Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Each volume in this series will explore the surprising or counterintuitive pleasures and revulsions of a single cultural experience, phenomenon, or artifact. Written in the “Avidly voice,” a charismatic blend of knowledge, affect, and enthusiasm, the books will offer narratives in which authors account for, and even savor, their own emotional relationships to the subjects they explore. These emotional relationships — enthusiast, apologist, idealist, grouch — are central cultural forces that are difficult to capture within the objective tone of most academic writing. Avidly Reads, on the other hand, invites writers to indulge feelings, and to tell stories, in the casual idioms that distinguish the best conversations about culture.

The Avidly Reads volumes will not only account for pleasure but will themselves be pleasurable — for their authors to write, as well as for others to read. Emotions enliven the writing we support, propel it towards wider audiences, and kindle more luminous reader experiences. Slim volumes of around 30,000 words featuring a signature design, books in the Avidly Reads series will be attractive to readers whether in the coffee shop, classroom, book club, or bar.