Reading Across Worlds: Transnational Book Groups and the Reception of Difference [Hardcover]

Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, this book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships.List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Transcription Key Notes on Book Groups 1. Introduction 2. Professional and Lay Readers 3. Remote Reading 4. Reading and Realism 5. Reading in the Literary Market Place 6. Reading as a Social Practice  Race Talk Appendices Endnotes Bibliography Index

James Procter is a Reader in the School of English at Newcastle University, UK. His publications include Writing Black Britain (2000), Dwelling Places (2003), Stuart Hall (2004), and (with Benwell and Robinson) co-editor of Postcolonial Audiences (2012).

Bethan Benwell is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Literature and Languages at the University of Stirling, UK. She has published widely on discursive approaches to identity, including those of readers. Her publications include Masculinity and Men's Lifestyle Magazines (2003) and (with Stokoe) Discourse and Identity (2006) and (with Procter and Robinson) co-editor of Postcolonial Audiences (2012).

Procter's talents as a postcolonial literary scholar combine with Benwell's as a discourse and conversation analyst to produce an interdisciplinary dream-team for a study of this type. ...  a text that & brilliantly challenges and expands the field of postcolonial literary studies to include the perspectives of readers. (Stephanie Newell, Yale University, USA)

Among the thorniest challenges in the seething subject area of book history is how meaningfully to account for the mercurial act of reading. Who reads what, when, where and how, and what do they make of their reading? These questions are especially pertinent in today's world in which diverse texts by authl“;