Reading - the good news

After reading about Victoria 'Posh Spice' Beckham's infamous bimboesque pronouncements about how she has never read anything in her entire life, some of us must have though, quite resignedly, "So it is true, the world as we know it is coming to an end," though we always suspected that being dumb was cooler than being smart. And then what more with news of country after country after country reporting declines in readership? (Oh no, not Malaysia, of course! While others may require statistics and surveys to come up with figures, we have the sublime skills to pluck them out of the air. Viola! Was it two books per person per year the last time? I cannot wait for the a new announcement that says it is four, and then sixteen, and then thirty two ...)

But, apparently, all is not lost. Reading is not dying. A study done by the University of Manchester, Trajectories of time spent reading as a primary activity: a comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s, which focussed 'on reading printed material as a primary activity, and excluding that conducted for the purposes of work or education' indicates that the reverse is actually the truth.

According to the report: '(In Britain the) average time women spent reading a book jumped from two minutes a day in 1975 to eight minutes in 2000. Men's reading time rose from three to five minutes a day.' Still lower than for television, but 'hey'!

As for other countries in the study, the increase was similar in Norway but in French it went up from 10 minutes a day up to 18. Wahhhh! Dey de champion. There was a slight decline in the Netherlands from 13 minutes to 12 (in 1995), while in the US the increase was from five to seven minutes.

Quoting one of the researchers, Dale Southerton, from Manchester's school of social sciences, a BBC report says: "there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them".

Here is some academic gobbledygook about how the study was conducted (according to the abstract which you can find on the internet): "(The study) examines four commonly held assumptions: that time spent reading has declined in all countries; that book reading has declined to a greater extent than it has for magazines and newspapers; that reading is increasingly concentrated in a small minority of the populations in all countries; and, that there is cross-national convergence of consumer behaviour in the practice of reading."

(Did you understand that? Good, because I didn't. What the hell is 'cross-national convergence' of consumer behaviour?)

Still this (also from the abstract) is interesting: "Generic trends of increased book and declining magazine and newspaper readership mask the differential impact of global consumer cultures in national contexts." Go figure.

Full story: http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/staff/Dale_Southerton/reading.htm
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6285740.stm

Then in another report from India (where else), The Times of India reports that, "Young Indian authors with their contemporary plots and ideas are fast becoming the favourites of readers across age groups …" and "The sale of books in the Indian segment has increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past four or five years ..."

Other quotes from the report:

"The good news is that it is the youth who is displaying a keener interest in Indian authors ..."

"Out of every 10 books sold on a given day, four are by Indian authors ..." (Have you been to a Malaysian mega bookstore lately, or seen their - highly suspect - bestseller list?)

"Indians are now talking of serious issues tastefully and people are flocking to take a read ..."

"I prefer Indian authors simply because I can relate to the subjects, places, events and most importantly to their characters ..."

Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow_Times/Indians_are_the_write_choice_baby_/articleshow/2189502.cms