Spoilers Russell T. Davies' Second Turn as Doctor Who Showrunner

[bdub76]

I'm a 63-year-old Canadian, and I don't remember a time in my life when there weren't a lot of men who saw reading as a complete waste of time, if not downright effeminate or nerdy. I've known people who read nonfiction but just couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of fiction. Why waste time on things that aren't real? I knew a commerce student at university who was proud that he never read anything that wasn't required reading for one of his classes. Smartphones have changed things a bit, but airport waiting lounges, airplanes, buses, and similar places were full of men just staring into space. Women seemed more likely to be reading. I've read whole books in airport terminals and in pubs.

I saw this behavior growing up in a working class neighborhood. But once I moved out and started making upper class income, this wasn't the norm at all. If anything, the kids go to school and then to tutoring afterwards. The tutoring is to make the kids even more competitive than what schools are teaching and reading is the norm. I definitely think it's a class thing.

Now, men are more likely to read non-fiction than fiction in general, but the quantity read is still low.

The problem with AI now is that it's not replacing work so much as changing it. Those that don't have the analytical skills to vet what AI is kicking out are going to fall behind. And prompting properly requires being able to write well.

What you're going to see is more guys out of the workforce since they won't have the skills. And how manly is a guy that can't provide? There is physical labor, but these jobs start to take a tool on folks by time they're fifty. And there are fewer ones available since a lot of them were moved off shore.

Sorry, what? Professional librarians are generally opposed to censorship. In Canada, what's been happening is conservative provincial governments telling public and school libraries to get rid of certain books.

The librarians working at the library might not want to censor, but they can't carry books in their libraries that their local governments don't approve of. So those going to the libraries to get books that they can't afford are limited by what the libraries has in stock. That's what I meant.

It's limiting what lower income people can read assuming they read at all. It's a great way to control the population.

 

[jaime]

The only reason why I struggle with this theory is that eBooks generally cost more than Mass Market Paperbacks and because the reader would have to purchase the eReader, which is not cheap. My b&w KOBO wasn't cheap. But I've read over 50 novels on it since I purchased it, which is far more than the normal reading rate, so I can justify the cost. However, if I'm only reading a couple of books a year, it's tough to justify spending nearly $200 on an eReader.

What's also tough for me to get my head around is why the decline in reading is mainly adult men. I see this in the turn out at our book club. I see this at book stores in general. But then I see far less fiction for men being produced as well.

To me this is really a class issue, where we're seeing lower income reading less mainly due to both literacy rates and cost. Now, libraries do help out a ton. But then libraries will censor their available books, which is also some thing I struggle with since censorship for books has gone through the roof lately.

This is an interesting watch too.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Publishing, by and large, is run by middle and upper class white women, for white women.
That seems to be the consensus in lots of articles and discussion on the subject in various places anyway.
You will also see divides in the entrenchment of genre fans one way or another, with sundry idiots like the Sick Puppies — or whatever they were called — pissing in a circle around SF a few years back, or the crazy batshit concept of ‘Romancelandia’ which I think has actual border guards now.

The class issue is *not* about money.
It is about buckets of crabs.
Reading is seen as gay, effeminate, and class traitor behaviour by far too many, and it’s been that way for decades.
Monty Python was taking the piss out of that in the seventies, and apart from the blooming of techno thrillers and historical fiction in doorstop form for a decade or so, thats pretty much where we are back to.


(The arts in general seems to have swung pretty far into a weird approach to gender division too. I remember being sat in an art history class, and whilst it was certainly true historically, I don’t think being told in a class that was about 90 percent plus women that there are more male artists than female was really holding true at that point at that point anymore. Though I suspect theres only a handful of artists who are money making names anymore, and not that many of those are women either, to be fair. Maybe. Hockney died, so it’s evening out a bit. In small names… well, I would strongly suspect that more women make their careers in the arts than men, even if it’s just Etsy sales or DeviantArt.)

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Publishing, by and large, is run by middle and upper class white women, for white women.

Whiskey tango foxtrot?!?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Whiskey tango foxtrot?!?

I file this under the same category as the claim the general public is by and large conservative.

 

[jaime]

Whiskey tango foxtrot?!?

It’s a regular commentary you see amongst writers on twitters for a few years (and no, not amongst the men you might expect) and it’s been in a few articles in a few places. I can’t remember where I first came across it, but it surfaces fairly regularly.

Basically the majority of editors, agents, commissioning editors etc — pretty homogenous white, middle aged, female. Which also seems to be the majority audience. It’s a bit chicken and egg, since the argument is that women make up the majority of readers.
Usually you’re also looking at arts degrees, masters.

Problem is, if a huge chunk of publishing is that homogenous group, the same is true of the books target audience and even characters. Which also somewhat stacks up when you start asking ‘why aren’t boys reading’ and ‘why aren’t men reading’ in fiction. It also is why even literary fiction — aka the arty bollocks that doesn’t sell anywhere near genre fiction, but is considered worthy, and where success is measured in awards and prizes rather than sales pre-award — has become a very homogenous field.

It’s not something I necessarily agree with, but enough people talk about it across many years and from different backgrounds, it’s worth considering.

A thing that often does make me think when I consider it, is where are the ‘new’ male writers? Not many make a splash, and the splashes are much smaller. Mick Herron is probably the biggest recent success story, and even he has been knocking about over a decade.

I also recall my own Eng Lit classes, which were in an all boys school about thirty years ago — and every writer we studied was a woman writer, aside from the mandated Shakespeare, I think.
Now, I really don’t mind — unlike some, I have zero problem reading authors not from my own background. I certainly wouldn’t ever declare I will only read white authors, or male authors.
But it’s very interesting.
For the record, I still have and like the writers from that qualification — Jeannette Winterson in particular I ended up reading more from.

But I can see how other teenage boys are *not* going to feel engaged by The Handmaids Tale, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.

The curriculum needs to get some Terry Pratchett in there, some William Gibson, some Haruki Murakami.

Because it’s just another contributory factor otherwise.

 

[jaime]

I file this under the same category as the claim the general public is by and large conservative.

Why do you think the capital C conservatives stay in power so long?

 

[Set Harth]

I file this under the same category as the claim the general public is by and large conservative.

More conservative than the activist left, at any rate.

 

[Sketcher]

Why do you think the capital C conservatives stay in power so long?

Gerrymandering...stoking fears...propaganda...

 

[jaime]

More conservative than the activist left, at any rate.

Exactly.

Gerrymandering...stoking fears...propaganda...

Will only get you so far.

As to the publishing thing, I am sure some consider The Guardian a terrible fascist right wing rag, but here’s an article from ten years ago that’s already talking about it. (And like I said, it’s been popping up for ages)

Publishing industry is overwhelmingly white and female, US study finds

Survey of workforce at 34 book publishers and eight review journals reveals 79% of staff are white and 78% female – with UK numbers still unmonitored

www.theguardian.com

 

[bdub76]

The class issue is *not* about money.
It is about buckets of crabs.
Reading is seen as gay, effeminate, and class traitor behaviour by far too many, and it’s been that way for decades.
Monty Python was taking the piss out of that in the seventies, and apart from the blooming of techno thrillers and historical fiction in doorstop form for a decade or so, thats pretty much where we are back to.

From what I have experienced, it's clearly a class difference. Education and reading are held far more highly in higher income areas and families in the US. I'm not sure how this plays out in the UK. I can definitely say that I have seen this with older money families in the US first hand.

Now, I have seen less published for guys over time, and this fits with more women in general reading. But more women in general are going to university than men this days as well. And far more men are failing to launch these days as well. I find I'm reading older stuff written by guys than newer stuff since guys wrote and published a lot more in the past when middle class men read more.

Back in the first Wilderness Years for Doctor Who, reading the novels filled the gap, and more men read back then.

This is going to make for an interesting Wilderness Years 2.0.

 

[jaime]

From what I have experienced, it's clearly a class difference. Education and reading are held far more highly in higher income areas and families in the US. I'm not sure how this plays out in the UK. I can definitely say that I have seen this with older money families in the US first hand.

Now, I have seen less published for guys over time, and this fits with more women in general reading. But more women in general are going to university than men this days as well. And far more men are failing to launch these days as well. I find I'm reading older stuff written by guys than newer stuff since guys wrote and published a lot more in the past when middle class men read more.

Back in the first Wilderness Years for Doctor Who, reading the novels filled the gap, and more men read back then.

This is going to make for an interesting Wilderness Years 2.0.

In the UK it’s a similar story.
But it’s not about money, it’s about attitude. There just ain’t much new stuff (as you touch upon) that appeals to working class men to read anymore.

The education thing is also a bigger problem, but we’ve seen a move to coursework over exams (apparently boys work better with exams) and again the majority of teachers are now women.
These things contribute in different ways (and sadly give the manosphere bastard grifters recruits to work with) but fundamentally a lot things in the spheres we are talking about have swung out of balance, and in such a way as to maintain a kind of… momentum.

I think to an extent the recent backlash in visual mediums — films, video games — may in part be because of feeling of having already walked this road before.
Though to be fair, some of it is also grifting bollocks.

Just more polarisation happening, and I really hope we — as in the Western World — find a way to bring it into a better harmony.
Because reading and stories are at the heart of developing empathy.

And to bring it back to RTD2, he really did modern day human boys absolutely no favours with his hamfisted punching down polemics these last two years. Well. The second year to be honest.
Alienated angry disenfranchised young men are not a good thing to create lots of, and we are in danger of creating a media, political, and educational landscape that does precisely that.

 

[JD]

The only reason why I struggle with this theory is that eBooks generally cost more than Mass Market Paperbacks and because the reader would have to purchase the eReader, which is not cheap. My b&w KOBO wasn't cheap. But I've read over 50 novels on it since I purchased it, which is far more than the normal reading rate, so I can justify the cost. However, if I'm only reading a couple of books a year, it's tough to justify spending nearly $200 on an eReader.

I have a feeling the majority of e-book readers probably just read on devices they already own or at least multipurpose devices. I've been reading e-books since around 2010, and I only owned a dedicated e-read, a Nook, for a very small fraction of that time. I've done the vast majority of my e-book reading on my tablets, and my smart phone, and I have a feeling that's probably true of most people. Why spend $200ish on something just for reading, when you can read it on other devices that you probably already own. And even if you don't own those devices, a tablet is going almost the same as an e-reader, so if you're going to spend the money, you can buy something that does a lot more. That was why I was pretty quick to switched from e-readers to just general tablets.

That's basically down to distribution. It's been a goal of BBC Books since the 90s to find an American publisher for the books stateside -- notably, some of the Capaldi NSAs and some of the "big name author" books were picked up by American publishers -- because it makes it easier (and quicker) to get into stores than to put them on a slow boat from Britain. But Doctor Who books are a pretty niche market.


No offense, but they're not going to tell you that. No one wants to tell a potential customer, "You don't need this. You don't need to spend your money on this."

With TLV, the only essential parts you have to buy are, imho, the eighth Doctor audios (including the flip audio) and the second novel, All Flesh Is Grass. Beyond that, on the free side, you should watch the Daleks animations and read James Goss' short story from the TARDIS's POV. (The title is something like "What the TARDIS Saw.") These are what I would call "the spine" of Time Lord Victorious. Notice that, in spite of the event having a tenth Doctor term, none of that, expect the flip audio, has a tenth Doctor focus.

Beyond that, the TLV producats are helpful but not essential.


Kinda. The death of mass markets has a lot to do with bookstores; they prefer higher price points for their KPIs.

My issue with saying that ebooks have replaced mass markets is that the ebooks I want to read are generally more expensive than mass markets were. I also object to spending trade paperback (or higher) prices on an ebook that I am legally only licensing and can be removed from my device by a publisher or platform without a refund. The Big Four price ebooks in a way to prevent ebooks from eating into print sales.

I never really looked at the pricing for e-books and paper books, and it's actually kind of all over the place, some of them were the same price, some the e-books were a little less, and some the e-books were a bit more. It looked like it was mostly the newer books where the e-books were more, although most of them were only a dollar or two more, so it's not like it's a huge difference.

 

[bdub76]

I have a feeling the majority of e-book readers probably just read on devices they already own or at least multipurpose devices. I've been reading e-books since around 2010, and I only owned a dedicated e-read, a Nook, for a very small fraction of that time. I've done the vast majority of my e-book reading on my tablets, and my smart phone, and I have a feeling that's probably true of most people. Why spend $200ish on something just for reading, when you can read it on other devices that you probably already own. And even if you don't own those devices, a tablet is going almost the same as an e-reader, so if you're going to spend the money, you can buy something that does a lot more. That was why I was pretty quick to switched from e-readers to just general tablets.

I can say that my reading rate is far faster on a dedicated reader than on my phone or a tablet. It provides less eye strain.

 

[Steve Roby]

And the battery lasts a lot longer. I’ve got several gadgets because different devices excel at different things.

 

[bdub76]

And the battery lasts a lot longer. I’ve got several gadgets because different devices excel at different things.

My last find was a potato ricer. I haven't mashed potatoes since.

 

[N-121973]

I also recall my own Eng Lit classes, which were in an all boys school about thirty years ago — and every writer we studied was a woman writer, aside from the mandated Shakespeare, I think.
Now, I really don’t mind — unlike some, I have zero problem reading authors not from my own background. I certainly wouldn’t ever declare I will only read white authors, or male authors.
But it’s very interesting.
For the record, I still have and like the writers from that qualification — Jeannette Winterson in particular I ended up reading more from.

But I can see how other teenage boys are *not* going to feel engaged by The Handmaids Tale, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.

The curriculum needs to get some Terry Pratchett in there, some William Gibson, some Haruki Murakami.

Because it’s just another contributory factor otherwise.

Remember the controversy, it would be about twenty-five or even thirty years ago now, when they talked about including Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' on the GCSE English Lit curriculum?

I remember wandering through bookshops in high streets, motorway services and large railway stations with copies of 'Hunt For Red October', 'Firefox', 'Raise the Titanic' and (usually with a scantily clad glamour model, draped suggestively over a giant gun), 'James Bond' books choking the shelves. Ahh, glorious times. Of course you still get that now, but it feels different.

 

[jaime]

Remember the controversy, it would be about twenty-five or even thirty years ago now, when they talked about including Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' on the GCSE English Lit curriculum?

I remember wandering through bookshops in high streets, motorway services and large railway stations with copies of 'Hunt For Red October', 'Firefox', 'Raise the Titanic' and (usually with a scantily clad glamour model, draped suggestively over a giant gun), 'James Bond' books choking the shelves. Ahh, glorious times. Of course you still get that now, but it feels different.

Ah! I think those are the late seventies/early eighties Bond Covers. I have Live and Let Die, and I think it was about 2p at a book sale somewhere lol.

The books in front of the general public have certainly changed.
I bought a fair chunk of my Who and Pratchett books in train stations Smiths. Which was usually why I was there - I wasn’t catching a train, but the station was in walking range of school in my lunch break.

 

[Set Harth]

From what I have experienced, it's clearly a class difference. Education and reading are held far more highly in higher income areas and families in the US. I'm not sure how this plays out in the UK. I can definitely say that I have seen this with older money families in the US first hand.

There may be some correlation in the aggregate but it really goes household by household on the ground level.

 

[jaime]

There may be some correlation in the aggregate but it really goes household by household on the ground level.

If I was totally cynical about it, it’s possible they realised it doesn’t matter how many books you read — eight out of ten times it’s who you know, not what you know that will get you anywhere ahead of where you started.

But mainly it’s just a bucket of crabs scenario.