We may think of reading and writing as opposite activities, but there’s a long history of people reading with blank books by their side so they could write out their favorite passages as they went. Deidre Lynch is interested in what these homemade books can tell us about the people who filled them up. Like someone’s Pinterest board or Tumblr blog today, these curated collections of words told a story about a person’s individual identity. Beyond that, they could also tell the story of relationships within a social group, with many people contributing extracts to a single book.
Tag: social
A one-sided relationship is a bad relationship, right? Not necessarily, says Elaine Auyoung. She’s interested in what are called parasocial relationships, where we know and care a lot about someone but they don’t directly engage with us – like a celebrity, for example, or even a fictional character. While parasocial relationships are often thought of as inferior to regular person-to-person relationships, Elaine argues that they have a unique value. Precisely because there’s no reciprocation, parasocial relationships can allow us to engage with other people’s experiences without the obstacles of social anxiety or self-centredness.
The classic image of a reader is someone alone with their eyes on a book, ignoring the world around them. But Janice Radway argues that the communities we’re in can shape what we read and how we read. Reading is not something that only takes place in our individual minds, but an activity that influences and is influenced by our social world. From prison reading groups to caregivers who read to get a break from their domestic duties, people read with agendas and desires they share with others in similar situations.