Originally published in my intranet blog:
A very disturbing trend these days is the steep decline of the book-reading habit. I rarely find people who are interested in reading books for the mere pleasure of it. Any action these days is always with a purpose. I hear of people reading books on personality development, project management, technical books, journals and so on, but when I say I read fiction, I see a sudden change in expression. It seems to say, ‘I thought you were a serious.. and intelligent (!!!??!!) person !!’. I am probably dismissed immediately in people’s minds as a childish person or what men love to call - a typical Indian woman !!
When I read a great piece of literature or just a wonderful suspense, the urge to share the pleasure is almost overwhelming. Yet it is very difficult to find people who are willing to share my enthusiasm. This is all the more worse when I am onsite, where I dont get to pick people around me :).
I once tried to start an initiative for my team members who were at that time in the free pool. As a fun way to improve their spoken English, I suggested some sort of a reading club, with all of us reading an English short story and discussing that as a group !! The kind of reception I got, you would have thought I had suggested a Murder club or some such thing. I then realized how naive I had been and that I could not force people to read anything - even a 2 page story !!
What do you think should be done to increase the interests of people in reading books?
No comments:
Post a Comment