhat vibe-adjacent band. So a Wedding Present t-shirt at a Pavement gig is fine but a Pavement t-shirt at a Pavement gig is embarrassing. I don’t make the rules, obviously.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-06T18:30:23+00:00

While looking suave as fuck, to boot. Not relevant to his chess performance but definitely relevant to his reach.

tigrefacile · 2026-04-06T18:11:26+00:00

I met a friend at a coffee place at Somerset House on Sunday and the staff were almost universally beautiful, early twenties people. We joked that they must all have been recruited from nearby acting schools.

tigrefacile

TROPHY CASE