Crash courses and lifelong journeys: Modes of reading non-fiction advice in a North American audience

• I examine modes of self-help reading in a heterogeneous North American sample.
• I consider combination effects of variables in generating modes of reading.
• Two dominant modes of reading—targeted and habitual—are described and theorized.
• Gender has a central but not exclusive influence on how consumers read.
• Modes of reception generated through combinations of book-type & motive for reading.

A substantial literature on media reception has demonstrated how meanings that audiences attribute to texts vary across social space, but has done less to explore modes of reception within genres and explain what generates different modes. Here, I use a highly successful yet insufficiently explored genre and new varieties of readers—non-fiction advice books about relationships and their heterogeneous audience—to examine how modes of reception are generated. Drawing on interviews with advice book readers, I theorize about modes of reading in the advice book audience—namely dominant modes of targeted reading and habitual reading—and how they constitute two competing definitions of culture and how it works. I move beyond prior gender-focused analyses by taking an intersectional perspective and considering the influence of other understudied demographic characteristics and motivations, alongside gender, on textual interpretation. I propose that several factors—namely ethnicity, socioeconomic and immigration statuses, and commitment to therapeutic culture—collectively influence reception by channeling readers toward different modes of reading. Furthermore, I consider how the books’ readings contribute to boundary creation and maintenance.