Anders Ohlsson

• Lund University

Background Shared reading (SR) is a group reading concept consisting of weekly meetings led by a trained facilitator where literary fiction and poetry is read aloud and discussed. SR requires no previous knowledge or homework and has been tried out as a health intervention to different vulnerable populations. Objectives The present study undertook...

This article considers students’ and teachers’ perceptions of shared reading (SR) in promoting reading engagement. It provides a thematic analysis of focus groups with students and teachers at a Swedish upper-secondary school who participated in an intervention consisting of SR sessions. The findings are triangulated with a student pre-intervention...

This article deepens the understanding of characteristic features of Shared Reading (SR) that can shed light on health benefits of this literary practice suggested by previous research. We provide a detailed analysis of language, interaction, reading strategies and collaborative meaning-making in an online SR group in which participants read and di...

Reviews of recent publications in the field.

The ongoing celebritisation of society not only comprises ‘celebrity sectors’ such as entertainment and sports, but also literature. As in other cultural fields, the commodities to be sold – books – are marketed using the ‘personalities’ directly connected to them by authors appearing on television shows or being selected for feature articles. The...

Ever since it first appeared in 1975, confusion and anger have been recurring features in the reaction to Fatelessness, written by Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész. This is the case, even if Kertész’s novel, as Kornélia Koltai has stated, ‘abides by the “obligatory” contents of a book on Holocaust, on surviving Auschwitz. … Livi...

Media development has profoundly affected the literary public sphere. Authors as well as politicians may feel obliged to follow “the law of compulsory visibility” (John B. Thompson). All contemporary writers, be it bestselling authors or exclu-sive, high brow poets, must in one way or another reflect on their marketing and media strategies. Meeting...