Reading Habits in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abigail Boucher is Lecturer in English Literature at Aston University, UK. She specialises in genre and popular fiction of the long nineteenth century, with interests in the body, class, and medicine and science in literature. Marcello Giovanelli is Reader in Literary Linguistics at Aston University, UK. His research is in the area of stylistics and specifically in cognitive and empirical approaches to reading literature within different contexts. Caroline Godfrey is Researcher in Applied Linguistics at Aston University, UK. Her work concentrates on the language used to conceptualise English education in the UK, with a particular focus on the use of metaphor. Chloe Harrison is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Aston University, UK. Her research explores cognitive stylistics, reader response studies and contemporary fiction. Robbie Love is Lecturer in English Language at Aston University, UK. He is a corpus linguist, specialising in contemporary spoken discourse, and advocates for the application of corpus approaches to address societal challenges.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Reading, Genre, and Crisis.- Chapter 3: Reading and Time.- Chapter 4: Reading as a Coping Strategy.- Chapter 5: Re-reading in the Pandemic.- Chapter 6: Lockdown Experiences of Social Reading. -Chapter 7: Conclusion.