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This book is about the experience of reading-what reading feels like, how it makes people feel, how people read and under what conditions, what drives people to read, and, conversely, what halts the individual in the pursuit of the pleasures of reading. The authors consider reading in all of its richness as they explore readers' relationships with diverse textual and digital forms.
This edited volume is divided into three sections: Theory, Practice, and Politics. The first provides insights into ways of seeing, thinking, and conceptualizing the experience of reading. The second features a variety of individual and social practices of reading. The third explores the political and ethical aspects of the reading experience, raising questions about the role that reading plays in democracy and civic participation.
With contributions from multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, this book provides provocative insights into what it means to be a reader reading in and across various social, cultural, and political contexts. Its unifying theme of the reader's experience of reading is put into dialogue with theories, practices, and politics, making this a rewarding read for graduate students, faculty, researchers, and librarians working across a range of academic fields.
List of contents
Table of ContentsList of Figures and TablesAcknowledgements1 Introduction: Plotting the Reading Experience • Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad and Paulette RothbauerPART 1 • THEORY2 The Hidden Foundations of Critical Reading • Magnus Persson3 What Is a Reading Experience? The Development of a Theoretical and Empirical Understanding • Gitte Balling4 Reimagining Reading • Gabrielle Cliff Hodges5 Evidence of Reading? The Swedish Public's Letters to Selma Lagerlöf: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the History of Reading • Jenny Bergenmar and Maria Karlsson6 Byatt versus Bloom: or, Reading by Patricide versus Reading by Love • Marianne Borch7 A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Researching the Reading Experience • Sara Whiteley8 Tempering Ambiguity - The Quality of the Reading Experience • Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad and Knut OterholmPART 2 • PRACTICE9 Fun " and Other Reasons for Sharing Reading with Strangers: Mass Reading Events and the Possibilities of Pleasure • Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo10 The Once and Future Self: (Re)reading Personal Lists, Notes, and Calendars • Pamela McKenzie and Elisabeth Davies11 More Benefit from a Well-Stocked Library Than a Well-Stocked Pharmacy: How Do Readers Use Books as Therapy? • Liz Brewster12 Literary Reading as a Social Technology: An Exploratory Study on Shared Reading Groups • Mette Steenberg13 The Indescribable Described: Readers' Experiences When Reading about Tragic Loss • Eva Maria (Emy) Koopman14 When Comics Set the Pace: The Experience of Time and the Reading of Comics • Lucia Cedeira Serantes15 Reading Groups in Swedish Public Libraries • Kerstin RydbeckPART 3 • POLITICS16 "I readed it!" (Marissa, 4 years): The Experience of Reading from the Perspective of Children Themselves: A Cautionary Tale • Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie17 Reading the Readers: Tracking Visible Online Reading Audiences • Marianne Martens18 Literature in Common: Reading for Pleasure in School Reading Groups • Teresa Cremin and Joan Swann19 Desire and Becoming - Multilingual Pupils' Reading Experiences • Joron Pihl and Kristin Skinstad van der Kooij20 Experiencing the Social Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century: Approaches of Amateur and Professional Criticism • Cecilie Naper 21 The Republic of Readers: Book Clubs in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1815-1830 • Arnold Lubbers22 "Crazy Thirst for Knowledge": Chinese Readers and the 1980s "Book Series Fever" • Shih-Wen Sue Chen23 Enabling Testimonies and Producing Witnesses: Exploring Readers' Responses to Two Norwegian Post-Terror Blogs • Tonje VoldNotes on Contributors Index
About the author
Paulette M. Rothbauer is an associate professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario.
Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad is an associate professor at the Institute of Archive, Library and Information Science, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway.
Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie is a professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at Western University, London, Ontario.
Knut Oterholm is an assistant professor in the Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science, Oslo, and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway.
Summary
Explores the experience of reading-what reading feels like, how it makes people feel, how people read and under what conditions, what drives people to read, and, conversely, what halts the individual in the pursuit of the pleasures of reading.
