From Book Appeal to Reading Appeal: Redefining the Concept of Appeal in Readers’ Advisory

Abstract

Revising the concept of appeal currently accepted in the field of readers’ advisory, this article redefines appeal as the power to invoke interest in reading and to set off an action of reading, as opposed to the established definition of appeal as the elements and characteristics of books to which a reader can relate. This article suggests that reading appeal is a more appropriate term than book appeal or genre appeal. A critical analysis of the results of an original empirical study of avid immigrant readers allows for the conceptualization of reading appeal as a function of both book-related appeal, that is, appeal rooted in the features of books, and reader-driven appeal, that is, appeal associated with readers and their social milieus. Furthermore, the article interrogates the notion of the role of reading and links it to the appeal and process of reading through the Temporal-Dynamic Model of Reading.

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