Reading about the reading life: October 3, 2021 edition

Welcome to another edition of "Reading about the reading life" here at The Itinerant Librarian. This is where I collect stories about reading and the reading life. Basically, these are items related to reading, maybe writing and literacy, that I find interesting and think my four readers might find interesting as well with a little commentary. As with other features I do on this blog, I do it when I have time or feel like it. Comments are always welcome (within reason).

 

It's been a bit of a while since I did one of these posts. It has not been for lack of interesting, to me at least, stories. It's been more finding time to select and make the post. So let's see what has been happening in the reading life. 

• Last week on September 30th was International Podcast Day. I remembered this article out of Salon from a while back comparing true crime podcasts of today to 19th century penny dreadfuls. It is interesting to see the commonalities. On a side note, I've given thought here and there to starting a podcast, but I am not sure about the lack of a visual element, plus it would be at this point more another endeavor than something for fun. I'd still may consider experimenting with the idea. Anyhow, if you like a little history, the article is an interesting read. 
• Unbound, the Smithsonian's blog, takes a look at card catalogs, that library staple we had before library catalogs went online. Nowadays, librarians who know, hipsters, and others who strive to be cool hunt for old library catalog cabinets to repurpose them as storage furniture for things like wine bottles and other knick knacks. 
• In a positive economic note, at least for a specific segment of book publishing, books on issues of social justice and race are selling very well in the Hard Times according to a press release from NPD Group. "According to The NPD Group, adult non-fiction subjects with a focus on these topics grew 160% (more than 700,000 units), from January through May 2021 compared to last year." 
• Back in March, LitHub had a small article on a house seller that set up a small library in one of their bathrooms. They made it sound like it was a problem or an issue. I think the idea is damn brilliant. One of the big issues of our time is having good reading material for those long visits to the restroom. I wish I had a bathroom big enough to keep a small library of books in it. As of this date, I have no idea if the $590,000+ house got sold; it does also have an indoor swimming pool. 
• Esquire took a look at men who read romance novels. Wait guys, don't laugh, come back and keep reading. The article states: "According to the nonprofit Romance Writers of America, 18 percent of romance fiction readers are men. Fully one-third of erotic audiobooks are downloaded by guys, another report says. In a billion-dollar industry comprising 23 percent of the adult fiction market, that’s a lot of dudes." That is certainly good business for romance book publishers. Naturally the article does its best to "sell" the books to guys, i.e. appealing to manly interests: "Unlike previous generations, these books dig deep into the emotional lives of characters. They center smart, strong, frequently stubborn men and women who are putting in the work to live authentic and meaningful lives. Want to read a story about people breaking free of tradition to find modern love? Figuring out their careers? Committing sexy espionage? There's a romance novel for that. The genre is packed with sports, spaceships, superheroes, and again, really fantastic sex." We are way beyond what we used to call "novelitas rosas" ("pink novels" in Spanish, a common term for what are often called bodice rippers). In addition, guys who read romance books may be better able to have intimate conversations with their partners. The sex life can improve, especially if they both read the books together. In case you are wondering, yes, I do a little reading in the romance and erotica genres, and I even review some of those books here on the blog. You can find some of those reviews under the "sex and erotic (adult)" tag of the blog, in the right column.
• Next I got a couple of items on GoodReads, the book social media site that many of us hate or just love to hate. If you are an avid reader, and you like to blend social media with reading, sooner or later you either end up using GoodReads or you come across it. As a reviewer, publishers and authors often want you to post reviews on GR, something that I tolerate because, one, I want to keep reviewing for those folks, and two, well, the site for all its issues does have pretty much a monopoly on reading, books, and social media. 
• A big issue and common complaint of many GR users is that the site just has not bothered to do a major update, upgrade, or just overall improvement in years. It seems once they achieved that near-monopoly they got now they just got complacent and seriously lazy. The fact Amazon bought the site back in 2013 just means the folks at GR have gotten even more lazy and complacent. UX Collective blog has a piece on "why has no one made a better GoodReads." Another issue of GR's monopoly is that there is no real competition, so any new site attempting to break into the area stands little to no chance of succeeding. The big obvious issue is who the hell is going to migrate the stuff they already put into GR to a new website. It really is a viciously bad cycle. The article if you have not seen it yet, and you use GR is worth a look. Personally I would love to see a new competitor or two to GR with some substance and support. Realistically I know that is next to impossible so far. The one prominent attempt I did was when I used BookLikes for a while, and that eventually disappeared like a thief in the night. These days I am able to find scraps of the site I kept on BL via Internet Archive. 
• More recently, Boing Boing was highlighting that GR "has a problem with extortion scams and review bombing." When I read the article for the first time, I was not surprised. Amazon has the same kind of problems, which they rarely fix if ever, and Amazon owns GR. So if the Big A has no incentive to fix that kind of mess on their own main site, why would they bother fixing it on their other property? Anyhow, if you are a new author starting out, and you want to promote your work on GR, this can be a significant concern. 
•  Every so often we get yet another jeremiad on the state of professional (as in paid) book reviewing. Bottom line is often the lamentation such places of "serious" and "professional" reviews keep disappearing combined with cursing the whippersnappers who review books freely on blogs, YouTube, and social media. Gee, kind of like yours truly here. I mean, I think it would be nice if I could get a professional or semi-professional book reviewing gig, but I think the types of books I review may not have that broad appeal the mass content people seek. Oh well, I can always dream. Anyhow, here are two more lamentations: 
• Via N+1, "Critical Attrition: What's the matter with book reviews?" This one at the time got a bit of traction on social media. As if the loss of such venues was not enough, well, review writers who by some miracle get some meager pay are often doing it hoping to get a bigger and better writing gig; reviewing is a stepping stone. The result, well, often reviews written by such folks are not up to their full potential, often are rush jobs. By the way, that scenario in the article of the first time novelist being assigned a review of another book based on the novel's topic does seem a bit idealized to be honest. 
• Meanwhile, The Walrus asks about "what we lose when literary criticism ends." So, how are things? "These days, the status of the professional critic—that is, someone who can earn a living writing criticism for the general public—has largely been subordinated to enthusiastic amateurs giving thumbnail reactions on Amazon and Goodreads." I am not a professional, but I do strive to write reviews here a lot more substantial than thumbnail reactions on sites like the Big A and GR. I do what I can, but pondering that may be a blog post for another time. 
• In reading about the reading life and books, I often come across articles on things like why reading is good and benefits of reading, such as these articles: 
•  Over at Lit Hub, Will Self asks "why should you read?"
• The Conversation looks at "why we remember more by reading--especially print--than from audio or video." 
• Librarianship Studies and Information Technology looks at the "as long as they are reading" line you often hear when it comes to school age children. The only thing I will add is that such approach may be fine for school age children, but not so much for adults. Again, that may be a blog post for another time. 
• Just like you get pieces about how reading is good, we also get material on who is not reading. PEW Research Center looks at "who hasn't read a book in the past 12 months." 
  
• J-Stor Daily takes a look at "the propaganda of World War II comic books."