I decided in April to spend the next few months immersing myself in Venetian culture, books, history, web tours etc. I’m long-term ill with a progressive neurological disease, largely bed bound now, and being realistic I may not get back there again. But I adore the place, and thought a deep dive from home would be fab. I have drawn up a big list, health permitting!
Because it’s been going slowly – various ongoing health issues, including current cancer investigations – I haven’t made as much progress as I’d hoped. But I think I’ll extend the time frame for this virtual tour, and just take as long as needed. I am enjoying what I can manage immensely, and want to continue with it.
For example I’ve been marvelling today at unexpected connections between things I’m studying. I read Tracy Chevalier’s The Glassmaker, a novel set in Venice, that rather magically spans its history from the fifteenth century through to the present day. The main character is a glassmaker in Murano, and her family is represented by a German merchant in Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Grand Canal. Which was strangely niggling at me, until in the more modern sections it was mentioned that this building in modern times had become a post office. I’ve been in there! Then I forgot about it again, until today I was reading Martin Gayford’s art history book Venice: City of Pictures. When he writes about the same building again I’m finally prompted to research its history more. Yes it was for many years the chief post office in Venice, which my husband and I stepped into in 1998, to post our postcards, and I’ve remembered vividly ever since. So not only is that a link and reinforcement between the novel and art history books, but it also connects with my own personal history and memories.
I plan to write up more thoughts about my Venice virtual tour after finishing it. But for now it continues. It is a very positive distraction from other stuff!
Today my husband and I visited Perth Museum for the first time. We’d been meaning to go for years, to see the Stone of Destiny and more. The temporary exhibition of the last letter of Mary Queen of Scots finally drew us there.
I was using my wheelchair, and parking nearby in Perth’s one way and pedestrianised centre is tricky. But we were very lucky to find a disabled space in the next street – I have a Blue Badge. The museum is good for wheelchair accessibility, with ramp access, lots of room inside, and generously proportioned lifts and disabled toilets.
The Stone of Destiny exhibition on the ground floor was impressive, with clever use of audio and visuals, to cover the history, especially the 1950 theft of the Stone, and the 1249 coronation of Alexander III, the earliest coronation historians are sure used the stone. Nicely done, and thoroughly recommended. I also appreciated that there were seats in the rooms for people attending, so it wasn’t just the wheelchair user who got to sit down for the duration!
The last letter of Mary Queen of Scots is on the upper floor, in a special area, based around two rooms, the first providing wider context, the second showing the letter, and more information boards, including about her local connections. I’ve been fascinated by Mary since I was a young child, and even back then, over 40 years ago, I had a facsimile copy of this letter. It is really helpful to see the letter physically in person, to appreciate its scale, be able to examine the paper, and the handwriting, and appreciate it more directly.
Another area of the museum that interested me, again on the first floor, was the extensive section about Georgian Perth. My Dundee University PhD examined Scottish cultural and social history in this period, so this section of the museum was of particular appeal. Both my husband and I were wowed by the natural history display nearby – he is a birder, and appreciated the stuffed birds flying high above! The ground floor pre history exhibition, including Pictish art, was good too. As a Hammer horror films fan I was also delighted to find a prop sarcophagus from their 1959 film The Mummy.
In between the two big headline items and browsing the rest of the museum we stopped for lunch in the museum cafe. It was extremely busy, and we were relieved to get a table, before browsing the menu and deciding what to order. Both were impressed by the range of food. I ordered a haggis and cheese baked potato and my husband ordered sandwiches, with cajun fries. The food was of a high standard, and the service excellent. The food and drinks arrived quickly after ordering. We found the cafe a calm place to pause in between museum browsing.
The shop layout in the museum is a little confusing. At the back of the museum on the ground floor there is a shop with gifts and especially things that children might enjoy. I bought a RSPB peregrine falcon stuffed toy! I also picked up the museum’s facsimile copy + English translation of Mary’s last letter. But they didn’t have other books, which we found later near the front desk. This split is a little unintuitive for visitors.
We very much enjoyed our time in Perth Museum and would recommend it to visitors without question. But maybe allow a good amount of time to browse the sections of interest to you, at least two hours. Also check in advance if going by car about the parking and street system, which can be confusing for those not familiar with Perth and its roads. But otherwise, a great day.
The image below shows part of the interior of the museum, and comes from the museum website.
Nearing the end of another year, and time for my annual recap of the books I’ve read in the last year, including general patterns, favourites etc. I enjoy looking back each year, and hope that the books mentioned may help some others.
To be blunt I’m also still delighted that I’m reading masses, albeit in increasingly difficult circumstances. I’ve lived with a progressive neurological disease now for 31 years, and although we’ve been able, with strong ongoing treatment, to slow the progression down a lot, it does mean that I am now extremely disabled and restricted. Including in what I can read.
Fortunately ebooks with gargantuan size fonts came to the rescue for me, and help me continue reading. I also still read graphic novels, though I am less likely to read traditional print. I have been an enthusiastic reader throughout all my life, and it’s very important to me that I can keep reading. I also have a PhD in historic reading habits … So yes, invested!
Looking back at the year I finished 58 books this year, the same number as in 2024, compared with 60 in 2023, and 75 in 2022. I don’t generally read short books, and my 58 books this year represent over 16,000 pages of reading. An average of over 300 pages a week. Almost always read on my Kindle, late at night, or during the day fitting around my extended sleeping and bedbound periods. I am usually reading lying down …
The picture below shows a glimpse of some of the books I was reading.
Two thirds of the books I read this year were fiction, and one third were non fiction. I tend to prefer reading novels, but also enjoy reading short stories. And my non fiction reading is quite varied and wide ranging. I tend not to read poetry, though I enjoy it, but occasionally read plays, including this year Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, the fictional retelling of the relationship between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, recently staged in London with Edward Bluemel and Ncuti Gatwa playing those roles. I enjoyed reading this play script a lot, rating it 5/5 on Goodreads and StoryGraph.
I had a number of other 5-star reads this year, including the 1988 painting book The Silvery Tay: Paintings and sketches from a Scottish river by Keith Brockie. Obviously of great interest to me living in Dundee. Similarly Luke Sherlock’s mix of architecture, history and place Forgotten Churches: Exploring England’s Hidden Treasures was a total delight.
My favourite genre for reading by a very long way is fantasy – not scifi, even though I’m a big fan of TV scifi series like Doctor Who, Babylon 5 and Star Trek. This year, for the first time, I read a Robin Hobb book, Assassin’s Apprentice, and was wowed. Though devastated in places while reading too! I expect to read more of her books. Better late than never. Other genres that I regularly enjoy reading include history, horror (though horror is very carefully selected to avoid some things that are too triggering for me) and manga.
I continued to slowly read Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series of books. I’ve been reading them, widely spread out alongside other books, slowly since October 2021. This year I read books 9 and 10 – the latter a particularly disappointing book, though I had been forewarned. Things should pick up after that point, and I expect to read books 11 and 12 in 2026, and hopefully 13 and 14 in 2027. To take me to the end of the series. I am still enjoying this series, though am taking an extremely strategic approach to get me to the end.
As usual I reread a few books. Every October, I read A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, the gothic horror tale of a mysterious game taking place in the Victorian English countryside around Halloween. I am one of many many people around the world who reread this book every year at this time.
At the start of the year I reread my favourite Charles Dickens book, Our Mutual Friend. A palette cleanser after a rather torrid read of something else! And I am continuing to slowly work my way through a reread of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes short stories. Which I am enjoying immensely as always, and writing little capsule reviews/thoughts on each one on my Dreamwidth blog.
Another book that I reread this year, for the first time in 30 years or so, was George Mackay Brown’s award-winning and Booker-shortlisted Beside the Ocean of Time. Told through the dreams and imaginings of a young Orcadian boy, this is a lyrical and powerful telling of Orkney history through time. An absolute highlight for me this year, and thoroughly recommended.
I also reread Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, continuing my slow reread of his “Witches” books in his Discworld fantasy series, following a slow reread some years ago of *all* of his Discworld books. This book is the very first book he wrote about young witch Tiffany Aching, and is a joy, and assumes no prior knowledge of the Discworld series. I was so happy to read it again, and have the rest of Tiffany’s books to reread in coming years too.
Continuing my love of fantasy books, I read a number of newly published fantasy books this year. Two 4-star reads for me were V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, and R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis. The former a tale of vampires, over many centuries, the latter a journey into the Underworld by two students of magic at Cambridge University in England, trying to save their academic supervisor, so they can complete their PhDs. Both were enjoyable, but not quite hitting the top spot for me. But I’m very glad that I read them.
The V.E. Schwab book was a book club read for me this year. Other book club reads for me included The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany (liked it, but glacially slow, and more descriptive than either plot-driven or character-driven) and Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (I greatly disliked the very convoluted writing style, which I could barely read). I don’t read all of my book club monthly reading choices, but cherry pick the ones of most interest to me.
I’d like to mention a couple of other books that I particularly enjoyed. Firstly D.V. Bishop’s City of Vengeance, the first in his series of 16th century set Florence thrillers. Gripping! I will definitely read more. Notebook by Tom Cox was a 5-star read for me, a delightful set of varied scribblings and musings, often funny. Tom has had a torrid time with his former publisher Unbound, who treated him and other authors appallingly, as well as pre-order customers like me. If you want to read this or any of his other books, make sure that you get the new edition from his new publisher Swift Books, who are publishing his new books and rereleasing his old ones. Unscrupulous resellers are reselling copies of his former Unbound-published book, but Tom doesn’t get any revenue from those sales. The same applies to other ex Unbound authors, whose books are being resold similarly.
I’ve written a lot, so I think I should wrap things up now. Hopefully some of this was of interest to others. I’m delighted to report another good year for reading for me, despite everything. Hopefully next year will also bring fun reads, new book and new author discoveries, and the delights of rediscovering old favourites.
A survey of users currently taking place on the intfiction forum reminded me that it’s exactly 45 years this month since I first played an interactive fiction game or text adventure, and so it’s also 45 years this month since I first used a computer.
My Dad at the time was heavily involved with introducing computers into schools in the Scottish Borders. Because of this he borrowed an Apple II over Christmas 1980. And I got to try it briefly too! I was only 8 years old, but was utterly captivated by computer screen and keyboard, the magic of loading from floppy disks, and all the beeps. And then there were the games …
Two of the games that I tried were particularly memorable. Firstly Colossal Cave Adventure, originally released in 1976, and by this time widely available as standard on Apple II computers. This saw you as an adventurer exploring an underground cave system with fantasy elements, typing your instructions as words into the computer, which would then respond with more text. And so on.
The other game that I adored immediately was Lemonade Stand, dating from 1973, but on this Apple II having vibrant graphics and glorious sound effects, as it played tunes depicting the weather, while you were trying to earn money from running a lemonade stand locally. Basically a business simulation, but the added multimedia effects on the Apple II version made it extra fun for a youngster. This version can be played on the Internet Archive in a browser emulation.
Using the computer as a youngster at Christmas 1980, even if only for a short period, made a huge impression on me. It’s no wonder that 10 years later I was off to university to study a computer science degree at St Andrews University. As well as being totally hooked on interactive fiction / text adventures.
The research followed a small part of my PhD research into Scottish reading habits circa 1750-1820. But the Pigot’s research in this paper was almost totally new, and done after that PhD. Very happily for me it combined my book/reading history PhD research with my earlier postgraduate training (taught MPhil degree) as an urban historian, and also my experiences as a research assistant working on Bob Harris’s Scottish small towns project. The research also drew on skills from my many years as a genealogist, long familiar with trade directories and their use for researching people, occupational history and place.
My past training and experience had familiarised me with historical debates about Scottish urban history in the long eighteenth century, including how Scotland compared with England (the latter notably documented by Peter Borsay in his groundbreaking The English Urban Renaissance book), but also questions about the speed and chronology of cultural development in Scottish towns, and how things varied between larger cities and smaller communities. My theory was that an early Scotland-wide trade directory, full of rich qualitative as well as quantitative information, could provide useful new perspectives on Scottish urbanisation as well as the state of the print trade and venues for reading.
When I started this research I was already very ill and severely disabled from a progressive neurological disease which I’ve lived with since 1994, and which relapsed hugely in 2004, preventing further research assistant work on the Scottish small towns project. But I did get that history PhD in spite of it! It was essential, however, that any further research could be done from home.
Fortunately digitised PDF copies of the Pigot’s 1825 directory for Scotland are available, that I could read on my laptop, and pore over, page by page. This was one of the earliest Scotland-wide trade directories, and was perfect for me to study for this research project.
My research process was initially to go through the directory in detail, page by page. Cities and towns had qualitative information about venues for reading in their opening descriptive sections, so I’d copy this out. And then I’d go through the trade directory’s lengthy lists of occupations, noting references to booksellers, printers and publishers. I’d also sometimes find libraries listed in those sections.
This gave me a mass of data to work with, which I analysed in three main stages, looking at printers, booksellers and libraries. There’s a strong Scottish tradition at this time for public and subscription libraries, far more so than in England at the same time where circulating libraries were more prominent. It was helpful to see if the directory supported this, as well as how much library provision varied by type of place. The directory could give me a snapshot view of the Scottish print trade, and revealed a surprisingly rich and complex picture.
As well as Scotland-wide content the paper included a couple of more local case studies, both of an individual town (Perth) and secondly looking at a network of towns in a small local geographical area (the Scottish Borders). A core part of the paper, that I’m hugely grateful that the journal editors agreed to include, was a hefty table of towns and villages, showing how many printers, booksellers, circulating libraries, public or subscription libraries, and reading or newspaper room each town had at this time according to Pigot’s.
The paper was in an extremely long state of gestation. I wish that I’d finished it sooner, but then I am really ill. Huge thanks to my former boss and PhD supervisor Bob Harris for looking through an early draft and making helpful comments. I was flexible about where I submitted the paper, but really wanted to aim it at Urban History, and that was the only journal that I sent it to. And it was accepted by them after a revise and resubmit offer.
Huge thanks to the journal editor Shane Ewen, as well as the two anonymous peer reviewers, who made extremely incisive and constructive suggestions for revisions, which helped turn the piece into a much stronger paper. Academic peer review can be a gruelling process, but overall I was filled with gratitude to my reviewers, who were tough but fair, and ultimately extremely helpful. Thank you.
The paper has been published under gold open access terms, thanks to an agreement between Dundee University (where I hold an ongoing honorary research fellowship) and Cambridge University Press. I am extremely grateful that it has been published via open access. I hope that it may be of interest to many interested in Scottish urban, social, cultural and reading histories in this period.
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