I suppose World/International Day of X is useful peg for journos...

[oursin]

Today is World Book Day. Or at least, it is in the UK - bizarrely, we don't celebrate this Unesco day on April 23 like the rest of the world. [Maybe because we have our own April 23 things to celebrate, like St George and one W Shagsberd?] Naomi Alderman says hug a librarian go to the library today. However, I'm v dubious about her claim that '

Comments

[carandol]

We're also in the middle of Read an E-Book Week, you might like to know. And last week was National Rabbit Week -- that was to encourage the care of rabbits, not the eating of them, in case you're wondering.

And it's well known that librarians only become sexy when they take their glasses off and shake out their hair -- which a diligent librarian would never dream of doing while on duty.

[oursin]

Not the seething possibility, when she sits with fierce glasses and hair in bun under 'Quiet' sign?

[clanwilliam]

Only if she's got a whip under her desk.

And, as I recall, librarians are forbidden to do so by law ever since the unfortunate incident involving a librarian, Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx in the BM Reading Room.

[oursin]

No, no, not Thomas Carlyle! Anything but that!
*Goes looking for bleach for mind*

[redbird]

Libraries may not be sexy, but they are comforting, helpful, and loving. Which is excellent for a long-term relationship--not all our relationships need to be romantic.

[oursin]

I have now managed to locate something about the Mars Bar Index, which is a useful comparator. Although didn't Mars Bars get smaller of recent years, so not quite a Gold Standard?

[oursin]

And the calculator (thanks for that - I used to have this linked at an address which is now defunct) gives the equivalence of price of a Penguin in 1935, 6d, as equalling £1.24 in 2007 - i.e. less than a quarter of the price of even a modestly-priced paperback in C21st.

[antisoppist]

We used the price of a paperback as the basis for daughter's pocket money, considering that when I was 7 I got 50p and could buy a 60p Armada Malory Towers once a fortnight. Giving her equivalent book-buying power today resulted in giving her £2 a week, which was probably a mistake as she now has more spare cash than we do. We'd have been much better off using Mars bars.

[fox_in_sand]

I thought that about the paperbacks too-even in my short book-buying career they've gone up dramatically. However it is possible that people have more spare cash? I personally only ever buy books from Oxfam. I don't know how people have the energy to read misery memoirs-I went to see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night, cried rather a lot and am still recovering mentally.