By reading three 21st century books am I trying to see how the female friendship is described in literature of our days. The books are Rebell med frusna fötter by Johanna Nilsson, Lutherska badet by Unni Drougge and I närheten av solen by Hanna Wallsten. They are all written by Swedish authors and taking place in Stockholm in the early years of 2000. I am doing a critical reading against the roles of ?heteronormativitet? as the word is described by Tiina Rosenberg and Fanny Ambjörnsson trying to see how the characters are following or breaking these roles.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to accomplish an understanding for childrens librarians purchases of juvenile books. Two main questions are to be answered: - Which considerations do childrens librarians do when buying juvenile books and which goals and motives are behind their purchases? - What do childrens librarians think that their knowledge and competence consists of and how is that knowledge useful when buying juvenile books? To answer the questions qualitative interviews with five childrens librarians have been carried out. The material has been analyzed through a theoretical construction consisting of theories about collection development, book selection and quality judgments. The conception tacit knowledge silent knowledge from Michael Polanyi has also been used for interpretation.

This Masters thesis aims to study the reading habits of readers of romantic fiction, especially focusing on gender issues. The main areas studied are the function of reading romances compared with reading other genres, and how the readers value romantic and general literature. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with seven readers of romances, five women and two men. The theoretical background is based on reader response theory and gender theory. Before I started interview the readers I asked them to read two romances; Sidney Sheldons - The best Laid Plans, and Rosamunde Pilchers - The End of Summer, which we later discussed during the interviews.

The aim of this study was to investigate the result of an effort to support reading development and the reading motivation. My approach was an intervention study during four weeks, where intensive reading in a group of three pupils in grade one took place. Individual conversations and group conversations were central methods in combination with different ways of processing the texts. Interviews were conducted with the class teacher and the participating children to see the difference in reading and motivation before and after the project. The result shows that an intensive period with reading fiction books with subsequent conversations and different processing of the text is a useful developing method for decoding, reading comprehension and reading motivation.

This Masters thesis is a study of the truck-driver profession and their use of libraries located in gas-stations and restaurants along the highways in Sweden. The reason for this interest is the positive trend that has occurred concerning men without any university education and their reading-habits, that is due to their increased interest in listening to audio books. This challenges the general opinion that this group is not particularly interested in reading literature. Questions posed in this study are: How do the truck-drivers relate to the activity of reading literature, what part does the road-libraries play, and how can the services that the road-libraries offer be improved according to the truck-drivers. The method used in the study is interviews made by telephone.

The topic of this bachelor thesis is the promotion of easy-to-read fiction for 10-12 year old children in public libraries. The number of easy-to-read fiction books is increasing on the book market. This can be expected to affect the public library. The hypotheses for the study are: 1) Public libraries expose easy-to-read fiction and use it in their reading promotion activities and, 2) The acquisition of easy-to-read books and the use of easy-to-read books in reading promotion activities have increased over the last five years. A self-completion questionnaire was distributed to 44 public libraries in Sweden.

This essay studied how six girls experienced their reading development during their college education in male-dominated profession programs. The issues assumed were how they experience their literature reading and literature education and what happened with their interest in reading. The theoretical frame included researchers Säljö, Rosenblatt, Gun Malmgren, Olin-Scheller, Ulfgaard and Molloy.The study showed that most of the girls felt their reading had worsened but not because of their male classmates but because of school. They had a lot of homework and participated in so many different school projects which would be completed that there was no time to reading for pleasure. The girls did not like the teachers? literate sample and did not like the methods used in learning literature.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the adult world is produced in the books of Martin Widmark about LasseMajas detektivbyrå from a gender perspective.I wanted to answer questions concerning the appearance, personal characteristics, occupations and activities, and the relationship between children and adults to do my analysis.I decided to make a qualitative content analysis to answer my questions.I used the gender theories that describe how stereotypes excel. I related these gender theories to the books that I have studied.I also used previous research on gender roles in other children's books to compare their results with mine.After reading, analyzing and comparing the books I have come to the conclusion that gender roles in books about LasseMajas detektivbyrå is very gender stereotyped..

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the adult world is produced in the books of Martin Widmark about LasseMajas detektivbyrå from a gender perspective.I wanted to answer questions concerning the appearance, personal characteristics, occupations and activities, and the relationship between children and adults to do my analysis.I decided to make a qualitative content analysis to answer my questions.I used the gender theories that describe how stereotypes excel. I related these gender theories to the books that I have studied.I also used previous research on gender roles in other children's books to compare their results with mine.After reading, analyzing and comparing the books I have come to the conclusion that gender roles in books about LasseMajas detektivbyrå is very gender stereotyped..

The purpose of my study has been to find out how mother tongue teachers working in preschools where a majority of the children have a mother tongue other than Swedish make use of fictional children?s books during the mother tongue support lessons. In order to determine this, I am asking the following questions:- What is the range of children's books in the children's mother tongue available at the preschool?- In what ways are the native language teachers encouraging literacy development through the usage of children's books?- How do native language teachers view the childrens? linguistic development as well as the enhancement of cultural identity through the usage of the books?These questions have formed the basis of the methodical approach, which is based on a qualitative research method. The data collection consists of three parts; the observation of mother tongue support, interviews with language teachers as well as with the nursery manager and lastly a survey of children's books in languages other than Swedish at the preschool.The essay has as its theoretical basis the socio-cultural view of learning and development.

In this Master's Thesis a rhetorical analysis is applied to reading suggestions in the database Boktips.net. Boktips.net utilize the Internet for readers advisory by offering public libraries in Sweden to use and participate to its contents. The aim is to examine how library staff writes about literature in Boktips.net. The empirical material is delimited to reading suggestions on fiction for adults. Areas in focus of the analysis are rhetorical context, disposition, style and components from the point of view of content: summary, evaluation on portrayal of characters and setting, narrative, language use, genre and themes, entertainment, insights and external information.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the phenomenon called bookcrossing. To fulfill this I have asked the following research questions: Why do people participate in bookcrossing?What functions do books have for bookcrossers? The method used is qualitative, semi structured interviews. Four active bookcrossers have been interviewed. These interviews revealed that bookcrossing as an activity in a medium sized town is very small.

In this thesis I investigate what librarians working with children do for six-year-olds at the libraries in order to stimulate them to read. I also investigate how children of this age read and what books are like for these beginners. The background for the thesis is that reading decreased a lot in ages three to eight during the 1980s and 1990s. My aim is to see what projects, methods and other strategies there are to get children to read. The method used is case study.

vuxnas läsning av skönlitteratur I became happier and wiser: young adults reading of fiction [123[upps-01.gif This Masters thesis explores young adults 18-26 years old, reading of fiction: their reading preferences, the meaning of reading and their access to literature. A study was made by way of a questionnaire, including 56 young adults, and seven qualitative interviews with two groups: one at a folk highschool and the other at a public library. The theories we have used to analyse the results are: theories of gender and youth, theories of literary genres, reader-response criticism, literature sociology and the theories of cultural sociology by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In the analysis the results are compared to other studies of reading habits. Results from this study show that the young adults read fiction from several genres among popular- and quality literature.

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to examine the importance of libraries for girls leisure time in secondary school. Focus has been on the use of the library as a leisure activity. Interviews were carried out with six girls of the ages 13 to 16. The conclusion of the study is that the library is of importance for the girls mostly through its books. Reading turned out to be an important leisure activity for the girls and the books provided by the library were of significance for their identity development.