Deftly melding ethnography, cultural history, literary criticism,
and autobiographical reflection,
A Feeling for Books is at
once an engaging study of the Book-of-the-Month Club's influential
role as a cultural institution and a profoundly personal meditation
about the experience of reading. Janice Radway traces the history
of the famous mail-order book club from its controversial founding
in 1926 through its evolution into an enterprise uniquely
successful in blending commerce and culture. Framing her historical
narrative with writing of a more personal sort, Radway reflects on
the contemporary role of the Book-of-the-Month Club in American
cultural history and in her own life. Her detailed account of the
standards and practices employed by the club's in-house editors is
also an absorbing story of her interactions with those editors.
Examining her experiences as a fourteen-year-old reader of the
club's selections and, later, as a professor of literature, she
offers a series of rigorously analytical yet deeply personal
readings of such beloved novels as
Marjorie Morningstar and
To Kill a Mockingbird. Rich and rewarding, this book will
captivate and delight anyone who is interested in the history of
books and in the personal and transformative experience of
reading.