“Geographies of Empathy” at SLSA 2022 Conference November 27, 2022November 27, 2022 jshanahan Leave a comment There’s been a lot of fascinating scholarship on affective reading and, more recently, on the outsized role of empathic reading and “bibliotherapy” in social media. Inspired by Sarah Brouillette’s recent essay in Post45 and e.g. Joseph Worthen’s on “Empathy Aptitude Reading”, last month John Shanahan presented work-in-progress about “One Book One Chicago” geography data (and subject of a forthcoming paper by John and Mihaela Stoica). The presentation at SLSA 2022 (Society for Literature Science and the Arts) at Purdue explores… Read more
What We Learned from Thousands of Goodreads Reviews February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 jshanahan Leave a comment This post is by student researchers Emma and Chris: If you’ve ever combed through Goodreads, you may have noticed the range of ratings and reviews on the site. While some books may receive thousands of comments, others only gather a hundred (or less). You might also wonder have much disparity there is in ratings for any single book. We wanted to know what Goodreads reviewers said about some of the “One Book One Chicago” books we’re studying as part of the Reading Chicago Reading project. Comments on Goodreads can, of course, come from anywhere in the world. But did Chicago’s choice of these books … Read more
“The Book is Just the Beginning,” Part 2 September 3, 2017September 3, 2017 jshanahan Leave a comment Mihaela writes: In the first segment of this two-part entry, we explored the variety of events offered by the Chicago Public Library at neighborhood branches during their One Book seasons. Over the years, the library has increased the number of events at physical branches. But CPL has also created innovative digital programs to encourage participation via Twitter chats, digital blog posts, and CHIRP Radio. This post is about such online programming. For the 2014-2015 season, on Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, OBOC launched chapter-by-chapter online “Reading Sprints.”… Read more