schemingreader

Books and screens: Everyone is panicking about the death of reading usefully points out that panic and woezery over reading/not-reading/what they're reading etc etc is far from a new phenomenon:

We have been here before. Not just once, but repeatedly, in a pattern so consistent it reveals something essential about how cultural elites respond to changes in how knowledge moves through society.
In the late 19th century, more than a million boys’ periodicals were sold per week in Britain. These ‘penny dreadfuls’ offered sensational stories of crime, horror and adventure that critics condemned as morally corrupting and intellectually shallow. By the 1850s, there were up to 100 publishers of this penny fiction. Victorian commentators wrung their hands over the degradation of youth, the death of serious thought, the impossibility of competing with such lurid entertainment.
But walk backwards through history, and the pattern repeats with eerie precision. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, novel-reading itself was the existential threat. The terms used were identical to today’s moral panic: ‘reading epidemic’, ‘reading mania’, ‘reading rage’, ‘reading fever’, ‘reading lust’, ‘insidious contagion’. The journal Sylph worried in 1796 that women ‘of every age, of every condition, contract and retain a taste for novels … the depravity is universal.’
....
In 1941, the American paediatrician Mary Preston claimed that more than half of the children she studied were ‘severely addicted’ to radio and movie crime dramas, consumed ‘much as a chronic alcoholic does drink’. The psychiatrist Fredric Wertham testified before US Congress that, as he put it in his book Seduction of the Innocent (1954), comics cause ‘chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction’, calling them more dangerous than Hitler. Thirteen American states passed restrictive laws. The comics historian Carol Tilley later exposed the flaws in Wertham’s research, but by then the damage was done.

Moving on: on another prickly paw, I am not sure I am entirely on board with this model of reading as equivalent to going to the gym or other self-improving activity, and committing to reading X number of books per year (even if I look at the numbers given and sneer slightly): ‘Last year I read 137 books’: could setting targets help you put down your phone and pick up a book?:

As reading is increasingly tracked and performed online, there is a growing sense that a solitary pleasure is being reshaped by the logic of metrics and visibility. In a culture that counts steps, optimises sleep and gamifies meditation, the pressure to quantify reading may say less about books than about a wider urge to turn even our leisure into something measurable and, ultimately, competitive.

Also at the sense that the books are being picked for Reasons - maybe I'm being unfair.

Also, perhaps, this is a where you are in the life-cycle thing: because in my 20s or so I was reading things I thought I ought to read/have read even if I was also reading things for enjoyment, and I am now in my sere and withered about, is this going to be pleasurable? (I suspect chomping through 1000 romances as research is not all that much fun?)

What I read

Finished Imperial Palace, v good, by 1930 Enoch Arnold had got into the groove of being able to maintain dramatic narrative drive without having to throw in millionaires and European royalty and sinister plots, but just the business of running a hotel and the interpersonal things going on.

Then took a break with Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17) (1937) - I slightly mark it down for having dreary old Hastings as narrator, but points for the murderer not being the Greek doctor.

Finished Grand Babylon Hotel, batshit to the last.

Discovered - since they are only on Kindle and although I occasionally get emails telling me about all the things that surely I will like to read available on Kindle, did they tell me about these, any more than the latest David Wishart? did they hell - that there are been two further DB Borton Cat Caliban mysteries and one more which published yesterday. So I can read these on the tablet and so far have read Ten Clues to Murder (2025) involving a suspect hit and run death of a member of a writers' group - the plot ahem ahem thickens.... Was a bit took aback by the gloves in the archives at the local history museum, but for all I know they still pursue this benighted practice.

Have also read, prep for next meeting of the reading group, Dorothy Richardson, Backwater (Pilgrimage, #2) (1916).

On the go

Recently posted on Project Gutenberg, three of Ann Bannon's classic works of lesbian pulp, so I downloaded these, and started I Am a Woman (1957) which is rather slow with a lot of brooding and yearning - our protag Laura has hardly met any women yet on moving to New York except her work colleagues and her room-mate so she is crushing on the latter, who is still bonking her ex-husband. But has now at least acquired a gay BF, even if he is mostly drunk.

Have just started DB Borton, Eleven Hours to Murder (2025).

Have also at least dipped into book for review and intro suggests person is not terribly well-acquainted with the field in general and the existing literature, because ahem ahem I actually have a chapter in big fat book which points out exactly those two contradictory strands - control vs individual liberation.

Up next

Well, I suspect the very recent Borton that arrived this week will be quite high priority!

Have only just discovered that there is a new (came out in November) biography of Decca Mitford: Carla Kaplan, Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.

Via a review in the latest Literary Review which is, alas, not fully online, sounds less than whelmed, and gives the impression that it may be a tad po-faced.

Yes, about Jessica Mitford, that great tease.

Can't find any other unpaywalled online reviews of any great credibility - there are some on GoodReads but they all sound to be from people who Nevererdofer previously.

So before I, that already have several of her own biographical works and essays, collections of letters etc upon my shelves, also the previous biography, spend moolah and time on this, I wonder if anyone has already read it and has opinions?

(Have just had thought that as far as I recall, Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd did on at least one occasion encounter Unity Mitford, while undercover in Germany: but not, I think, Decca &/or Esmond, anywhere in his exploits.)

Charity secures 1000 acres for Wales’ largest rewilding project:

The charity’s approach will include introducing hardy cattle and Welsh mountain ponies to the land, with ancient breeds of pigs to follow. Their grazing and roaming will support habitat restoration.
Peatland rewetting and natural water retention across the site over the next five to ten years means the project will contribute to increased biodiversity, cleaner water, healthier soils, improved carbon storage and reduced flood risk for downstream farmland.
It is hoped these actions will create conditions to boost various species, with the potential for red squirrels, pine martens, polecats, curlews and hen harriers to return.
The charity also aims for much of the work to be carried out by local tradespeople. Community participation will also help uncover and share stories of those who lived and worked across the site’s 55 historic stone landmarks, from Bronze Age cairns to traditional upland buildings.

Not sure if this can at all be mapped onto Cranford (based on Knutsford): Knutsford's Booths Hall granted special building status:

The house was built in 1745 for Peter Legh after he married heiress, Anne Wade.
The building was extended in 1845 by his grandson, Peter and remodelled in 1858 into an Italianate style by Edward Habershon for John Legh, a nephew of Mr Legh.
In 1917, the Legh family auctioned the hall and estate.
....
Historic England says it was listed for ‘demonstrating fine craftsmanship in the brickwork and stone detailing’ of each phase.
Special features include the unusual and well-preserved first floor conservatory with a curved glass roof.
The good survival of interior features and decoration from all three building phases using high quality materials and a high degree of craftsmanship.

Another kind of heritage: Green’s Dictionary of Slang: Five hundred years of the vulgar tongue, including the invaluable Timelines of Slang.

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Smutwalk: Mapping Nineteenth-Century Obscenity - though actually, not all of the physical places are still there. Still. I think one might manage a tribute to Pornographers of Ye Olde Tymes stroll.

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Queer love and friendship: 1920s Fitzroy Square:

In 1927, Bobby and his queer working-class friends gathered in his Fitzroy Square flat. Though surveillance documents, we can learn about these vibrant gatherings, the people involved and the passionate, intimate letters that survive. These records offer a rare insight into queer lives of the time.

How Not To Do Heritage, we feel (guy has quite rightly been getting crapped on on social media): History professor finds huge Iron Age hoard: 'The collection will be auctioned at Noonans in Mayfair on 4 March as part of a coins and historical medals, external sale.'. Observe the guy's creepy smirk in the photo.