Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 395.
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        Date: 2026-04-06 07:20:00+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: an answer

As if to answer my own call for comment, moments after sending off the
previous request, into my inbox popped a message from the
London Review of Books, John Day's 'Diary' special, on 'Hordiculture'
44.17, 8 Sept 2022), which begins as follows:

> When​ Possessed, Rebecca Falkoff’s cultural history of hoarding,
> came through the letter box, I put it on my desk next to a pile of
> other books, a tangle of wires left out after an unsuccessful search
> for a phone charger, a small pocket microscope, a broken reading
> light, a carrier bag full of travel adapters, a sheaf of loose
> papers, a selection of penknives, a pair of speakers, the jawbone of
> a pike, an ancient box of cigars, a blown pigeon egg, a spool of
> fishing line, several harmonicas, a roll of solder, a broken toy
> steam engine, the shell of a sea urchin, the tail feather of a ring-
> necked parakeet, a transparent padlock for practising lockpicking,
> three empty mugs and a shrivelled apple core.
>
> Falkoff’s book led me to others. I didn’t think I could start
> writing until I had read a few more histories of hoarding (Stuff by
> Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, Clutter by Jennifer Howard) and books
> about the way to treat it (The Hoarding Handbook, CBT for Hoarding
> Disorder). I wanted to understand the allure of decluttering, so I
> bought The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo and
> Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana White....

And so it continues. Sigh, more to read.

WM

--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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