On the rare occasions when Bruce, fresh from his helicopter or his Lamborghini, enters a reception with a girl or two on his arm, he looks deeply uncomfortable, and Nolan, as if sharing that unease, tends to hurry him through the moment.

NEWYORKER: Batman��s Bane

By the age of 30, says Mr Singh, he had given up hope of finding a girl from his own village, Nandgaon, or from his state.

ECONOMIST: Struggling to cope with a dearth of brides

This novel, Emmanuel Darley's second, is the story of an exclusive love that turns into a nightmare, perhaps because the protagonists have no common language: the boy is enclosed in the simplicity of his own world, the little girl only laughs or cries, and the police speak only the language of the law.

ECONOMIST: Fiction from France

The only variables that make him more ready are if his mother is married or has been to college, or if he is a girl.

ECONOMIST: Despite budget cuts, reformers are pushing ahead

To his embarrassment was added shame, and the Minotaur found that he could bear his message of ultimate truth only on the sly, when the new girl was asleep, or when she was looking the other way.

NEWYORKER: Ziggurat

The other nondrama is whether Harold Abrahams, son of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, will be accorded the respect due him as the fastest Englishman of his day (Liddell was a Scotsman.) Abrahams more or less is, and gets the beautiful girl in the process.

FORBES: Overrated or Underrated? Lennon & McCartney, Celluloid Olympians