Reading about the reading life: July 2, 2023 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 has been a while since I have done one of these. To be honest, it gets a bit more difficult over time. I had compiled a pretty good list of sources on my feed reader from news sources to blogs to find interesting features about reading and the reading life, but the quality over time has seriously decreased, specially for blogs. Yet I manage to still find a few things to share, so as long as I am able to find things I will have things to share with my four readers. So here we go this week, as always in no particular order. 

Links: 

• Via El Español (Spanish language news), a look at the most ancient library in Europe, which is located in Spain. The library is located at the University of Salamanca, and it was founded in 1254 making it the oldest academic library in Europe. The article includes a brief history of the library and some nice photos. 
• Via Infobae (Spanish language news), a look at the dominatrix that invented masochism, or rather the book that featured her Venus in Furs.  
• Joanna Cannon, writing for The Guardian, looks at embracing reading challenges to keep herself motivated to read.  As she writes, if it works for you why not? I would say as long as you do not get too obsessive about it, go for it if it makes you happy. I am doing three reading challenges for 2023, and so far I am doing a lot better on them at this stage of the year for two of them. The remaining one, the audiobook challenge I still need to pick out an audiobook, but I hope to have that done and read by end of year. 
• The World Economic Forum reports on a finding that Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2015) prefer to read book in print rather than e-books.  Reasons range from reducing eye strain to liking the smell of books. I will add I am a bit older than Gen Z, but I can relate as I do prefer print books as well. 
• Via The Millions, a look at the history of the book blurb. We may take them for granted by now, but not everyone is a fan of blurbs. To be honest, I do not pay that much attention to blurbs when I am looking at books to read. How about readers out there? Do blurbs make any difference at all in your decision to read a book or not? Feel free to comment. 
• At the end of 2022, the Happy Guy Writing Services ran a survey of readers to learn about reading habits. What I found interesting was some of the reader comments included in the post. For instance, readers identified and/or suggested reading categories the initial survey did not include such as reading cookbooks. At the end of the post, you get the methodology. Keep in mind this was based on an Internet poll, so caveats apply, but still interesting. 
• Jezebel asks why there are no celebrity book clubs for men.  As librarian and reader, I pretty much know already that reading as a field is a female dominated field. So is librarianship for that matter (though there are other historical reasons for that, but I digress). Thus I never really gave thought to the lack of celebrity men leading book clubs. Then again, I am not much of a book club person either (I know; I am a bad librarian). As the article points out, a celebrity book club can be a cash cow, just ask Oprah Winfrey. So why are celebrity men not tapping into that? Their theory is that celebrity men overall just don't read much if at all. The article offers additional observations. I can agree that celebrity men often do not read. Heck, to be honest, outside of my profession and the field of education I work in, I do not know of any men who read for leisure. Heck, not even my younger two male siblings read. Went to the same schools, same education, and I am the only one who turned out a reader. Go figure. Any guy readers out there? Feel free to comment and let me know. 
• J-Stor Daily has an article on the Library War Service and their role in providing books to service people in World War I.  
• Via Asymptote, a look at bilingual editions of translated works.  
•  Foreign Policy (this may be paywalled for some) looks at reading in Russia as a form of resistance. Article looks at what kinds of books are selling well in Russia at this time, a lot of it is fiction. There are also some very interesting nonfiction titles selling very well at the moment. 
• Over at Literary Hub, Sam Leith observes that Americans tend to prefer nonfiction, and big nonfiction at that, more than the British.  While I tend to prefer nonfiction more often, I do not really like the nonfiction door stoppers Leith mentions in the article.