By Lubna Abdel-Aziz I lie beneath the sheets in semi-darkness, totally oblivious of time, consumed within the pages of a book. I have done this since my childhood, a habit I am unwilling to abandon. Yet, they say, the art of reading books is in danger of extinction. What a sad, sad thought for mankind, for the joys that reading provides are endless and incomparable. "Books are all the dreams we are likely to have." They have the power to transport us from our world to that of the author's choosing. His imagination replaces our own, or gently blends with ours, in an "exquisite asynchronous tango," leading us to that trancelike hypnotic state that only a book can muster. You find yourself perched on top of the highest mountain, grappling with a blinding snow blizzard, or bracing the transparent air of a sad autumn day, when the trees are bare and motionless, beneath a dim and dreary sky. Reading can transport the fragrance of a summer rose to your very nostril, or make your heart beat with expectation with the freshest breeze of spring's promise. All life's seasons, places, emotions are right there within your grasp, through the power of words. Books have taught us how to think, feel, behave. If man is God's wonderful creation, the book is man's divine creation. "A message from human souls we never saw. And yet they arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us." The writings of these men are our legacy, one we should not squander. But are we doing just that? We are publishing more books than ever; a book is published every 30 seconds, yet book sales are down. How many of these books are bought or read, and how many will survive? Of all the books published in 1859, only 5 were still found in 1959: Darwin's The Origin of Species, Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, Eliot's Adam Bede, Mills' Essay on Liberty, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King. So how is the third millennium treating the book? How healthy is the state of books and how big is the appetite for reading. Books have been available to us for over 500 years since Johannes Guttenberg of Germany (1395-1488) ushered in the age of print by inventing the moveable type printing, circa 1455. Man was able to hold heaven in his hands, but now he reaches for that heaven less and less. We thought the book was indestructible, for it cannot be killed even by fire, but maybe by technology. In desperate search for its survival, the book has to go digital, like everything else, music, video, etc. How else can it keep its head above water in the rushing river of technology that engulfs us all. "We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put 'dirty marks' on them, then cut the sheets and bind them, and ship them around the world. Do you really believe we'll be doing that in another 50 years?" asks Microsoft's Bill Hill. Put in this manner the inevitable answer is, of course not. Amazon is coming up with a new revolutionary device called the "Kindle," which promises to "change the way readers read, writers write, and publishers publish." A hand held object operating much like the ipod has several advantages, surpassing all other electronic reading devices that preceded it. Its inventor Joe Bezos, himself a book lover, his wife a novelist, pledges that with the Kindle he will "refurbish the dusty halls of literacy." Some statistics reveal the halls are dusty indeed. In the two leading countries, US and UK in publishing and selling books, literary reading is falling. A study by Corporate Intelligence found that the greatest challenge to traditional booksellers is the competition posed by other leisure goods, such as music, video, and the cinema. US American booksellers are dwindling, from 4700 bookstores in 1993, to 1660 in 2005. What went wrong? According to a report published by the US National Endowment of the Arts, one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, 42 per cent of College graduates never read another book, 58 per cent of US families never read a book after high school, and 80 per cent of American families did not buy a book during the last year. Similar stats are provided by the Brits despite concentrated efforts to resuscitate the art of reading. If the leading countries are less inclined to read, what about the rest of the world? Perhaps we need to teach a course in the love of reading. There is some good news however, that may redeem and preserve man's perfect invention. Apart from the Kindle and other electronic reading devices, it is encouraging to find that discount stores are growing in number and self-help books are commanding a generous share of the sellers' market. Ever since Dale Carnegie wrote his famous How to Make Friends and Influence People in 1936, more and more of us are opting for self-help books. But, it is the literary reading that needs a shot in the arm. When the Da Vinci Code was published everyone rushed to buy the book, making it the number 1 adult book best seller of all time. J. K. Rowling fared even better amongst children and "kidults," as her secret adult readers are called, becoming the best-selling author in history. Harry Potter and the Deadly Halls (2007) sold 15 million copies worldwide in 24 hours. Her books break records without fail, consistently selling more copies in one day than the Da Vinci Code did in one year. On reading such figures "hope springs eternal in the human breast" confirming man's need for his book. Staggering figures show that expenditure on books has taken a back seat to other desirables. $1.7 billion was spent on textbooks, $78 billion on alcohol, $37 billion on cigarettes, and $6 billion on pet food. Can we allow the demise of our perfect creation, this superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful, and beloved more passionately than any gadget that technology can come up with?" If technology can save it, I part ways with many traditionalists and say, why not! It may not be my choice since I am faithful to the one friend that has remained constantly by my side while so many others have gone. Yet we must bend with the wind rather than be broken. If Kindle can kindle the imagination of writer and reader, preserve the written word within the pages of a book, more power to them. The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them Mark Twain (1835-1910)
