How can we understand the practices of everyday readers in the twenty-first century? In this paper, I present a dynamic theoretical model of contemporary reading based on qualitative research with readers, in order to drive forward debates about the significance of recreational reading. I argue that reading in the twenty-first century has three key dimensions: aesthetic conduct, moral conduct, and self-care. Through practices such as Goodreads reviewing, book club discussions and reading for mindfulness, readers make aesthetic judgements, test their moral beliefs, and nurture their own sense of self. Readers move deftly across online spaces and cherish their time with print and paper; they intertwine private and social behaviours; and they both reinforce and oppose the structures of capitalism through their interactions with the publishing industry and the new technology giants, especially Amazon.

Beth Driscoll is Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), co-author with Claire Squires of Publishing Bestsellers: Buzz and the Frankfurt Book Fair (Cambridge UP, 2020) and co-author with Kim Wilkins and Lisa Fletcher of Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First Century Book Culture (UMass Press, 2022). Her current research includes work on post-digital literary culture, self-publishing practices in regional Australia, and reading.

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