Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/Practice/Politics

✍ Scribed by Paulette M. Rothbauer (editor), Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad (editor), Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie (editor), Knut Oterholm (editor)

• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 417
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Plotting the Reading Experience
PART 1 THEORY
2 The Hidden Foundations of Critical Reading
3 What Is a Reading Experience? The Development of a Theoretical and Empirical Understanding
4 Reimagining Reading
5 Evidence of Reading? The Swedish Public’s Letters to Selma Lagerlöf: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the History of Reading
6 Byatt versus Bloom: or, Reading by Patricide versus Reading by Love
7 A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Researching the Reading Experience
8 Tempering Ambiguity – The Quality of the Reading Experience
PART 2 PRACTICE
9 Fun … and Other Reasons for Sharing Reading with Strangers: Mass Reading Events and the Possibilities of Pleasure
10 The Once and Future Self: (Re)reading Personal Lists, Notes, and Calendars
11 More Benefit from a Well-Stocked Library Than a Well-Stocked Pharmacy: How Do Readers Use Books as Therapy?
12 Literary Reading as a Social Technology: An Exploratory Study on Shared Reading Groups
13 The Indescribable Described: Readers’ Experiences When Reading about Tragic Loss
14 When Comics Set the Pace: The Experience of Time and the Reading of Comics
15 Reading Groups in Swedish Public Libraries
PART 3 POLITICS
16 “I readed it!” (Marissa, 4 years): The Experience of Reading from the Perspective of Children Themselves: A Cautionary Tale
17 Reading the Readers: Tracking Visible Online Reading Audiences
18 Literature in Common: Reading for Pleasure in School Reading Groups
19 Desire and Becoming – Multilingual Pupils’ Reading Experiences
20 Experiencing the Social Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century: Approaches of Amateur and Professional Criticism
21 The Republic of Readers: Book Clubs in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1815–1830
22 “Crazy Thirst for Knowledge”: Chinese Readers and the 1980s “Book Series Fever”
23 Enabling Testimonies and Producing Witnesses: Exploring Readers’ Responses to Two Norwegian Post-Terror Blogs
Notes on Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z