Thinking about the structures that exist around the reading we do for participation in class, leisure, for the approval of others etc.. creates an endless cycle of considerations for how we perceive what we read, particularly when we consider the influence of the digital, manifested in online book communities, reviewing sites, and the new ways book marketing can access its readership. More and more I have begun to ask myself, how much stock the average reader puts into a review, blog post, or critical introduction they have read before they encountered the text itself? When I am reading an article online, how far do I stray from the original text I intended to read by the time I am done reading? Sometimes I’ve clicked the embedded links so many times my original research question has lost all meaning.
I am particularly interested in what Murray has to say about the impact of the digital on literary culture, particularly how that culture has not only moved online (Murray cites blogs and book review sites, likely Goodreads specifically), but has ‘come into its own’ in a way. In hindsight, many of the claims Murray makes about online literary culture are accurate not only to the literary culture of the 2010s but to the one which would continue to develop on TikTok, Instagram, and twitter/X following the pandemic and into the 2020s, deeply entwined with the commercial publishing industry.
Wright seems particularly concerned with the idea of a mediating factor between publisher and reader in the form of lists. Wright particularly cites certain literary prizes, presumably awarded by those with the proper authority to decide what is as well as more ‘democratic’ lists such as the BBC’s The Big Read, and celebrity lists such as Oprah’s Book Club, which are widely perceived as having the overall net good of promoting public engagement with the practice of reading yet infuse commercial marketing, branding into that practice on a deeper level.
