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1 – 10 of over 10000
Article
Publication date: 27 June 2019

Mike Thelwall and Karen Bourrier

Despite the social, educational and therapeutic benefits of book clubs, little is known about which books participants are likely to have read. In response, the purpose of this…

Abstract

Purpose

Despite the social, educational and therapeutic benefits of book clubs, little is known about which books participants are likely to have read. In response, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the public bookshelves of those that have joined a group within the Goodreads social network site.

Design/methodology/approach

Books listed as read by members of 50 large English-language Goodreads groups – with a genre focus or other theme – were compiled by author and title.

Findings

Recent and youth-oriented fiction dominate the 50 books most read by book club members, whilst almost half are works of literature frequently taught at the secondary and postsecondary level (literary classics). Whilst J.K. Rowling is almost ubiquitous (at least 63 per cent as frequently listed as other authors in any group, including groups for other genres), most authors, including Shakespeare (15 per cent), Goulding (6 per cent) and Hemmingway (9 per cent), are little read by some groups. Nor are individual recent literary prize winners or works in languages other than English frequently read.

Research limitations/implications

Although these results are derived from a single popular website, knowing more about what book club members are likely to have read should help participants, organisers and moderators. For example, recent literary prize winners might be a good choice, given that few members may have read them.

Originality/value

This is the first large scale study of book group members’ reading patterns. Whilst typical reading is likely to vary by group theme and average age, there seems to be a mainly female canon of about 14 authors and 19 books that Goodreads book club members are likely to have read.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 75 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2009

Cassandra M. Scharber, Ann Melrose and Jody Wurl

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and examine public‐library‐based, online book clubs for preteens and teens.

2037

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and examine public‐library‐based, online book clubs for preteens and teens.

Design/methodology/approach

Two online book clubs are discussed.

Findings

Overall, the online book clubs proved to be a fun, engaging, and convenient activity for preteen and teens. Parents and librarians also found these clubs to be motivating and flexible.

Research limitations/implications

This case‐based manuscript would benefit from insights from other libraries that offer online book clubs, further investigation and empirical research.

Practical implications

This manuscript offers theoretical grounding and rich, practical details so that other libraries can capitalize and create their own online book clubs.

Originality/value

Online book clubs offer a forum that capitalizes on youths' familiarity with computers and new literacy practices while staying rooted in traditional practices. Public library online book clubs are sites of possibility – a medium through which libraries can more readily encourage literate practices in younger generations.

Details

Library Review, vol. 58 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 September 2016

Sheila Hollins, Jo Egerton and Barry Carpenter

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the social and scientific rationale for book clubs, whose members read wordless books together, and give examples of storytelling with…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the social and scientific rationale for book clubs, whose members read wordless books together, and give examples of storytelling with picture books in libraries and other community settings for people with intellectual disabilities and autism.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors consider the impact of book clubs reading picture books without words, alongside an understanding of the underlying neuroscience (see Table I for search strategy). The authors compare differences in the neuroscience of information and emotion processing between pictures and words. Accounts from book club facilitators illustrate these differences in practice.

Findings

Many readers who struggle with reading and comprehending words, find pictures much easier to understand. Book clubs support community inclusion, as for other people in society. A focus on visual rather than word literacy encourages successful shared reading.

Research limitations/implications

No research has been published about the feasibility and effectiveness of wordless books in community book clubs or shared reading groups. There is very little research on the impact of accessible materials, despite a legal requirement for services to provide reasonable adjustments and the investment of time and resources in developing storylines in pictures, or “translating” information into easy read formats.

Practical implications

Book clubs whose members read picture books without words are growing in number, especially in public libraries in the UK. Expansion is dependent on funding to pay for training for librarians and volunteer facilitators.

Social implications

There is a shortage of fully accessible activities for adults with intellectual disabilities in mainstream community settings with a primarily social purpose.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper describing the theory and impact of wordless book clubs for people who find pictures easier to understand than words.

Details

Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities, vol. 10 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2044-1282

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1937

COLM BROGAN

FEW people would deny that the most remarkable recent development in publishing is the Book Club. Not everybody would agree that the influence of such clubs on writing is…

Abstract

FEW people would deny that the most remarkable recent development in publishing is the Book Club. Not everybody would agree that the influence of such clubs on writing is potentially as great as their influence on the mechanics of selling, but that is the fact, and the clubs should be carefully watched by all who would like to see literature free. The clubs vary greatly in size and seriousness. Some are almost entirely comic. Others, like the Book Society, have an academic air and confer a quite important cachet, a kind of literary Monthly Medal. How is their standing justified ? The Left Book Club is actually a publishing concern, and the Right Book Club is run by a bookseller. Commerce and ideology are running in harness.

Details

Library Review, vol. 6 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Article
Publication date: 1 October 1995

Sarah Slight

Investigates how companies make customers feel welcome and ensurecustomer loyalty through offering club membership. Describes book clubsas an example. Lists a number of scenarios…

620

Abstract

Investigates how companies make customers feel welcome and ensure customer loyalty through offering club membership. Describes book clubs as an example. Lists a number of scenarios where customer clubs have an important role to play. Assesses formats of clubs, stressing that the main cost is selling the concept to the consumers. Lists key tasks to be considered when planning a customer club. Reviews Spies Hecker’s Colour Club, which offers members a unique range of colour resources to enable them to improve colour matching performance as well as providing a number of other benefits: an easy‐to‐use reference guide to refinishing colours; exclusive access to a colour hotline; training vouchers; and regular bulletins. Lists various benefits of club membership both to Spies Hecker and the customer.

Details

Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, vol. 5 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0960-4529

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 July 1928

FREDERIC MELCHER

THE publishing and distribution of books in the United States has seen many changes in the last decade and seems now to be entering into a period of uncommon activity. During the…

Abstract

THE publishing and distribution of books in the United States has seen many changes in the last decade and seems now to be entering into a period of uncommon activity. During the war the number of new titles decreased, owing to the rising costs of manufacture, and the total number has not yet reached the level of 1914. At the same time the number of volumes being sold from the old and new titles has very rapidly increased and it may safely be judged from the government census figures that the number has doubled since 1919.

Details

Library Review, vol. 1 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1976

Caroline E. Werkley

THERE IS SIGNIFICANCE, perhaps, in the fact that in 1876, the year the first library in Moberly, Missouri, probably disappeared, a Wizard came to town. Professor Macallister, the…

47

Abstract

THERE IS SIGNIFICANCE, perhaps, in the fact that in 1876, the year the first library in Moberly, Missouri, probably disappeared, a Wizard came to town. Professor Macallister, the Prince of Magic Performers, gave ‘great entertainments’ for three days, April 3rd, 4th and 5th, at Morgan's Opera House. ‘Without a peer in his line of business’, and ‘a gentleman whom it is a pleasure to know’, wrote the editor of the Moberly Enterprise‐Monitor (the first daily published in Moberly, its first issue dated 3 April 1873). ‘Do not be misled by classing the great East Indian magician with inferior traveling concerns, styling themselves Fakirs, etc. They not only injure reputations of first class magicians, but they give their patrons snide jewelry and sham watches for presents.’ Not so Professor Mac‐allister, who, in addition to his first‐class performance, distributed one hundred costly and valuable presents each evening: china tea sets, chamber sets, tête‐à‐têtes, chairs, marble‐topped tables, bureaus, American watches. Wisely, too, these articles were not brought out of the Wizard's hat but were purchased by his canny manager, Mr Harry Weston, from the business houses in the town. Any resident—or visiting drummer—for 25 cents (50 cents reserved seat) could see a true Wizard perform and also have a chance of winning atête‐à‐tête or a chamber set.

Details

Library Review, vol. 25 no. 5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Article
Publication date: 1 August 1946

JOHN L. WEIR

THE history of the Scottish Book Clubs has still to be written. That no one has yet ventured upon it is partly due to the vastness of the subject, partly to the fact that in these…

Abstract

THE history of the Scottish Book Clubs has still to be written. That no one has yet ventured upon it is partly due to the vastness of the subject, partly to the fact that in these degenerate times the student of history or literature is inclined to take his blessings for granted. Happily, the story is unfinished; for today the modern successors of the Bannatyne and Maitland go on from strength to strength. The Scottish History Society is now sixty years old, but as virile as in the days of its youth. The Scottish Text Society, which has given us monumental editions of Dunbar, Wyntoun, and Pitscottie, to name only a few of its triumphs, continues to maintain its high standards of editorship and production. In the North‐East, the Third Spalding Club proclaims to the world at large that Aberdeen has wealth still of scholars in the Joseph Robertson — Hill Burton tradition. In recent years one new name has been added to the roll of the printing fraternities. Some ten years ago, the Stair Society, established for the purpose of “encouraging the study, and advancing the knowledge of” Scots Law, began its labours. Though young, it has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is worthy to rank with the great Clubs I have mentioned. True, its scope at first sight may appear limited: and those who have the layman's undefined distrust of legal affairs may pass with averted eye. The noble volumes of the Stair, however, bear eloquent witness to the close relationship of law and history, and afford illustrations of bygone life in Scotland which we would be sorry to lose. An extensive and distinguished membership, with regular publications of value, confirms that the work begun by men like David Laing and Cosmo Innes is still being carried on,—and right worthily too.

Details

Library Review, vol. 10 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Article
Publication date: 4 December 2017

Peter Smagorinsky, Andie Brasley, Rebekah Johnson and Lisa Shurtz

This paper aims to describe a letter written to undergraduate students before their enrollment in a required foundations course, Service-Learning in English Education, taken…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to describe a letter written to undergraduate students before their enrollment in a required foundations course, Service-Learning in English Education, taken before admission to the English education program at [the university]. The course, offered in the spring of 2017, came on the heels of Donald Trump’s election to the US Presidency, an event that followed from a campaign that raged against “politically correct” social developments that respect the dignity of people historically marginalized in US society.

Design/methodology/approach

The letter lays out the perils of teaching a diversity-oriented course in an era of disdain for diverse people and cultures. The letter explains how the course design attempts to give all interpretive authority to the students through their selection of course books and the book club design of promoting discussion outside professorial surveillance.

Findings

The paper includes the comments of three students regarding their response to the letter and course, and concludes that teaching a politicized course in a tempestuous time is risky yet possible.

Originality/value

This paper looks at one teacher educator’s approach to introducing diversity-related ideas in a Red State during an anti-diversity presidency.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 August 2022

Mary Neville and Rick Marlatt

This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research explores how reading a book-length text may help support DL, equity-oriented curricula that consider literacy as empowerment and connected to lived and communal experiences (González et al., 2005; Muhammad, 2020).

Design/methodology/approach

This work is grounded in a qualitative, humanizing methodology and thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Paris and Winn, 2014). This approach examines student work in one DL course, considering how teachers within and beyond English language arts (ELA) respond to the task of reading a book-length text.

Findings

First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants’ enjoyment of reading.

Originality/value

The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically “ELA”: reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

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