Salman Rushdie is perhaps one of the most recognizable global literary writers. This emerged in the early 1980s when his work was seen as the quintessential exponent of the Indian novel in English. Distinctive marketing campaigns by publishers, as well as speculation about his advances and publishing deals, have further fuelled the success of the Rushdie brand. This chapter considers issues of reception that relate to Rushdie’s position in the literary marketplace and combines a review of some of the available sales figures with readers’ comments about Rushdie’s novels on online book reviewing sites. It addresses Rushdie’s position in the context of the consolidation of the Anglo-American publishing world through a series of mergers in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and the significant impact this has had on the way in which literary works are disseminated. It considers what readers’ reviews of his novels and the existence of a critical apparatus, including annotations and study guides, reveal about the classification of Rushdie’s fiction and the constitution of his audience, and it reviews concepts of reading, not reading, and partial reading with a view to the Rushdie affair.

After an introductory excursus on the concept of the inns as early modern England’s third university, this chapter outlines the form of legal instruction which they provided by means of oral ‘learning exercises’, notably case-putting in moots and other exercises involving the argument of hypothetical cases in law, and ‘readings’ or lectures at both the inns of court and chancery.

The second section (‘The State of the Learning Exercises to 1640’) considers the supposed decline in the performance of exercises. It argues that even though they may have been rendered largely obsolete by the advent of the printed law-book, there is little to suggest that they were not generally performed in a conscientious and regular fashion before the outbreak of the civil war. But it was one thing to preserve the system as a going concern, quite another to revive it after the disruptions of the 1640s and ‘50s.

This chapter explores ways in which interpreting literature might inform biblical interpretation through the metaphors used to describe the relationship between the two and reading in general.

Chapter 2: Building Blocks of Fluency and Comprehension. This chapter describes the many component skills and knowledge resources that contribute to reading fluency and reading comprehension. Key component skills addressed include word recognition, orthographic processing, letter-sound correspondences, sight word reading, morphological processing, phonological processing, spelling knowledge and orthographic mapping, syntactic processing, semantic processing, semantic proposition formation, working memory (central executive, phonological loop, episodic buffer), long-term memory, and cognitive executive functions. Other concepts introduced along with component skills include the self-teaching hypothesis, statistical learning, the alphabetic principle, implicit learning, connectionism, lexical access, automaticity, the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, spreading activation, priming effects, word-to-text integration, chunking, meta-linguistic awareness, good-enough parsing, now-or-never processing, chunk-and-pass processing, and usage-based approaches to language learning. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 5: Neurocognitive Processing and Reading Ability. This chapter examines the relationship between neurological processing and reading comprehension. Over the past twenty years, there has been an increasing connection between real-time behavioral language (and reading) processing and newer perspectives on neurolinguistic processing. In order to provide an introductory overview, the chapter first described the key physiological features of language in the brain. The goal is to connect neurological processes and cognitive-behavioral research on reading comprehension. Both cortical and sub-cortical contributions are addressed as is the recent turn to networks and pathways (the connectome). The chapter also describes the various measurement methods for examining neurological processing (fMRI, ERP, PET, DTI, TMS, MEG). The chapter also notes distinct, but very similar, language processing when engaged in L2 reading. The last major section focuses more specifically on ERP and fMRI research studies, involving both L1 and L2 reading. This chapter does not note implications for instruction.

Chapter 9: Social Contexts of Reading. This chapter focuses on the many social contexts in which reading is carried out and in which reading develops. We learn to read within a family unit, in various school settings (and their associated goals, expectations, and opportunities), in various classrooms, and in interaction with specific teachers and student peers. Students are also influenced by the wider social and cultural expectations of political, religious, ethnic, economic, and social institutions. Social contexts set the stage for successful reading within the first year of life, and language knowledge, as well as beginning reading, is profoundly shaped in the first five years of life. L2 reading, as it often is learned in childhood or adolescence, is also strongly shaped by social contexts in which learning to read is carried out. Four specific issues include the needs for effective teacher training, the status of minority language instruction in K-12 schools, advanced L2 reading instruction, and most importantly, the role of language and reading exposure throughout a learner’s lifetime. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 11: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension. This chapter highlights the central role that vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension and reading development, for both L1 and L2 learners. The centrality of lexical knowledge for reading is supported now by decades of research across many L1 and L2 settings. In particular, the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, as the central concept of the Reading Systems Framework, is the main support for reading comprehension skills. This central idea applies to both L1 and L2 reading development. A further key idea argues that reading amount is the primary mechanism for the development of lexical quality, and by extension, reading abilities. Learning words in context is a complex notion that is developed in detail. Most important in this regard, is the major impact of incidental word learning from both extensive reading and background knowledge. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 12: Building Main Idea Comprehension: Syntax and Strategies. Identifying main ideas from a text is the fundamental comprehension process that drives how we understand a text and use that information for whatever goals we have set as readers. Identifying main ideas from a text is the fundamental comprehension process that drives how we understand a text and use that information for whatever goals we have set as readers. Critical to main idea comprehension is word-to-text integration processing. This operates automatically through syntactic processing for skilled readers. Comprehension processes are supported through the functional information provided by syntactic resources. However, when texts are difficult or learners need additional support, strategies provide the bridging mechanism in learning to comprehend texts. Strategies that have shown to be effective in research studies are reviewed. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 7: Reading Different Languages. This chapter outlines differences in learning to read in differing L1s. Linguistic differences, or linguistic distance, between any given L1 and L2 will be a factor to consider in L2 reading development. The study of linguistic differences when reading across languages also leads to identifying universal linguistic aspects of reading development. The chapter focuses more specifically on differing orthographic systems, from alphabetic systems to morpho-syllabic systems as well as mixed systems. A major source of variation within alphabetic systems is the concept of orthographic depth between orthography and phonology. English is the most opaque orthographic language and, in that respect, is an outlier among languages of the world. Other factors in word recognition development include the informational density of a given orthography, word reading time, and morphological processing. The many differences across languages also impact L1 to L2 reading transfer. The chapter closes with a discussion of reading universals in relation to L1 to L2 reading transfer and provides a set of implications for instruction.

Chapter 3: Comprehension Processes. This chapter describes higher-level processes and how both lower- and higher-level processes work together to form a mental text representation and a situation model of reading. Key features of higher-level processing include the following: text representation, situation model processing skills associated with working memory, background knowledge, and executive function resources. Key concepts include passive resonance processing, bridging inferences, the now-or-never bottleneck, lexical processing, incremental item-based learning, Kintsch’s Construction-Integration model of reading, a two-level account of reading comprehension, genre variations in text processing, working memory as executive function, other executive functions, attentional processing, inferencing, metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, strategy use, goal setting, and comprehension monitoring. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.