Lockdownlife
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Lockdown Life
The COVID-19 pandemic took many by surprise when it arrived in Britain in early 2020. Daily lives changed dramatically from March with the introduction of unprecedented restrictions and lockdowns. How did people react? This book draws on the diaries of 68 men and women aged 70 and above, capturing their thoughts and experiences over the following months. Although these older diarists considered themselves among the more fortunate at the time, their entries reveal both highs and lows. There were anxieties and frustrations but also much positivity and, often, a reluctance for an over-hasty return to pre-pandemic times. Through these personal and contemporaneous accounts, the book offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the pandemic and its significance in modern social history.
Entertained or Else
Author: Tina Kendall
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Release Date: 2025-09-18
This book considers the complex and often contradictory relations that are forged between boredom and everyday media use in the twenty-first century and demonstrates how networked media have developed new technical means of capitalizing on boredom's state of suspension to make it into a source of value creation. Focusing on the discursive, technological, and affective structures that encourage users to be entertaining and to remain entertained, the book analyses how boredom has been increasingly instrumentalized as both an individual mood and a wider structure of feeling that drives participation across media networks. It identifies the range of cultural techniques for codifying, classifying, sensing, and pre-empting boredom, as well as those that teach users, counter-intuitively, to embrace boring media as a means of coping with the intensities of always-on existence. However, if boredom is positioned in a digital network culture as a feeling that keeps driving us back to our social media feeds, it is important to ask how else it might operate. While the technological affordances of computational media have put pressure on our ability to conceive of boredom as a radical challenge to digital capitalism, this book attempts to think about the potential that might still be embedded in boredom's capacity to temporarily suspend or to neutralize dominant structures of attention and affect. Building on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Byung-Chul Han, Roland Barthes, and from historical accounts of boredom and entertainment, the book provides a new understanding of boredom in the context of networked media.
The Lost Summers of Driftwood
'Like the slow-moving river that flows through the story, this compelling mystery will creep up on you and pull you in.' Josephine Moon An absorbing drama about broken dreams, first love and the mystery of a lost sister, for all fans of Hannah Richell and Kate Morton. 'A cracking read' Maggie Alderson Is it more dangerous to forget ... or to remember? Phoebe's life has fallen apart and there's only one place left to go. Alone and adrift after a failed marriage proposal, she flees Sydney to her family's abandoned holiday cottage. On the slow-moving river Phoebe is confronted with the legacy of her older sister's suicide, a year before. Why did Karin leave a note written in flowers and walk into the water? Phoebe's childhood love, Jez, has moved back to the beautiful old house, Driftwood, one jetty down. He's married now and the home has become a refuge for an unlikely little community. As the river begins to give up its secrets, Phoebe finds herself caught up in old feelings and new mysteries. The Lost Summers of Driftwood is a story of lost loves, rekindled passions, tragedy and betrayal set against the backdrop of an idyllic south coast town. Praise for The Lost Summers of Driftwood: 'This tender and evocative story of the power of love, grief and memories will resonate with so many readers thanks to the power of Vanessa McCausland's storytelling and her understanding of human nature.' Sophie Green, author of The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club 'McCausland is a natural storyteller who weaves love, loss, mystery and secrets into a satisfying tale' Herald Sun 'You'll be on the edge of your seat as surprising secrets unfold on every page' Woman's Day 'Full of mystery and romance, this is the perfect atmospheric summer read' Who Weekly 'Pure reading pleasure! Evocatively written and with beautifully realised characters whose loves and losses play out against a lush and mysterious backdrop, I kept turning the pages, desperate to know what would happen, but also wishing it would never end.' Cassie Hamer, author of After the Party