E-book Culture

With the onset of the digital era, people began to spend more time with gadgets. Smartphones, tablets and laptops have become essential items for almost all people. They get all the information, from the prices of groceries to the new theory of black holes, from these devices. The internet-driven digital revolution is unprecedented in human history. The scale and impacts it has generated were beyond imagination, never seen before. As the saying ‘every coin has two facets’ goes, the digital devices that have taken us by storm also carry their pros and cons. Of course, they store a repository of information, data and knowledge and circulate it to millions of people in seconds. Users often fail to sift facts from falsehoods as they are bogged down by the bombardment of information, misinformation and lies. 

People’s obsessions with gadgets have reached pandemic proportions, affecting their mental health and work efficiency. One area that has been pushed to the back burner is the people’s reading culture essential to creating a wise and civilised society.  As people rely on smartphones and laptops for everything, visiting libraries and buying books comes in second priority. However, in recent years, people have switched to reading books, after the COVID-19 pandemic that impelled them to resort to a variety of literary works to beat boredom and a sense of panic.  Adults, youngsters and schoolchildren alike have visited the bookstores to get books of their taste. 

Teenagers like to read English books written by foreign writers, as many of them still find difficulty in poring over Nepali literary works. According to a news report published in this daily, boys like suspense and thriller novels while girls prefer romantic fiction. Readers above 35 enjoy biography, poetry, academic or research-based books and spiritual books. This emerging trend is good, but printing industry and book sellers point to the flip side of this. The rise of e-books and pirated books has put them on the receiving end. As the young people are leaving for abroad in droves for work and study, the number of readers also decreases. 

The book markets are not faring well, with the sales of literary books remaining far from satisfactory. E-books have caught the fancy of young readers because they are cost-effective and easily available. Besides, they have attractive technical features -- adjustable font size, easy highlight option, and audio version or screen readers for people with disabilities. With the growing craze of e-books, the number of readers visiting libraries has significantly gone down. The digital materials have come in handy for academic and other types of research. This development should be taken with a positive note. After all, differences lie in the medium, not in the essence. If people prefer e-books to books, this will also revive the dying reading culture. 

Reading e-books benefits the readers in the way books do. Reading broadens the cognitive horizon and nourishes the brain. It is an antidote to anxiety and depression. It enhances the academic and professional aptitudes of the readers, contributing to their intellectual growth. The ills generated from the addiction to the screens, are likely to be minimised with the reading habit flourishing. The government agencies, the academic sector and civic associations should get involved in spreading awareness about the importance of reading culture in the evolution of constructive and enlightened citizenry.