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61 books match the query 'Readers' and 3 start with b

cover of Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

Book Was There

Reading in Electronic Times

Andrew Piper

University of Chicago Press, 2012

Andrew Piper grew up liking books and loving computers. While occasionally burying his nose in books, he was going to computer camp, programming his Radio Shack TRS-80, and playing Pong. His eventual love of reading made him a historian of the book and a connoisseur of print, but as a card-carrying member of the first digital generation—and the father of two digital natives—he understands that we live in electronic times. Book Was There is Piper’s surprising and always entertaining essay on reading in an e-reader world.
 
Much ink has been spilled lamenting or championing the decline of printed books, but Piper shows that the rich history of reading itself offers unexpected clues to what lies in store for books, print or digital. From medieval manuscript books to today’s playable media and interactive urban fictions, Piper explores the manifold ways that physical media have shaped how we read, while also observing his own children as they face the struggles and triumphs of learning to read. In doing so, he uncovers the intimate connections we develop with our reading materials—how we hold them, look at them, share them, play with them, and even where we read them—and shows how reading is interwoven with our experiences in life. Piper reveals that reading’s many identities, past and present, on page and on screen, are the key to helping us understand the kind of reading we care about and how new technologies will—and will not—change old habits.
 
Contending that our experience of reading belies naive generalizations about the future of books, Book Was There is an elegantly argued and thoroughly up-to-date tribute to the endurance of books in our ever-evolving digital world.
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cover of Books and Readers in the Premodern World: Essays in Honor of Harry Gamble

Books and Readers in the Premodern World

Essays in Honor of Harry Gamble

Karl Shuve

SBL Press, 2018

A book about the role of books in shaping the ancient religious landscape

This collection of essays by leading scholars from a variety of academic disciplines explores the ongoing relevance of Harry Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church (1995) for the study of premodern book cultures. Contributors expand the conversation of book culture to examine the role the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an played in shaping the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions in the ancient and medieval world. By considering books as material objects rather than as repositories for stories and texts, the essays examine how new technologies, new materials, and new cultural encounters contributed to these holy books spreading throughout territories, becoming authoritative, and profoundly shaping three global religions.

Features:

  • Comparative analysis of book culture in Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contexts
  • Art-historical, papyrological, philological, and historical modes of analysis
  • Essays that demonstrate the vibrant, ongoing legacy of Gamble’s seminal work
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cover of Books, Readers and Libraries in Fiction

Books, Readers and Libraries in Fiction

Edited by Karen Attar and Andrew Nash

University of London Press, 2024

A chronological account of the depiction of books, libraries, and reading in fiction from the medieval period to the present.

Books and libraries appear in fiction from the earliest times onwards, in works for all age groups, in canonical literature, and in books that form part of popular culture. Fiction enables writers to teach readers how to read, but it can also portray subversive acts of reading that engage with contemporary cultural anxieties or moral debates. The reading material of fictional personae is part of their characterization; we are often reading readers.

Drawing on approaches from literary studies, book history, library history, and theories and histories of reading, Books, Readers and Libraries in Fiction examines what fictional representations of reading tell us about changing cultural attitudes to different reading practices, and the use (and abuse) of books beyond actual reading, both in the context of specific works and about the reception of books more widely. Through detailed case studies from primarily British fiction that address common themes such as gender, genre, and the relation between reading and writing itself, this collection catalogs the ways in which authors of fiction mediate and interpret books, libraries, and the act of reading to their own readers.
 
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