Good morning – 19 sleeps till Christmas!
Ah, December, time of ham (taste tests), cricket (Ashes Tests), the return of the bird theory (a relationship test), and all the year-in-review content a heart could want. First up in this week’s great reads, in fact …
1. The 20 best songs of 2025
At least, as voted for by 30 Guardian music writers – they run the gamut from post-punk rap to indie-disco and operatic pop.
Name the artist: Do you know … pop’s best showgirl? The frontman who’s accrued “a lifetime of heartbroken wisdom in just 23 years”? One of Britain’s best lyricists, whose inner monologue “burns like a fuse”? The Irish singer-songwriter who’s had “a true breakthrough year”?
How long will it take to read: five or six minutes
Disagree? I am HUNGRY to know your favourite song of this year – especially if it’s not on this list. Please tell me, at australia.newsletters@theguardian.com.
2. The first Aboriginal bilingual school in NSW
Three years ago Anne-Marie Briggs and her son, Darruy, moved to Coffs Harbour, where Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom school is spearheading an Indigenous language revival. Clark Webb, a Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung man, led its formation as the chief executive of the Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation.
As he tells reporter Ella Archibald-Binge, the school measures success by an unconventional metric: happiness.
Word of the day: Of the several Gumbaynggirr words for “morning” bambuuda is Anne-Marie Briggs’ favourite. Drawn from bamburr – soft and gentle – it sketches the quiet moments before sunrise, literally translating as “in the softness”.
How long will it take to read: four minutes
Further reading: Check out the rest of our Speaking to country series, introducing the First Nations communities fighting to keep their languages alive.
3. The snail farm don
Is this the perfect opening to a story? “It is a drizzly October afternoon and I am sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints of Moretti with London’s leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples mafia,” Jim Waterson writes. “We’re discussing the best way to stop a mollusc orgy.”
He has conducted the first interview with 79-year-old Terry Ball, a renowned former shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi, who was inspired by the former UK Conservative minister Michael Gove to use snails to avoid paying local councils tens of millions of pounds in taxes.
How does this tax dodge work? Ball sets up shell companies (excuse the pun) that breed snails in empty office blocks. He then claims the office block is legally a farm and so exempt from paying taxes.
As Waterson discovers, he “is proudly committed to spending his remaining years on this earth finding innovative ways to get revenge on the ‘bastard’ authorities who he feels screwed him over in the past”.
***
“I just do it for devilment. I do it just to get away with it.” – Terry Ball
How long will it take to read: nine minutes
4. ‘Global harm, blatant impunity’
Speaking of scams, Tess McClure’s report on the rise of “scam states” is an eye-opener.
What are they? “Like the narco-state, the term refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into legitimate institutions, reshaping the economy, corrupting governments and establishing state reliance on an illegal network.”
How does that happen? “In terms of gross GDP, it’s the dominant economic engine for the entire Mekong sub-region,” a cybercrime expert tells McClure. “And that means that it’s one of the dominant – if not the dominant – political engine.”
How long will it take to read: less than three minutes
5. A mass wedding in Gaza
For obvious reasons, this “great reads” newsletter doesn’t often highlight galleries – this series of photos from a mass wedding in Gaza is a beautiful exception.
They show crowds gathering in Khan Younis to watch 54 Palestinian couples get married: a family looking on from the balcony of a destroyed building, flags draped over shattered concrete, children watching from ruined steps, a convoy of grooms’ cars proceeding through mountains of dust and twisted metal, festooned in ribbons and flowers.
A small moment of relief: Both parents of Eman Lawwa, who is pictured above with her new husband, Hikmat, died during the war. Other members of her family were killed. “It’s hard to experience joy after such sorrow,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “God willing, we will rebuild brick by brick.”
How long will it take to read: a few minutes
Further reading: Raz Segal a US associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, says that despite the ceasefire, “The genocide is far from over”.
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