Reading for pleasure: An endangered habit?

“Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” For long, teachers have been using this statement of Sir Francis Bacon, as a ruler, to hit the students. With well-meaning intentions, teachers have been admonishing students for not reading books. They have been telling students that good reading, good conversation and good writing is essential for success in life. However, when television entered our homes, it became a serious distraction to the young and restless. In fact, we are still blaming it as the chief impediment in the cultivation of the reading habit. Today, it is the smartphones.

Tiny chunks of information is all that seems to matter for young people. Not some boring long-winding prose, in thick tomes. “A Third of Teenagers Don’t Read Books for Pleasure Anymore” says an article by Jamie Ducharme on the TIME magazine’s website (TIME, 20 August 2018). She writes that, in at least a year, according to a new survey from the American Psychological Association (APA), one third of US teenagers have not read books for pleasure. The research, published in the journal ‘Psychology of Popular Media Culture’, points to the continuing dominance of digital media among teenagers. Apparently, teen use of traditional media — such as books, magazines and television — has dropped off, while time spent texting, scrolling through social media and using other forms of digital media continues to increase. That is in the United States.

What about the ‘reading’ habit in the Arab World? According to a report given at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2013, “the Arab world, with its population of over 362 million people in 2012,” produced about the same “number of books produced in countries like Romania (with a population of 21.3 million in 2012) and Ukraine (population 45.6 millions) in 2012.” (Why Don’t Arabs Read?, 07 Jul 2016, Al-Fanar Media). Which means, firstly, the books are in short supply here; and therefore we need more Arab writers to write more books. A report by the RAND Corp. says, “Religious books constitute 17 per cent of all books published in Arab countries” (a considerably higher proportion than in other book markets).

Everyone knows that one cannot easily categorize ‘religious books’ as ‘books that can be read for pleasure’.   Which means we need more Arab writers to write material in genres others than the religious genre. Since the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz became the first and the only Arab author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1988, one can say that there has not been any significant contribution to the world of literature. Some argue that there will be a rise in the supply of books when there is a rise in the demand for books. But that seems unlikely.

Even though, on e-readers like ‘Kindle’ and ‘Kindle Fire’, and on listening apps like ‘audible’, books are still selling, and interested readers are still reading books, but the overall sales are falling. According to a news article ‘E-book Sales Fell 10pc in 2017’, the steepest decline in e-book sales last year was in the children’s category, where sales fell 22pc. In children’s, the digital format accounted for only 5pc of all sales last year (Publisher’s Weekly, Apr 25, 2018).

Sadly, the habit of ‘reading for pleasure’ is truly becoming endangered. In the early 2000s, thanks to J K Rowling’s Harry Potter Series, there was a rejuvenation of interest in reading and in books; especially, among high school students. But, that too has passed. With YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and a hundred other viewing options, today, it is viewing, not reading, that is becoming important. Someone will soon say, “Watching videos makes a full man; discussing them a ready man, and producing them an exact man”.