Parents, publishers and booksellers have generally welcomed “BookTok”, the videos on TikTok promoting literature.
As well they should!
In an age when many worry about children spending too much time in front of a screen, reading has become “cool” on the platform. But a trend for “spicy” (ie sexy) books has led to fears children may be reading titles with adult content.
Oh noes! Isn't it better that, than they are out on the streets stabbing one another?
Thriller writer and journalist Kat Rosenfield criticised a bookseller on X last year for sharing a video offering alternatives to teenage readers who want to read adult books. “Imagine being a normal teenage girl, just trying to buy some good old-fashioned smut” and “getting shooed out of the romance section”, she tweeted. “It’s normal and healthy for teenagers to be interested in sex, and there’s no safer way to explore that interest than by reading stories about it,” she added. “The problem is not the kids who are reading spicy books. It’s the ones who don’t – or can’t – read at all.”
So very true. I couldn't wait to get my adult library card (as I believe I've mentioned before), which I got pretty early and maybe far too early, who can say? Certainly a lot of my peers didn't have one. And did I check out some modern-parlance 'spicy' titles? Reader, I cannot tell a lie! Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper...
The librarians didn't turn a hair. And I learned a lot.
So it's gone from 'Protect the kiddies from the porno', to 'Protect the kiddies from 'The vicar won't be home for hours...'?
ReplyDelete"And did I check out some modern-parlance 'spicy' titles? Reader, I cannot tell a lie! Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper..."
ReplyDeleteBarbara Cartland . . .
Have you been into a library recently?
ReplyDeleteThis isn't about the good old days when you smuggled out a Mills and Boon romance (or I confused the librarians by using my mums cards, leaving them wondering why she had suddenly become a hard-core sci-fi aficionado).
I made the mistake of entering, for the first time in years (I normally download or just buy - I finally completed my H/B 1st Ed. collection of Pratchett, yey!), my local library, and wasn't that an eye-opener!
What few 'books' still exist there are shocking. The "children's" section is replete with obscene indoctrination texts, now imagine just what the "adult" section is like.
I hate to say it but library attendance, and even 'recreational' reading has 'always' been a bit of a minority sport. Those who used to attend weren't necessarily the "intellectuals", but 'were' usually sensitive and/or loners, lonely or using it for escapism (not all, but most I suspect). Now imagine how that cohort is 'responding' to the wall-to-wall perversion and indoctrination (why imagine when you can see it play out in front of you in gay and trans freakdom, in full colour. 'They' always target the most vulnerable first).
If I had the choice now ... 'I' would be doing a "Bradbury" on what that place has become.
"So it's gone from 'Protect the kiddies from the porno', to 'Protect the kiddies from 'The vicar won't be home for hours...'?"
ReplyDelete🤣
"Barbara Cartland . . ."
Thankfully, never saw the appeal!
"Have you been into a library recently?"
No, what I read about what they've become puts me off! Besides, with Kindle, and 99p books offered every day, there's little need to.