Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Noughties Reading

  • Chapter
The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure

  • 412 Accesses

Abstract

Reading seems the most demure of leisure activities. While writers around leisure have turned in recent times to ‘the dark side’ of leisure (Rojek, 1999: 126), the privacy and silence we associate with much modern reading would seem to be at odds with the kinds of activities Chris Rojek describes as ‘wild’ leisure — imbued with the passion of the disorderly crowd. Reading has often been associated with virtue, progress and reason and viewed as a key route to learning and wisdom. Historically, public libraries, for example, have been viewed as places to promote the social good through educative reading, dis tracting working-class readers from vices like the ‘demon’ drink (Brophy, 2007: 34). Libraries, one recent author comments, ‘are one of the marks of civilization’ (Brophy, 2007: ix). Even in newly popular social spaces for reading and discussing books, such as the book clubs popularised by Oprah Winfrey and the UK’s Richard and Judy, have been framed as therapeutic communities organised around ethical principles (Driscoll, 2008; Fuller, 2008).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Bibliography

  • Albury, K. (1998) ‘Spanking stories: Writing and reading bad female heterosex’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Culture, 12(1) April: 55–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Billiani, F. (2007) ‘Assessing boundaries — Censoring and translation: A discussion’, from F. Billiani (ed.) Modes of Censorship and Translation: National Contexts and Diverse Media (St. Jerome Publishing).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brophy, P. (2007) The Library in the Twenty First Century (London: Facet Publishing).

    Google Scholar 

  • Burt, R. (1994) ‘Introduction: The “new” censorship’, from Richard Burt (ed.) The Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism and the Public Sphere (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Buschman, J. (2003) Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarian-ship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy (Westport: Libraries Unlimited).

    Google Scholar 

  • Califia, P. (1995) ‘Dangerous tongues’, from Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada (London: Cleis Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • Caso, F. (2008) Censorship (New York: Infobase Publishing/Facts on File).

    Google Scholar 

  • Driscoll, B. (2008) ‘How Oprah’s book club reinvented the woman reader’, Popular Narrative Media, 1(2): 139–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falk-Ross, F. and J. Caplan (2008) ‘The challenge of censorship’, Reading Today, 25.5 April-May: 20(1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Finan, C. (2007) From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (Boston: Beacon Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Finkelstein, D. and A. McCleery (2005) An Introduction to Book History (New York: Routledge).

    Google Scholar 

  • Flint, K. (2002) ‘Reading practices’, from D. Finkelstein and A. McCleery (eds) The Book History Reader, Second edition, 416–23 (London: Routledge).

    Google Scholar 

  • Flood, A. (2008) ‘Publication of controversial Muhammad novel delayed’, The Guardian, October 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuller, D. (2008) ‘Reading as social practice: The “beyond the book” research project’, Popular Narrative Media, 1(2): 211–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gafaiti, H. (1996) ‘Between God and the President: Literature and censorship in North Africa’, Diacritics, 27(2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Greco, A. (2005) The Book Publishing Industry, Second edition (London: Laurence Erlbaum Associates).

    Google Scholar 

  • Greco, A. N., C. E. Rodriguez and R. Wharton (2007) The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford Business Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffin, G. and H. Iball (2007) ‘Editors introduction to gagging — Forum on censorship’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17(4): 516–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollier, N. (2007) ‘Between denial and despair: Understanding the decline of literary publishing in Australia’, Southern Review, 40(1): 62–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horvath, S. (2001) ‘Publishing’s brave new world — according to Jason Epstein’, Logos, 12(2): 87–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (London: Routledge).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Here Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Karolides, N. J. (2006) Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds (New York: Facts on File).

    Google Scholar 

  • Khoo, O. (2003) ‘Sexing the city: Malaysia’s new “cyberlaws” and Cyberjaya’s queer success’, from Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue (eds) Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, 222–44 (Durham: Duke University Press).

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • King, N. (2007b) ‘The main thing we book publishers have going with our books is the books themselves’, an interview with Peter Ayrton (London: Serpent’s Tail Press, Islington), 12 July 2006, Critical Quarterly, 49(3): 104–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krzywinska, T. (1995) ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci?’, in P. Burston and C. Richardson, A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture, 99–110 (London: Routledge).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lutz, D. (2007) ‘The haunted space of the mind: The revival of the gothic romance in the twenty first century’, in S. Goade (ed.) Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels, 31–92 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyons, M. (2003) ‘New readers in the nineteenth century: Women, children, workers’, in G. Cavallo and R. Chartier (eds) A History of Reading in the West, 313–44 (Cambridge: Policy).

    Google Scholar 

  • McLelland, M. (2000) ‘No climax, no point, no meaning? Japanese women’s boy-love sites on the internet’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 24(3): 274–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, L. J. (2006) Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Moody, N. (1998) ‘Mills and Boon’s Temptations: Sex and the single couple in the 1990s’, in L. Pearce and G. Wisker (eds) Fatal Attractions: Re-scripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film (London: Pluto Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, J. (1997) ‘The role of multimedia conglomerates in American trade book publishing’, Media, Culture and Society, 19(3): 441–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Offord, B. (2003) ‘Singaporean queering of the internet: Toward a new ford of cultural transmission of rights discourse’, in Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and Yue, Audrey (eds) Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, 133–57 (Durham: Duke University Press).

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Penley, C. (1997) Nasa/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America (London: Verso).

    Google Scholar 

  • Petrucci, A. (1999) ‘Reading to read: A future for reading’, in G. Cavallo and R. Chartier (eds) A History of Reading in the West, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, 345–67 (Cambridge: Polity Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Publishers Weekly (2006) ‘Danse Macabre’, 00000019, 5/22/2006, Vol. 253, Issue 21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Punter, D. (1999) ‘Introduction: Of apparitions’, in Glennis Byron and David Punter (eds) Spectral Readings: Towards a Gothic Geography (London: Macmillan), 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Punter, D. and B. Glennis (eds) (1999) ‘Special readings: Towards a Gothic geography’ (Basingstoke: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, C. (2007) ‘Comics bestsellers’, Publishers Weekly, 00000019, 9/3/2007, 254(35).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rojek, C. (1999) Leisure and Culture (London: Palgrave).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, J. (2003) ‘Booksellers help Harry Potter’. Publishers Weekly, 00000019, 5/12/2003, 250(19).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothman, D. (2006) ‘How sexy can a library e-book be?’, from TeleRead ‘Bring the E-Books HomeNews & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics’, http://www.teleread.org/blog/2006/01/17/how-sexy-can-a-library-e-book-be/

  • Sabucco, V. (2003) ‘Guided fan fiction: Western “readings” of Japanese homosexual-themed texts’, in Chris Berry, Fran Martin and Audrey Yue (eds) Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, 70–86 (Durham: Duke University Press).

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Schiffrin, A. (2000) The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (London: Verso).

    Google Scholar 

  • Schindler, D. T. (2004) ‘Laurell K. Hamilton: Underworld seductress’, Publishers’ Weekly, September 20, 2004, 42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smejkalova, J. (2001) ‘Censors and their readers: Selling, silencing, and reading Czeh books’, Libraries & Culture, 36.1 (Wntr 2001): p.87(17), (6908 words).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, K. (2004) ‘Publishers and the public: Governmental support in Europe’, Javnost -The Public, 11(4): 5–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sova, D. (2006) Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds, revised edition (New York: Infobase Publishing/Facts on File).

    Google Scholar 

  • Stockman, D. (2004) ‘Free or fixed prices on books — Patterns of book pricing in Europe’, Javnost — The Public, 11(4): 49–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vaidhyanathan, S. (2004) The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Cambridge: Basic Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wisker, G. (1998) ‘If looks could kill: Contemporary women’s vampire fictions’, in L. Pearce and G. Wisker (eds) Fatal Attractions: Re-scripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film, 70–86 (London: Pluto Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, S. (2007) The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book (Sydney: UNSW Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Zavisca, J. (2005) ‘The status of cultural omnivorism: A case study of reading in Russia’, from Social Forces, 84.2 (December 2005): p. 1233(23).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Nicole Matthews
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

    Peter Bramham  & Stephen Wagg  & 

Copyright information

© 2011 Nicole Matthews

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Matthews, N. (2011). Noughties Reading. In: Bramham, P., Wagg, S. (eds) The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299979_12

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation