To read or not to read seems to be the great question for literary studies of our time. More specifically, in a world of abundant literary production, how can we decide what to read and how to read it? Three recent books by Amy Hungerford, Lee Clark Mitchell, and Nicholas Thoburn have, in their own ways, turned to this problem. Certainly, these are not the only titles to pursue this question of reading in the digital age. Other works on this theme from just within the past couple of years include David Letzler’s excellent The Cruft of Fiction (2017); Zara Dinnen’s astute The Digital Banal (2018); a host of fascinating work in the digital/distant reading field, including Andrew Piper’s Enumerations (2018) and Ted Underwood’s Distant Horizons (2019); and surely many others. Yet the triad of titles under review showcases the distinctively different approaches that are being adopted in the face...

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