ABSTRACT
Reading, and particularly literary reading, is often thought of as an individual activity: a lone reader engaging with a text. The reader is usually silent. In literary reading they may immerse themselves in the narrative—there is a sense in which such reading takes the individual away from the present, into another world. In this book, however, our focus is rather different. Our interest is in contemporary reading groups (or book clubs or reading clubs—the terms are used interchangeably)—people who come together to talk about a book. Reading is, here, more evidently a joint, collaborative activity, in which people share interpretations and create new ones within their interaction. Reading is anything but silent. And readers’ engagement in particular ‘text-worlds’ is, in various ways, embedded in the here and now of their particular reading context.
