The Affective Materiality of Books in Everyday Life: Findings from Reading Conversations

The article examines the various roles books play in everyday life, which extend bey­ond reading to include their material presence and so-called ‘non-reading’ uses. It is based on findings from individual semi-structured interviews, or ‘reading conversati­ons‘, with people willing to discuss their reading habits, how their reading is situated in time and space, and how it is enacted through different rituals. The article primarily focuses on findings related to the affective materiality of books, specifically how bo­oks as objects evoke emotions, bodily responses, and memories, and on reading as a bodily need for ritual. It also addresses methodology and the analysis of the research process, as well as different conceptualisations of book-related behaviour, particularly within the context of anthropological studies. Although media studies often address everyday life in relation to media uses and practices, reading – despite belonging to this domain – is rarely examined in this context. Even digitalisation, which allows us to read anywhere and at any time, has not given reading a more prominent place within media studies. Media studies tend to approach contemporary forms of reading associated with screen-based digital devices more as part of new forms of networked existence and communication than as reading itself. However, digitalisation has also renewed scholarly interest in the material specificities of reading behaviour and the objecthood of the book, which informs our own research curiosity. The article highli­ghts often overlooked relationships with books and demonstrates that these relation­ships also have their own effects.