DeNel Rehberg Sedo

Marionettes and Puppeteers? The Relationship between Book Club Readers and Publishers

The recognizable orange, white and black colour scheme catches the attention of patrons passing by the local library bulletin board for reading groups.1 The brochure’s headline, ‘PENGUIN READERS’ BOOK OF THE MONTH’, jumps out from the various pamphlets on display. The front text tells us that Penguin asked ‘hundreds of librarians nationwide’ (in the UK) to recommend contemporary novels that they believed would appeal to reading groups. Inside the brochure we find six Penguin titles for their 2005 ‘Book of the Month’ programme, ranging from Esther Freud’s The Sea House to The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. The programme, according to Penguin, includes novels that ‘appeal to each member of the wide-ranging library reading groups that they will be running and supporting for the next six months’.2

Faraway, So Close: Seeing the Intimacy in Goodreads Reviews

Book reviews written by readers and published on digital sites such as Goodreads are a new force in contemporary book culture. This article uses feminist standpoint theory to investigate the language used in Goodreads reviews to better understand how these reviewers articulate intimate reading experiences. A total of 692 reviews of seven bestselling fiction and nonfiction books are analyzed by two methods. The first, thematic content analysis, involves close reading of the reviews. The second, sentiment analysis, is an automated “distant reading” process. These methods prompt us, as researchers, to reflect on the way they foster or inhibit a sense of proximity to readers, even as they reveal predominant features of Goodreads reviews. Together, the methods reveal that 86.1% of Goodreads reviews describe a reading experience, and 68% specifically mention an emotional reaction to the book, with the emotion most intense in reviews of fiction. Reviews also create social connections by mentioning other readers, authors, characters, and people from the reviewer’s life. Through their emotional language and sociality, Goodreads reviews present distinctive, intimate reading practices, constituting a new cultural phenomenon, and a unique opportunity for investigation.

Book Review: A Heretic in American Journalism Education and Research: Malcolm S. Maclean, Jr., Revisited, edited by Luigi Manca and Gail W. Pieper. Columbia, MO: William Stephenson Center, 2001, 425 pp., ISBN: 1-884406-16-5 (paper).

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