Readers’ itineraries. A critical note on recent studies on the sociology of reading
From the 1980s, research on reading made an attempt to deepen the knowledge on how people read. This research wanted to redefine the activity of reading in terms of genesis and dynamics through the analysis of readers’ itineraries. The description of what readers are, the maintaining or the modification of their interests during the different stages of their school or professional life or of their existence, the identification of the books they have read, the way they read, makes it possible to identify precisely their different paths. Finally, this research will allow there to be a renewal of the work done on the way people read and to suggest more detailed analysis of the different ways of reading similar books and to study the different ways of interpreting the same book.