Bring on the Books for Everybody

Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on th...

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Main Author: Collins, Jim
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Duke University Press 2022
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Online Access:OCN: 653403566
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author Collins, Jim
author_browse Collins, Jim
author_facet Collins, Jim
author_sort Collins, Jim
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Fueled by Oprah’s Book Club, Miramax film adaptations, superstore bookshops, and new technologies such as the Kindle digital reader, literary fiction has been transformed into best-selling, high-concept entertainment. Collins highlights the infrastructural and cultural changes that have given rise to a flourishing reading public at a time when the future of the book has been called into question. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media.Collins explores how digital technologies and the convergence of literary, visual, and consumer cultures have changed what counts as a “literary experience” in phenomena ranging from lush film adaptations such as The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love to the customer communities at Amazon. Central to Collins’s analysis and, he argues, to contemporary literary culture, is the notion that refined taste is now easily acquired; it is just a matter of knowing where to access it and whose advice to trust. Using recent novels, he shows that the redefined literary landscape has affected not just how books are being read, but also what sort of novels are being written for these passionate readers. Collins connects literary bestsellers from The Jane Austen Book Club and Literacy and Longing in L.A. to Saturday and The Line of Beauty, highlighting their depictions of fictional worlds filled with avid readers and their equations of reading with cultivated consumer taste.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-782172025-07-30T09:12:02Z Bring on the Books for Everybody Collins, Jim Literary Criticism Books & Reading Performing Arts Film History & Criticism Social Science Popular Culture thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC1 Popular culture Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Fueled by Oprah’s Book Club, Miramax film adaptations, superstore bookshops, and new technologies such as the Kindle digital reader, literary fiction has been transformed into best-selling, high-concept entertainment. Collins highlights the infrastructural and cultural changes that have given rise to a flourishing reading public at a time when the future of the book has been called into question. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media.Collins explores how digital technologies and the convergence of literary, visual, and consumer cultures have changed what counts as a “literary experience” in phenomena ranging from lush film adaptations such as The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love to the customer communities at Amazon. Central to Collins’s analysis and, he argues, to contemporary literary culture, is the notion that refined taste is now easily acquired; it is just a matter of knowing where to access it and whose advice to trust. Using recent novels, he shows that the redefined literary landscape has affected not just how books are being read, but also what sort of novels are being written for these passionate readers. Collins connects literary bestsellers from The Jane Austen Book Club and Literacy and Longing in L.A. to Saturday and The Line of Beauty, highlighting their depictions of fictional worlds filled with avid readers and their equations of reading with cultivated consumer taste. 2022-02-12T04:00:45Z 2022-02-12T04:00:45Z 2022-02-11T05:31:01Z 2010 book OCN: 653403566 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52795 9780822391975 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/78217 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52795/1/external_content.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52795/1/external_content.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52795/1/external_content.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52795/1/external_content.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52795/1/external_content.pdf Duke University Press Duke University Press https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391975 https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391975 8b9381d6-252e-4bed-8478-ee620c861aac Knowledge Unlatched 9780822391975 Knowledge Unlatched (KU) KU Select 2022: HSS Backlist Books Duke University Press open access
spellingShingle Literary Criticism
Books & Reading
Performing Arts
Film
History & Criticism
Social Science
Popular Culture
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC1 Popular culture
Collins, Jim
Bring on the Books for Everybody
title Bring on the Books for Everybody
title_full Bring on the Books for Everybody
title_fullStr Bring on the Books for Everybody
title_full_unstemmed Bring on the Books for Everybody
title_short Bring on the Books for Everybody
title_sort bring on the books for everybody
topic Literary Criticism
Books & Reading
Performing Arts
Film
History & Criticism
Social Science
Popular Culture
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC1 Popular culture
topic_facet Literary Criticism
Books & Reading
Performing Arts
Film
History & Criticism
Social Science
Popular Culture
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC1 Popular culture
url OCN: 653403566
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