There was a good piece by Jenny Turner in the paper yesterday about the current wave of nostalgia books - you know, The Dangerous Book for Boys, and now the Great Big Glorious Book for Girls and various others. She thinks it's all part of a "bizarre artefact of middle class nostalgia" but aimed at concerns and dreams for our children's future. She is also quite disparaging about the aspirations of such tomes to be "old-school posh". Anyway, a link is here.
Also, according to Jenny Turner:
Such books are not meant to be really meant to be read at all. They are what the publishing trade calls "gift books" for people who don't much enjoy reading to present to people they don't really know or like.
As I've spent a good portion of my spare time this year hacking away at producing a tome called The Dangerous Book for Blokes, my own take on middle-class nostalgia, then I hope you will also buy this for people who you don't like too. I also hope it's worth reading and not just filing. I'm not counting my chickens though, there's a long way to go yet.
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