The materiality of reading and its affective implications in people’s everyday lives: Insights from the reading conversations

Numerous studies focus on media in everyday life, butalthough reading is also a media practice, it is rarely considered aspart of this agenda, and despite the fact it mostly happens at home,domestication theories largely bypass it, too. Reading as a mediapractice is usually acknowledged only sporadically, e.g. when it refersto reading magazines or following news on cell phone. Evendigitalisation, enabling us to read whenever and wherever, did notsecure reading a more central topic in media studies. On the otherhand, in reading studies, digitalization spurred new interest for thematerial specificities of reading behaviour, and this provides aframework also for my research interest. In this contribution I willfocus on the ways in which books play a role in people’s everydaypursuits and undertakings, not only through reading as such, but alsothrough their material presence. My research is based on individualsemi-structured interviews or so-called reading conversations withpeople who have voluntarily agreed to talk about their readingbehaviour. I was interested in reading habits and practices, with anaim to analyse reading as embedded in time and space andperformed through different kinds of rituals. In this paper I focus on the findings referring to affective materialities. Considerableattention is given to the methodology and the analysis of the researchprocess, and some reflection dedicated to the importance ofcomplementing media and reading studies.