Reviews
This is a book about why books matter. It is written in a way that offers a masterclass for researchers in constructing scholarly monographs that are accessible, quirky, different and defiant. To use an Australianism, this book 'issa bloody beaudy.' Buy it. Borrow it. Download it. Now. It is a book that we will remember where we were when we we first read it. This is a game-changer for popular cultural studies, media studies and the new humanities., For those who wonder why they read what they do, for writers who want to know how to cater to an audience, for book marketers who want to know how to reach consumers, for everybody wanting an up-to-date and insightful take on contemporary American culture--bring on this book., An extraordinary book about books. . . . This book is full of surprises, from a deft analysis of the true cultural significance of online reader reviews to a fresh look at how an explosion of literary reading has overtaken us from the US to the UK, via Canada, and back again, through the proliferation of book clubs, book superstores, e-retailers, literary festivals, film adaptations etc. Anyone who feels literary culture is threatened by the rise of the digital should read this book; our literary culture is on the cusp of a digital golden age., “In this lively, always insightful but never predictable book, Jim Collins claims that literary culture is alive and well today, but that to understand it we must also understand the variety of institutions and technologies that house and drive it, its storage and delivery systems, and its new forms of connoisseurship. He makes us think about what it means to love literature, and how a cultural activity comes to be enjoyed as popular culture.�- Linda Hutcheon , author of A Theory of Adaptation, "In this lively, always insightful but never predictable book, Jim Collins claims that literary culture is alive and well today, but that to understand it we must also understand the variety of institutions and technologies that house and drive it, its storage and delivery systems, and its new forms of connoisseurship. He makes us think about what it means to love literature, and how a cultural activity comes to be enjoyed as popular culture."- Linda Hutcheon , author of A Theory of Adaptation, " Bring on the Books for Everybody is a lively and entertaining assault on some widely held shibboleths about popular culture.... Engaging and provocative. It is a salutary to read a work that takes the ordinary reader seriously while engaging in literary criticism. The story ends with the author sitting in a branch of Barnes and Noble reminding us all that we live in the twenty-first century and what seem to us like the certainties of the nineteenth are long gone." Andrew HadField, Times Literary Supplement "Jim Collins' Bring on the Books for Everybody manages two difficult topics that have inhibited the field. First, there is a desperate need for books and articles that create a continuum between old and new media, analogue and digital. Second, teachers and students require research that investigates the concept of cultural value with rigour, discipline and energy.... This is not a monograph describing old and new media (again). It investigates how talent, taste, pleasure and leisure are building new reading cultures through innovative delivery systems as authors appear on television, in web chats and are followed on Twitter....Through all these changes, innovations and revisions, this is a book about why books matter. It is written in a way that offers a masterclass for researchers in constructing scholarly monographs that are accessible, quirky, different and defiant." - Tara Brabazon, Times Higher Education "In this lively, always insightful but never predictable book, Jim Collins claims that literary culture is alive and well today, but that to understand it we must also understand the variety of institutions and technologies that house and drive it, its storage and delivery systems, and its new forms of connoisseurship. He makes us think about what it means to love literature, and how a cultural activity comes to be enjoyed as popular culture."--Linda Hutcheon, author of A Theory of Adaptation "[A] lively study that moves from strip mall to television to the multiplex to virtual reading communities. . . ."--Nina C. Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education "[A] smart and funny look at this marriage of the literary and digital cultures--and an easy read. . . ."--Siobhan Neile Welch, Bookslut "[A] lively take on the way traditional literary culture has been transmuted into new and sometimes only dimly recognizable forms by the powerful forces of American popular culture. . . . Collins's savvy assessment of these recent developments is informative and entertaining and, in a way that's most welcome, accessible to anyone looking for a foothold as the tectonic plates of our cultural landscape shift."--Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness, "In this lively, always insightful but never predictable book, Jim Collins claims that literary culture is alive and well today, but that to understand it we must also understand the variety of institutions and technologies that house and drive it, its storage and delivery systems, and its new forms of connoisseurship. He makes us think about what it means to love literature, and how a cultural activity comes to be enjoyed as popular culture."-- Linda Hutcheon , author of A Theory of Adaptation, Bring on the Books for Everybod y is a lively and entertaining assault on some widely held shibboleths about popular culture. . . . It is salutary to read a work that takes the ordinary reader seriously while engaging in literary criticism.
