It's Always More Complicated

Honestly, it was fairly restful when the Panic Over Reading was about Putting That Book Down and going out into the fresh air -

(In those days, my dearios, we had fresh air, not to mention rain, during the months designated 'summer'.)

- rather than people framing it like Healthful Exercise requiring a Training Regime? Could a couch-to-5k for books get you back into reading?

I found it refreshing to encounter this somewhat counter-piece suggesting that people are not not-reading, they're reading differently (and I wonder about previous woezery about magazines and periodicals and even paperbacks rather than Real Hardback Books.... oh yes, and the comics panics of my yooof): What the panic over Gen Z’s reading habits gets wrong.

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In other news, I am still being solicited to contribute to dodgy conferences and journals: okay, the International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics is a perennial, and the latest venue is Bucharest, and it is just marginally within my sphere of interest squinting a little and ignoring the fact the my focus has been historical: but the Open Access Journal of Waste Management & Xenobiotics: 'covering waste generation, characterization, treatment, disposal and xenobiotics research'? I cannot even.