Integrating Reading Time into Family Life: AN ESSAY IN FIVE ACTS
Publication Name
Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History
Abstract
This experimental article proposes that reading—particularly reading aloud, in both family and academic contexts—takes time, but also creates space for a form of shared time. Using my own family as a case study (from my grandmother—who taught herself to read Shakespeare as a teenager in the 1930s in the scant free time she had as a domestic worker—to my daughter, who spends hours every night reading paperbacks in the bath), I suggest that time spent reading need not necessarily be seen as an optional extra, nor even as stolen time, but as integral to our lived (and shared) day-to-day. I attempt to enact this integration in the form of this article—for example, it is structured in five Acts, following Shakespeare’s plays; and variations of chapter titles from A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh are used to introduce each Act.
Open Access Status
This publication is not available as open access
Volume
15
First Page
33
Last Page
40