Page - 222 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 the group.12These classmateswere fuelled by the novelty of talking to reading researchers andby thewidest variety of snacks andbeverages thatwehad ever provided– includingcheeseandfreshfruitandthebestcookieswecouldfindon oneofourmany trips to the local supermarket.Wewere able to elicit opinions notonlyabout theOneBook,OneCommunityprogrammeinHuntsville,which theyhadheardofbuthadnotparticipatedin,butalsotheirdivergentviewsabout the suitabilityof the selectedbook,ToKillAMockingbird,whichmanyof them hadread.Thestudents’familiaritywitheachothermeantthattheywereprepared to offer up thoughtful—and sometimes contradictory—reflections on racism andmasculinitywithinthenovel.Their insightsextendedtotheircontemporary daily experiencesof gender, class andrace innorthernAlabama. Such critical discussions about the social and cultural relations structuring peoples’everydayexperience in theplaceswhere they livedbecamea featureof ourmost successful andconversational focusgroups. In these, suchasour final focus group in Liverpool UK, the talk about reading interests, opinions about organized reading events, and commentary about the book choices forMREs, flowed between participants with minimal direction from the two of us. The matchbetween themethod andour focus on reading as a social process dove- tailedneatlyat thesetimes:wecouldhearandobservehowparticipantswereco- constructingmeaning, figuringout throughtheirback-and-forthdialoguewhat anMREmeantfortheircityorcommunity.13Severalparticipantswerealsobook clubmembers andwere familiarwith talkingabout their readingpractices. This levelof social confidenceandwillingness to thinkaloudabout thevalue of reading programmes and their own identities as readers was not shared by participants across all our focus groups. On other occasions, we had to work muchhardertoestablishafriendlyatmosphereusingjokesandanecdotestoput peopleatease,andusingouroutsiderstatusasforeignnationalstoaskaboutthe locality before moving on to questions about reading andMREs. As reading researcherGitte Balling comments, “Even readerswith ahighdegree of reflex- ivityexpressdifficultieswithputting their readingexperiences intowords.”14 In personand in transcripts, high levels of hesitation, longpauses and repetitions underline how awkward it can be for a reader to articulate in words and in company aspects of their reading lives thatmay have been experienced as in- teriorizedacts (readingabooksilently, forexample),orasunspokensensations (the somaticaspectsofbookreadingor thecognitivepleasuresof talkingabout readingwithothers). 12 Ibid., p. 42. 13 Fuller/Procter2009,p. 34ff. 14 Balling2016,p. 49. DanielleFuller222 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0