Reading Groups: an overview

The focus of this study is on one particular site of naturalistic reading: the reading group. This constitutes a natural setting because reading group members voluntarily come together to discuss books. Discussing individual, private reading practices Collinson notes that books ‘provide a site of common ground, a territory which provides a location for discussion’ (2009: 78). Collinson’s point is that all reading has a social component and creates a potential for discussion, but it is in the reading group that these qualities are most in evidence. As natural sites of reading that exist prior to and beyond academic research, reading groups can show us how reading is done outside the academy, while also demonstrating the necessarily social aspects of reading.

People have been talking about books in groups for many centuries, although it is only since the 18th-century that these groups have been comprised of non-professional, lay readers, existing outside the universities. Since the ‘library revolution’ in 18th

-century Britain during which time ‘early public libraries’ and ‘reading clubs’ emerged (Pearson 1999: 160), reading groups have been an important part of Western reading practice. It has been predicted that there are around 50,000 face-to-face reading groups in the UK, around 500,000 in the US (Hartley 2001: vii), and approximately 40,750 such groups in Canada (Rehberg Sedo 2002: 13) although this number is likely to have risen in the fifteen years since these surveys were conducted. The rise in popularity of reading groups over the last thirty years has been helped in no small part by the amount of media attention shared reading now receives. In the USA,

Oprah’s Book Club has engaged many thousands of readers, while in the UK, the Richard & Judy Book Club has run since 2004 and, similar to Oprah’s Book Club, encourages the public discussion of literary texts. The TV Book Club on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4’s Bookclub

of the broadsheet newspapers run highly successful book clubs. This wealth of media attention that book groups receive in the USA and the UK may not explain the underlying popularity of these groups, but it does reflect a sense shared by many that literary reading naturally leads to discussion, and that books (good and bad) are worth talking about.

As defined in Chapter 1, a reading group describes a collective who meet regularly to discuss a book that all members (should) have read. Typically, face-to-face groups meet once a month, so that members have time in between meetings to read the book and formulate their views on it. These meetings can be seen as a literacy event, an activity ‘where literacy has a role’ (Barton and Hamilton 2000: 8) and which involves some talk around texts. Seeing reading groups as events in this way ‘stresses the situated nature of literacy’, emphasising the importance of ‘social context’ (Barton and Hamilton 2000: 8). Groups can be organised across a range of different social contexts, all of which will make for different literacy events. Institutions as diverse as libraries, schools, prisons and workplaces are increasingly running and hosting reading groups, ‘book circles’ (Daniels, 2002; Duncan, 2012), and ‘shared reading’ sessions with a bibliotherapy focus (e.g. Dowrick et al., 2012; Hodge, Robinson & Davis 2007). For private or ‘closed’ groups that have grown out of friendship networks, members may take turns at hosting or may meet in a pub, bar, or restaurant. In Chapter 1 some of these differences were acknowledged when the reading groups used in the current study were described.

As the four reading groups in this study show, different book selection procedures are used across various groups. Again, there is variation between groups run through institutions and those run privately. Often, the readers in more institutional groups have little or no choice over deciding which books they read. Certainly the library (and ex-library) groups in my

study have a relatively restricted choice compared to the private groups. Some libraries have a system whereby a long-list of texts is drawn up for the year and groups select books from that list. These library groups can opt to read a text that is not on the list but this may require members to buy their own copies of the text. As public libraries are becoming increasingly impoverished, practical and logistical factors play an important role in this free service they offer readers, and consequently, the list of books is typically comprised of texts that local libraries hold in plentiful supply. Often, these are texts that local reading officers have decided will prove popular with groups.

Compared to library groups, privately-run groups tend to have more choice over the books they read and greater freedom over the process for selecting texts. Hartley (2001: 47-8) lists some of the most common ways for these groups to select books. Some groups choose books by nominating a ‘leader’ who selects the books; some groups follow the book selections from popular media sources (e.g. Richard and Judy’s Book Club or the Guardian Book Club). The benefit of this latter method is that no one member is responsible for book selection, which diminishes the potential risk of the book selector being offended if readers in the group report disliking the book and/or the book leads to an unsatisfactory meeting. Another popular way for books to be selected is for groups to have certain ‘themes’ for a fixed amount of time. For instance, a group may decide to read African writers for six months, or various epic poems for a year. Hartley (2001: 45) reports that the most common method is for members to take it in turns to select titles, as this is the most democratic method. Some of the specific

organisational practices of the groups in my study are discussed in Chapter 3. In the next section of this chapter, sociological, sociolinguistic, and stylistic research into reading groups will be discussed, with the current study will be positioned in relation to this previous