Prema Jayakumar

‘The reports of my death have been grossly exaggerated’. That was Mark Twain when asked to comment on the fact that his death had been reported in some London newspapers. Someone or rather something else might tell us the same thing now. And a rather unexpected something. I’m talking of books and bookshops.
We have heard all those arguments that said that reading was dying, that books, especially books with paper pages and a cover are dying out, that the electronic media have taken over the leisure hours of the people who used to read and even those who read will now only read on their Kindle or their Tablet or even worse, on their smartphones. Actually, we had heard all this when the television came to the living or dining room at home. And those of us who do read, who do love books, but don’t know any statistics to refute the laments, can only listen and sigh. But recently I did hear a contrary opinion and it was so heartening.
While the whole world seems ready to take up the dirge, someone whose voice carries weight in the matter of selling books says a resounding ‘no’. I read an interview with Mr James Daunt who is the CEO of Barnes and Nobles who says people still read books and they still buy books. And who better qualified than him to talk of selling books? A banker who quit banking to set up Daunt Books, and then nursed Waterstones through its ailing years and now is CEO at Barnes and Noble, he can talk with authority.
And in my own experience people still read books and people still buy books. And I had thought that it was wishful thinking. You go through conversations in any readers’ groups, you find animated conversations going on about books bought, books read, books borrowed in earlier days before one could afford to buy them as quickly as one would have liked to, books recommended to others.
While shamefacedly owning up to having a Kindle on which I read (the practical problems of carrying a number of books when you are away on a trip, and that of reading without disturbing others with a reading lamp more or less force me to), the joys of a the printed page are still enticing. Oh, not just the nostalgic and sentimental matters of the smells and the heft and all that. There are some books that do not lend themselves to being read on an electronic device. I find that I enjoy poetry only on the printed page and not on a screen. A screen is all right for a quick reference, for finding that elusive line, but for sustained reading of poetry one does need the pages that can be turned. As for reading a graphic novel or a comic on a screen, it is impossible.
Besides these pleasures of the physical book, there is also the fact that you can lend it, borrow it, share it. If you are the kind of person who reads a good book and has immediately to get someone else, who you are sure will enjoy it, to read it, you need a physical book you can lend. It’s all very well to say that you can recommend it, they can order it on to their device and so on. But none of them are as immediate as just handing over the book and saying, ‘Read it and give it back to me’. (The second part is equally important for those who are possessive about their books, you know.)
Similarly, book stores too are places of magic. Ordering online is all very well. One has to do it once in a while but to go into a book shop to buy one book and browse, just taking in what is available, recognizing names, a new addition to a series you had started on and liked. As for children, who have some liking for books, the magic is simply awesome. Just seeing so many books in one place is a wonderful feeling.
So, let us all, those dubbed bookworms by the unaware many, wish books and bookstores many many years of triumphant existence, so that in the next generation too, those who care for the written word have these wonderful resources.