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socialreading

Page history last edited by (account deleted) 14 years, 9 months ago

Following Tom's example I thought it might be worth explaining a bit more about my interests.

 

And to say that I agree that there’s a lot of mileage in exploring social reading.

 

I’m currently investigating British literary/book festivals for an MSc: I want to know why people go to book festivals, whether they get what they want and why they’re going in what seem to be ever-increasing numbers.

 

I’m pretty new to this field so can’t claim any particular expertise but the core of my interest is readers - why people read, what reading means to them and why they want to share their reading – at festivals and also in book groups, another recent boom area in the book business.

 

I’m also delving into the history of books and reading at the moment, which I’m finding fascinating and revealing.

 

Cheers,

Lucy 

Comments (3)

Kevin O'Neill said

at 10:51 am on Jan 12, 2009

My interest is in a different field (why people buy literary magazines, what kind of engagement this suggests and what this tells us about wider patterns of literary consumption) but I think there are crossovers. I also help run my department's graduate seminar series, as well as an occasional involvement in some Oxfam poetry readings, and we're constantly debating (on a much smaller scale) the interest people have in certain topics and types of event. And more broadly, why people choose to do research into literature!

(account deleted) said

at 5:53 pm on Jan 13, 2009

Yes, definitely some crossovers here...
It all sounds really interesting; I look forward to finding out more!
See you Saturday
Lucy

Anna Rafferty said

at 10:54 am on Jan 16, 2009

When www.penguindating.co.uk launched I counted over 40 mentions of 'lonely bookworms' in the resulting press which made me ill. Reading groups are often thought of as the natural home of fussy old ladies, competitively baking and only reading very literary books. A recent survey revealed that some mothers stop reading as they consider it a very solitary, self-indulgent pursuit (they're doing it for their own satisfaction rather than the good of their children...).

I would love to talk about social reading - how can publishers work to make the reading experience more collaborative, can reading groups be re-branded and so on...

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