ABOUT THIS BOOK

Today we’re just as, if not more, likely to scroll, click, and tap the cold, shiny screen of a laptop, tablet, or smartphone as we are to turn the pages of a book. How has the advent of new technologies changed the way we read? Do our devices encourage quick and cursory reading? Is the experience of reading becoming “flatter” alongside the devices themselves? How have our conceptions changed of what reading is?

With Reading Today, Heta Pyrhönen and Janna Kantola have assembled contributions that respond to these questions and many more. The contributors unpack emerging strategies of reading. They consider, for example, how paying attention to our emotional reactions while reading can significantly affect how we experience the process. Other chapters consider the impacts of technology on reading through such topics as experimental literature, the contemporary encyclopedic novel, and the healing power of books.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Heta Pyrhönen is professor of comparative literature at the University of Helsinki and the author of several books, including Mayhem and Murder and Murder from an Academic Angle. Janna Kantola is a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Helsinki specializing in modern and postmodern poetry.

REVIEWS

"‘An interesting volume for its contributions on various forms of reading and, above all, for placing some of the most relevant works of Finnish culture in the focus of philological and technological interpretation that characterizes Comparative Literature and Digital Humanities’
Blog de l'Escola de Llibreria"

TABLE OF CONTENTS

"New perspectives on reading: an introduction
Heta Pyrhönen

Part I Reading challenges
1 Reading experimental literature: unreadability, discomfort
and reading strategies
Natalya Bekhta

2 Information and the illusion of totality: reading the
contemporary encyclopedic novel
Vesa Kyllönen

3 The brain in our hands: the materiality of
reading Neuromaani
Laura Piippo

4 Explorative exposure: media in and of
Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
Juha-Pekka Kilpiö

Part II New strategies of reading
5 New reading strategies in the twenty-first century:
transmedia storytelling via app in Marisha Pessl’s Night Film
Anna Weigel

6 New reading strategies in print and on digital platforms:
Stephanie Strickland’s V
Matti Kangaskoski

Part III Reading affectively
7 Rethinking reading through the novelistic discourses
of Don Quixote and Madame Bovary
Stefano Rossoni

8 ‘Emily equals childhood and youth and first love’: Finnish
readers and L. M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily books
Vappu Kannas

9 ‘The miraculous secret of a good book’: representations
of the reading experience in Dutch middlebrow criticism
Ryanne Keltjens

10 The healing power of books: The Novel Cure as a
culturally tailored literary experiment
Serena Cacchioli

Part IV Reading in context
11 Context in film adaptations
Marjo Vallittu

Notes
Works cited and additional reading
Index "