Whoever decides to read a specific book has already undergone a part of the process of reception: the decision to read this book before all other books. Most of the time before deciding which book to read a communication process precedes. This can be a talk with friends, the prior engagement of book reviews or reading tips from one’s bookseller of trust. It is as well part of the complex “literary follow-up communication” as enthusiastic or angry comments after reading, the semi-anonymous exchange on social reading platforms on the internet, professional literary criticism on TV or in newspapers. Literary follow-up communication is based on readers whose book readings are so important that they talk about them – in private and public. In our project “Negotiating Literary Meaning” we research how this communication about literature in reading groups – on- and offline – works. This FWF-project can be found at the institute of German studies at the University of Klagenfurt.
