Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 3

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On Getting Lost in a Good Book: Bibliomania and the Harry Potter and Twilight Series / Erin Hollis

Abstract: Beginning with the common assertion that both the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series have had a positive effect on the reading practices of children, teenagers and adults, this article examines Bibliomania in relation to the Harry Potter and Twilight series in order to interrogate the validity of such an argument. It is easy to find articles, blogs and Amazon.com book reviews that marvel at each of the series’ ability to foster a passion for reading in previously resistant readers, but such a statement erases distinctions between the effects each series has on readers and fails to examine what kind of reader each series encourages.

Key to this examination is a critical exploration of "Bibliomania," a term coined in the eighteenth century that encompasses both the obsessive need to collect books and the effects of becoming too caught up in reading. Arguments about Bibliomania mirror fears about the effects of contemporary media, indicating a fear of change. Yet, if these series are only creating a new sort of "bibliomania," what results is the same passive interaction that readers already have with such dreaded media as the television. However, the two series produce disparate sorts of reading experiences. While a first reading of any of the texts in the Harry Potter series may be bibliomanic in nature, the texts definitely have the potential to become more subtly nuanced upon rereading them, whereas the Twilight series merely supports reading for plot, and subsequent readings only reinforce such a bibliomanic haze.

<1> In 1841, a crowd of more than a thousand readers waited on the docks in New York City for the arrival of Master Humphrey’s Clock, a London periodical that contained the most recent installment of Charles Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop; these readers, eager to discover the fate of their favorite character, cried out, "Is Little Nell Dead?" (Flynn 9) The fervor with which this nineteenth-century crowd responded to Dickens’s text continues over a century and a half later in response to contemporary popular fiction, including the Harry Potter and Twilight series. Indeed, midnight release parties increased as did readers’ desires to discover the fortunes of the series’ popular characters. Such anxiety about beloved characters highlights a particular relationship between readers and popular fiction—bibliomania. This essay will examine the reception of both series through the lens of modern day "bibliomania," or "novel-reading disease/fever," (Littau 5) in order to examine the way readers are approaching each series. Because both Harry Potter and Twilight have been so popular, it is important to look beyond what people are reading in order to analyze how they are reading. In this essay, I will examine the sorts of readers that each series encourages by providing a close reading of Hermione from Harry Potter and Bella from Twilight in the context of specific readers’ reception of both series. Both series risk encouraging stereotypically lazy readers who passively consume texts, and using the lens of bibliomania to understand such approaches to reading will uncover how many readers are interacting with popular fiction. Looking at how readers approach these series will demonstrate not only how responses to both series are parts of a continuum of responses to popular fiction dating back to the eighteenth century, but also whether readers of these series merely respond with bibliomania or develop a more reciprocal, and thus more critical, relationship with the books.

Reading Novels and Bibliomania: A Brief Overview

<2> The concept "bibliomania" originally appeared in the mid-18th century in Western Europe as a response to the burgeoning form of the novel and the growing popularity of book collecting. (Littau 5) The term refers both to the madness of possessing and collecting books and to a "novel-reading disease/fever" that was potentially treacherous because it "gratifi(ed) the baser instincts by appealing less to the reader’s faculty for sense-making than his or her sensations, thus reducing or eliminating the reader’s capacity for action." (Littau 5) Both the obsessive collectingof books and the fanatical desire to read books reflected a fixated attitude towards books that, according to Karin Littau, many critics considered dangerous:

In the periodical press, but all in philosophical treatises and works of fiction, writers warned of too much print, too much writing, too much reading. Bibliomania had infected Western societies and become, as a French dictionary defines it in 1740: ‘une de maladies de ce siècle.’ (4)

This so-called "disease of the century" was the excessive obsession with print, whether through collecting or reading itself; as Littau argues, many physicians even treated the disease as a valid medical problem, complete with symptoms: "its medical symptoms range[d] from constipation, a flabby stomach and eye and brain disorders, to nerve complaints and mental disease" (5). Contemporary discussions of so-called "internet addiction" and whether psychologists would even consider it an "addiction" or categorize it as a "disorder" reflect concerns similar to eighteenth century discussions of bibliomania (Byun et al 203). Similarly to the Internet now, the form of the novel was relatively new in the eighteenth century (Mackay 23), and it became the particular focus of doctors and critics who worried about the mental and physical effects of obsessive reading (Littau 5). One noteworthy example is the reaction to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther. Goethe himself was even worried about reactions to his novel, saying that its effects on readers could be "highly dangerous" (qtd. in Littau 63). Responses to the novel included tearful readers who sympathized with the main character, admiring readers who wore Werther’s signature yellow waistcoat, and distraught readers who committed suicide in a sort of perverse solidarity with Werther. The novel was even banned in some cities because of worries about its ill effects on readers (Littau 67). The fervor with which many readers responded to novels in the 18th century can be productively linked to how readers currently interact with popular fiction, including the Harry Potter and Twilight series.

Bibliomania and Contemporary Media

<3> Because "bibliomania" can be associated with what Littau identifies as "a larger cultural malaise specifically associated with modernity: sensory overstimulation" (5), it is possible to view readers’ experiences with contemporary media, including popular fiction, television, film, and the internet through the lens of bibliomania. Responses to new kinds of media as potentially dangerous to readers/viewers are not a new development. Such arguments have persisted in Western society since Gutenberg "invented" moveable type and publishers began to regularly authorize books printed in the vernacular, rather than in Latin [1]. So, while early readers were usually the educated clergy and the wealthy aristocracy, the widespread individual reading of texts such as the Bible created a larger and more diverse group of readers. Since most of these new readers were reading the Bible in a family-oriented group setting, most people were reading for moral enrichment. As the various new genres of the novel, including the gothic novel, the romance novel, and the western, were introduced to the reading public, worries rose about the effects of that new form on these supposedly vulnerable readers. For example, the advent of the novel prompted reactions from social critics like Rolf Engelsing, who saw the downfall of "intensive" reading, which resulted in a move towards "extensive" reading (Darnton 27). Robert Darnton explains this shift and Engelsing’s terms:

Rolf Engelsing has argued that a "reading revolution" (Leserevolution) took place at the end of the eighteenth century. From the Middle Ages until sometime after 1750, according to Engelsing, men read "intensively." They had only a few books—the Bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two—and they read them over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness. By 1800 men were reading "extensively." They read all kinds of material...and read it only once, then raced on to the next item. (27)

Engelsing argued that readers pay less attention to content even as they read more variety. Such a shift demonstrates the enormous impact the advent of the novel in the 18th century had on reading practices.

<4> This turn towards extensive reading mimics similar shifts in contemporary Western culture. Critics such as Mark Bauerlein, Maggie Jackson, and Nicholas Carr worry about the current effects of the divided attentions of multitasking--many Westerners regularly watch a television program, read an article on a webpage, respond to an email and read a book on an iPad. In his book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, Bauerlein bemoans the decrease in reading in younger generations. He cites a report issued in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts "showing that adults read literature at significantly lower rates than adults had in previous decades, and that the biggest drop was in the 18- to 24-year old age group." (39) Noting what he called a "brazen disregard for books" in young people, Bauerlein claims that knowledge from conventional reading does not hold the same cultural capital for young people as knowledge of entertainment news learned from a blog posting or a friend’s Facebook postings. (40) Other authors that have worried about such dangers include Maggie Jackson in her book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming of the Dark Age. She argues that the increase in multitasking is "corroding the three pillars of our attention: focus (orienting), judgment (executive function), and awareness (alerting)" (215). The costs of such a loss "are steep: we begin to lose trust, depth, and connection in our relations and our thoughts." (215) Nicholas Carr echoes these growing concerns in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, examining how the Internet is changing "the very way [his] brain worked" and worrying about his "inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes" (16). Such concerns inspired him to explore the effects of the Internet on physical brain chemistry and anatomy, about which he argues that "the more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience the subtlest, most distinctively human forms of empathy, compassion, and other emotions" (221). Popular media have also entered the debate. A recent cover story in Newsweek that investigates information overload (Begley 28-33) addresses concerns about contemporary media and how they affect people’s relationships with activities such as reading, tasks at work, and interpersonal communication. Thus, as Littau argues, the reading culture in the eighteenth century "very much resembles our own" (19). Current responses to the potential effects of contemporary media mirror eighteenth century concerns about bibliomania.

<5> Given the current responses to contemporary media cited above, it seems as if almost any kind of "conventional" reading (i.e. reading a book silently in solitude, whether in the form of a conventionally printed book or in the form of an e-book on an iPad or Kindle ) is positive, which reveals a lack of knowledge about the history of reading and privileges form over any consideration of content. What matters in this argument, it seems, is not so much what readers learn or how a text affects them, but only that people are participating in the conventional act of reading. The Harry Potter and Twilight series have been the lightning rods of this line of reasoning. An Amazon.com discussion forum about the movie version of Twilight entitled "why this movie sucks" provides a good example of this phenomenon. The initial poster argues that she "does not understand the mania that surrounds these books and this film"; in response, one enthusiastic fan states, "I say anything that will get teenagers and parents to read together is a good thing. They say the same thing about Harry Potter and how many children out there will probably want to write their own story because of J.K. Rowling" (Amazon.com). Many newspaper and magazine articles have also credited the resurgence in reading to both series. An article in Education Weekly, a magazine for teachers, directly reflects the comment of the Amazon.com poster: "Say what you will about Twilight, I have not seen so many kids cart around 500 page tomes since Harry Potter" (blogs.edweek.org). And both U.S. News and World Report and The Christian Science Monitor have addressed the topic, the former exploring whether the Harry Potter series can "turn a generation of halfhearted readers into lifelong bookworms" (Hallett), while the latter mentions a 2006 study by Scholastic that "found that the Harry Potter books have had a positive impact not only on kids’ attitudes toward reading, but also on the quality of their schoolwork" (Garlick). Thus, while some claim that series like Harry Potter and Twilight have had a positive effect on young readers, urging them to turn away from what they see as potentially dangerous forms of media that may encourage passive engagement such as television, videogames, and the internet, they rarely explore what kinds of readers these series themselves construct. If these series are only creating a new sort of "bibliomania," what may result is the same sort of passive interaction that readers may already have with such dreaded media as television. Looking at both series through the lens of 18th-century "bibliomania," both in terms of "novel-reading fever" and the obsessive consumption of books, will uncover more specifically what sorts of reading practices each series encourages.

Passive vs. Active Reading Practices

<6> If one approaches a book as something to read quickly rather than as something to approach both critically and actively, one may engage with the text only passively. Because both series are aimed at children and young adults, such readers may have reading practices that are more malleable. Robin McCallum argues that "a substantial proportion of children’s fiction attempts to construct and impose a unified (monologic) worldview upon readers" (17). Young readers are thus urged to accept the worldview presented in the works they read without question, which can lead to passive reading practices (McCallum 17). However, other scholars, such as Anna Silver, disagree, arguing that "readers, including young readers, navigate and evaluate ideologies far more actively" (136), even when reading for mere "entertainment." If such active interaction is possible, then children must learn how to resist impositions on their own perspectives. This tension between children’s active and passive engagement with texts highlights the significance of the kinds of readers series like Twilight and Harry Potter encourage. If children are looking to texts to figure out how to negotiate "cultural meaning and value," books that encourage a bibliomanic reaction may encourage young readers to develop passive reading practices (Silver 136). If children only read books that reinforce a generic understanding of narrative, then they won’t be as encouraged to move beyond the passive comfort of the conventions of a genre to a more active engagement.

<7> Beyond concerns with how reading these series might affect children and young adults, one might argue that reading such books may only attract adult readers who merely wish to escape their daily lives by passively consuming series like Harry Potter and Twilight. Reading these series repeatedly may only reinforce a desire for texts that invite passive reception and will not challenge readers to create more active reading strategies. On the other hand, Janice Radway’s influential Reading the Romance questions whether critics should so easily dismiss popular literature like the romance novel as a manipulative genre whose usual readers fail to understand the underlying implications of what they are reading, arguing that "[b]ecause readers are presented in this theory as passive, purely receptive individuals who can only consume the meanings embodied within cultural texts, they are understood to be powerless in the face of ideology" (6). She further argues that critics need to reexamine the confining definition of "escapism" as a "term of disparagement [used] to refer to an activity that the evaluator believes has no merit in and of itself" (89). While Radway is discussing a specific genre and group of readers, her arguments can provide a lens through which to read other popular genres. Radway pushes back against the underlying assumptions of "bibliomania" by urging a deeper understanding of reading practices and how everyday readers think about reading.

<8> However, even acknowledging Radway’s point, there are certainly texts that encourage readers only to get absorbed into the story and to lose their own agency as they fall into the text. Indeed, Michel De Certeau, taking his inspiration from Roland Barthes, outlines numerous ways that readers may approach texts: "the one that stops at the pleasure afforded by words, the one that rushes on to the end and ‘faints with expectation,’ and the one that cultivates the desire to write" (De Certeau 161). Keeping in mind these different levels of engagement and Radway’s problematizing of "escapism" and thus of "bibliomania," the manner in which an author constructs a text can encourage different types of reading. Some texts encourage a "rush on to the end" while others inspire readers to become active by writing themselves into the text or by creating their own kinds of participation, and some texts do both depending on how readers approach the text. The sharp division that many have delineated between escapist entertainment and intellectual engagement, between popular fiction and literature, is more complex than it at first appears. Because the two are not mutually exclusive, looking at how an author constructs a text and how readers are responding to that text helps to reveal what kinds of reading practices authors are encouraging.

Release Night Bibliomania

<9> Readers of all ages demonstrated an increasing eagerness with the release of each new Harry Potter novel. As readers grew to love the characters, they rushed to buy the book and read it on the night of its release to discover their fate. These experiences are often reflected in the posts on fan sites for the series. On The Leaky Cauldron, for example, many fans commented on their repeated rereading of the series, one saying that she was "slightly depressed when [she] finished reading DH [Deathly Hallows], but decided to reread the series" (Leakycauldron.com). Another discusses the circular reading pattern she has established with the series: When you literally can't stop reading Harry Potter, because every time you read the Deathly Hallows you just have to read the Philosopher's Stone again to compare. And of course you can't stop there and end up reading the whole series again and then just go round and round in a perpetual Harry Potter cycle. (Leakycauldron.com) In 2003, Dr. Howard J. Bennett even wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine describing the symptoms of what he called "Hogwarts headaches":

During the past several months, I have evaluated three children between 8 and 10 years of age who presented with a two-to-three-day history of generalized headaches. . . . On further questioning, it was determined that each child had spent many hours reading J.K. Rowling’s latest book in the Harry Potter series. Two patients read the book lying prone and the third propped the book on her legs and rested her head on a pillow. The presumed diagnosis for each child was a tension headache brought on by the effort required to plow through an 870-page book. The obvious care for this malady—that is, taking a break from reading—was rejected by two of the patients, who preferred acetaminophen instead. . . . If this escalation continues as Rowling concludes the saga, there may be an epidemic of Hogwarts headaches in the years to come. (1779) While Bennett’s letter is facetious, it reflects many of the concerns about bibliomania expressed by critics two centuries before; the description in the letter of the children reading in bed even parallels previous portraits of female readers.

<10> Many readers of the Harry Potter series seem to get similarly lost in the books, experiencing a sort of modern-day reading "sickness" and even, though humorously, demonstrating symptoms of that "sickness." They are willing to risk "Hogwarts headaches." But the danger immediately following the release of a book in the series is that they encourage readers to focus only on the plot and don’t urge readers to interact critically with the text. And even if readers later engage with the texts on a more active basis through the creation of fan fiction or participation on discussion boards, the first night’s reading is an intensely solitary event focused entirely on a text. It runs the risk of enabling a modern day bibliomania via readers that approach these texts as a plot to consume rather than as a multivalent and ambivalent web of characters, plot, social commentary and style that requires a mutual exchange. The hoopla built up around the release night events for the Harry Potter series encourages readers to read quickly, in part so that they can lay claim to having had the initial experience without any mediation.

<11> Reader response to the Twilight series seems to mirror much of the initial reaction that many had to the Harry Potter series, especially as it gained popularity with each book’s release. Trading on the popularity of the Harry Potter series, Twilight midnight release parties were staged for the releases of later books in the series, and fans lined up to purchase each book and read it immediately. Fans’ descriptions of their experience of reading the series echo the symptoms of bibliomania I discussed earlier. On the online magazine Salon, Laura Miller discusses the fan site "Twilight Moms" where fans "describe the effects of Meyer’s books using words such as ‘obsession’ and ‘addiction.’ Chores, husbands, and children go neglected, and the hours that aren’t spent reading and rereading the three novels are squandered on forums and fan fiction" (Miller). Miller gives examples of a few "twimoms’" responses:

Twilight makes me feel like there may be a world where a perfect man does exist, where love can overcome anything, where men will fight for the women they love no matter what, where the underdog strange girl in high school with an amazing heart can snag the best guy in school, and where we can live forever with the person we love. (Miller)

Although this reader is in thrall of the experience, another reader acknowledges the potentially negative effects of her involvement with the series: "I have no desires to be part of the real world right now . . . Nothing I was doing before holds any interest to me. I do what I have to do, what I need to get by, and that’s it. Someone please tell me it will ease up, even if just a little? My entire world is consumed and in a tailspin" (Miller). In an article on the Twilight series in Studies in the Novel, Anna Silver cites another fan’s response:

One poster on Facebook writes, in the simultaneously comical and poignant lingo of instant messaging, that ‘i loved it because every word that was written made me feel like im in another world a fantasy where love is the most powerful thing and nothing can eva break u up it made me feel like there is no1 what could stop them from loving each other no matter Wat happens they will always b together [sic].’ (135)

These fans exhibit many of the symptoms of bibliomania, including a loss of interest in their daily lives and responsibilities. Such a response indicates the dangers of bibliomanic interaction with a text that occurs especially during release night readings, which, as Lev Grossman argues, may "create a compulsion in the reader that is not unvampiric." (50) Yet, readers who reread the series may go beyond such a bibliomanic response as they read the text more closely during subsequent re-readings. Looking more specifically at two fan communities and their sustained response to each of the series will better demonstrate the diverse response each series inspires and how readers of the series either respond with a perpetual bibliomania or more creatively, by rewriting the series that they love.

Cullenism vs. Wizard Rock: Two Cases of Fan Responses

<12> There have been numerous fan activities in response to both series, but the two groups that I examine here, Cullenism and Wizard Rock, both claim a desire to go beyond simple reading of the series to a more participatory and active response. The creator of Cullenism describes it as "a group of people who have come together to appreciate the ideals represented by the Twilight series. We are not a religion." ("Twifans") So-called Cullenites, who claim to "value the themes that the story represents" above "how hot Edward is," meet regularly on the twifans.com website for "Twichurch" ("Twifans"). On first glance, Cullenism does at first appear to be urging a more critical reading of the series beyond a bibliomanic experience. However, a closer look at the Cullenites indicates that while they want to discuss the underlying ideals of the series, they only end up reinforcing the typical response—"Edward is hot"— to which they were initially objecting. Such responses are most prevalent in the weekly meetings of "Twichurch," in which a moderator asks a question pertaining to the series and participants post their comments. Most of the Twichurch forums fail to focus on Cullenism’s stated purpose of discussing the values inherent in the series. Indeed, only one of the Twichurch forums addresses the question, asking participants, "What are these [ideals], exactly? I can name a few, but all that I can name are either totally cliché and were represented by numerous other stories and/or life lessons, OR can only pertain to someone who is a village-saving werewolf/vampire." ("Twifans") That one of the moderators for the group cannot think of any ideals beyond clichéd ideas indicates how attempting to read more deeply into the series doesn’t really work. Even when readers attempt to participate in a mutual exchange with the series, they fail because the series doesn’t allow readers to engage in that manner. In contrast, Wizard Rock, a music movement in response to the Harry Potter series, demonstrates how readers of the series can move beyond a bibliomanic engagement to a more active participation.

<13> Wizard Rock is a more generative and thoughtful response to the Harry Potter series than Cullenism is to the Twilight series. The documentary The Wizard Rockumentary follows several Wizard Rock bands immediately preceding the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Interviews with many of their creators indicate not only that they have gone beyond a purely bibliomanic response to the text, but that they are creating something new as a result of their interaction with the text. For example, one of the most famous bands, Harry and the Potters, takes Harry himself as inspiration and writes original songs about Harry’s experiences at Hogwarts. The Wizard Rock movement also moves beyond creating music in response to the series by establishing its own charitable mission. Members became a sort of community, and collectively decided that most of the money that they make from selling CDs and merchandise would be donated to charity. The cause they most support is literacy. Harry and the Potters often make references to how they would write "start your own band about books" on CDs as they were selling them, encouraging others not only to create a band, but also to read (Wizard Rockumentary). Many of the Wizard Rock bands also share a common slogan, "fight evil, read books," that indicates their dedication to literacy and their belief that reading may help people to understand how better to treat one another (Wizard Rockumentary). Thus, unlike Cullenism, whose stated, yet failed goal is to assert the values underlying the Twilight series, Wizard Rock not only reflects such values, but also acts on them, encouraging a creative and charitable response that moves beyond simple bibliomania.

<14> The Twilight series, then, provokes the same sort of bibliomania as a release night reading of a book in the Harry Potter series. While the Harry Potter series rewards multiple readings, subsequent readings of the Twilight series seem merely to recreate the bibliomanic release night moment. Thus, even though the critics I cited earlier at first assume that the popularity of both series is positive because they act as a gateway to more reading, a closer look at the kind of reader each series attracts indicates that the Twilight series only gives readers a bibliomanic reading experience, whereas the Harry Potter series only encourages bibliomania during a release night reading. Focusing on two of the main characters from each series, Hermione and Bella, will demonstrate how character construction may encourage such disparate responses.

Bella vs. Hermione: Two Models for the Reader

<15> In contrast, when readers are first introduced to Hermione, Rowling describes her as having "a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth" (105). Hermione immediately challenges Ron in his attempts to cast a spell to turn his rat yellow, and quickly informs both Ron and Harry that she has "learned all of our course books by heart, of course" (106). Readers are not encouraged to identify with her as a character and are discouraged from over-identifying with her as they might with Bella. Ron and Harry’s bewilderment and even dislike creates a sort of distance between Hermione and the reader as readers are encouraged to think about Hermione’s character and her imperfections, which urges a more discerning sort of engagement. Instead of placing themselves into the text, like they do with Bella, readers are at once drawn to the text and discouraged from over-identifying with bossy, know-it-all Hermione. This distinction helps readers develop their own unique responses, rather than encouraging a thoughtless, if empathetic, connection.

<16> In contrast, when readers are first introduced to Hermione, Rowling describes her as having "a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth" (105). Hermione immediately challenges Ron in his attempts to cast a spell to turn his rat yellow, and quickly informs both Ron and Harry that she has "learned all of our course books by heart, of course" (106). Readers are not encouraged to identify with her as a character and are discouraged from over-identifying with her as they might with Bella. Ron and Harry’s bewilderment and even dislike creates a sort of distance between Hermione and the reader as readers are encouraged to think about Hermione’s character and her imperfections, which urges a more discerning sort of engagement. Instead of placing themselves into the text, like they do with Bella, readers are at once drawn to the text and discouraged from over-identifying with bossy, know-it-all Hermione. This distinction helps readers develop their own unique responses, rather than encouraging a thoughtless, if empathetic, connection.

<17> Within the series, Bella and Hermione’s reading practices act as models for the reader of how best to approach the practice of reading. Early in Twilight, Meyer makes it clear that Bella reads a great deal and that she is better read than most of her human classmates, but her attitude towards reading demonstrates a lack of attentive engagement. On her first day at school in her English class, she dismisses the reading because she had already done it, indicating a lack of intellectual response to the work that she has read and a lack of excitement about literature in general. The books she does read repeatedly all center around romance, including the works of Jane Austen, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and, most significantly, Wuthering Heights. Bella repeatedly reads Wuthering Heights throughout the series, and her well-worn copy indicates her frequent reading of the novel even before the events of series. In Eclipse, Edward, seeing Bella reading the novel once again, comments on her obsession: "The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others’ lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story" (29). After he asks her "why do you read it over and over again?," she responds "I think it’s something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart—not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death in the end" (29). Edward continues his objection, arguing that "I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality," to which Bella responds, "Their love is their only redeeming quality" (29). It is difficult to believe that this interaction is not intended ironically, but, in the text, it is presented with no ironic subtext. That Bella and Edward conduct this earnest conversation about Wuthering Heights highlights their lack of personality beyond the love they have for one another, but it also emphasizes Bella’s naïveté about reading in general. She reads a book repeatedly until the binding of the book is broken, with characters that (she argues) have only the redeeming quality of unhealthy and obsessive love. While this is certainly an available interpretation of Bronte’s novel, it does ignore other issues raised in the novel and represents a sort of bibliomanic reading on Bella’s part. Bella wants to understand the novel only as an example for her own love life, rather than engaging in any deeper reading of the depiction of love or the interaction between characters in the novel. Bella seems to take the book as a model for how to love properly; Edward, on the other hand, provides a warning to both Bella and the reader, urging her to look at the text more closely. Bella, like any bibliomaniac, ignores this warning. If Bella represents the blank slate upon which readers write themselves and through which they enter into the text, readers of the series, in turn, are encouraged to ignore disturbing aspects of the series in deference to the depiction of Edward and Bella’s love. The contrast between Edward and Bella’s responses to Wuthering Heights highlights the distinction between different sorts of reading practices. Bella dismisses Edward’s criticisms of the novel because she enjoys the love that she sees depicted in the novel and doesn’t want to admit that it might be flawed. Thus, Bella’s reading practices tell readers not to look to closely at a text.

<18> In contrast, Hermione’s reading practices demonstrate how to approach texts in an attentive and nuanced manner. Throughout the series, Hermione is constantly reading—she enthusiastically completes her assignments for school even before it begins and does extra reading to learn about wizardry. Most notably, she reads Hogwarts: A History, and the knowledge she obtains comes in handy several times throughout the series, including her repeated reminders to Harry and Ron that no one can apparate (teleport) into the school. But Hermione doesn’t just excel at reading for school. As Mimi Gladstein argues, "Hermione’s good study habits and subsequent strength of mind are a crucial part of her character. She excels at school throughout the series and her relentless reading often puts her in position to provide key pieces of information" (52). Throughout the series, whether it is Hermione criticizing the Daily Prophet, the wizarding world’s main newspaper, or translating runes in order to discover the secrets of the deathly hallows, readers are urged to adopt her reading practices, encouraging them not to accept anything at face value and to challenge each text. Hermione acts as a model for Rowling’s readers to move beyond a bibliomanic engagement to a more critical interaction with the series.

<19> In her preface to Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, author Jeanette Winterson troubles current reading practices:

For us, books have turned into fast food, to be consumed in the gaps between one bout of relentless living and the next. Airports, subways, maybe half an hour at bedtime, maybe something with the office sandwich, isn’t really ideal. At least at the cinema, or at the theater, or at a concert, or even in a gallery, some real time has to be set aside. Books have been squeezed in, which goes a long way towards explaining why our appetite for literature is waning, and our allergic reaction to anything demanding is on the rise. (x)

The lack of desire to read anything demanding, or to read anything a demanding way, troubles Winterson and highlights concerns with approaches to reading popular fiction. Because people are only reading when they have time, squeezing in books between other activities, it is easy to understand the excitement that greeted both the Harry Potter and Twilight series. Yet, the initial bibliomanic response that many fans experienced makes evident the importance of a more subtle response to how readers are approaching each series. Part of the appeal of popular fiction is the bibilomanic experience—it’s fun to feel so excited about a text that one can’t put it down. However, examining subsequent responses to such texts demonstrates a lack of growth in the case of the Twilight series and a critical response to the series in the case of the Harry Potter series. Such sustained and disparate responses indicate how each series encourages different sorts of reading practices, demonstrating that although most popular fiction may initially cause bibliomania, some works engender a different response during subsequent readings, encouraging readers to embrace what they love with a more critical lens. Over the years, bibliomania has been a persistent response to popular fiction, only some of which has stood the test of time and remains popular even as it has entered the canon. The canonical fates of the Harry Potter and Twilight series are yet to be seen, but, given the different responses to each series, it seems one of these series may be merely a fad while the other may stand the test of time.

Notes

[1] Moveable type was commonly used outside of Europe for some when Gutenberg "invented" it; as Kai-Wing Chow argues, "movable-type printing was invented in China in the eleventh century" (187).

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