What book to read?
(Baonghean) - In 2013, the average number of books that Vietnamese people read in a year was officially announced by the Ministry of Culture, Information and Tourism as 0.8 books/person/year, which "startled" public opinion.
That was also the time when the topic of "Reading Culture" became hotter than ever. Then, a series of measures to attract people to read books were implemented. Specifically, increasing the organization of book exhibitions according to annual themes as well as organizing outdoor book fairs, discounting many good books. In addition, e-books are increasingly interested because the quality is equal but the price is much cheaper than paper books, suitable for the era of technological development, books can be read anytime, anywhere on electronic devices. Those changes partly show the "forgetfulness" of reading culture is gradually being awakened. However, the most important thing is not how many books we read but what we read, how much useful information we accumulate?
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| Entertainment books are the choice of most young people. |
So, what are we reading? We can temporarily divide books into two basic types, one is entertainment books, the other is books that provide knowledge and in-depth information. And from there, there are also two main types of readers, readers who specialize in reading entertainment books and readers who specialize in reading in-depth books. Modern youth are heavily influenced by audio-visual media and mass psychology, whatever is popular, whatever is "hot" they will rush to find out, this psychology also applies to the books they read and buy.
Of the 10 young people asked in Vinh City now, 6 young people answered that they only read books for entertainment, such as Chinese novels, Vietnamese youth novels, essays, love essays that are shared a lot, mentioned a lot on the internet, detective stories or comics...; 2 of them only like to read books like "You are talented, so am I", which teach life skills, while the other 2 read whatever books are available. Therefore, in bookstores, entertainment books account for a high percentage.
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| Entertainment books are the choice of most young people. |
Second, what do the books we read bring? It is a fact that entertainment books are often easier to read and understand than specialized books. But that also goes hand in hand with the fact that entertainment books have low, even very low, information value. Looking at the difference between the number of people reading entertainment books and the number of people reading books that require thinking also shows that the amount of information that young people get from the books they read today is not much...
No one says that reading for entertainment purposes is not good, but there should be a balance between reading for entertainment and books that provide knowledge and develop thinking. So how can young people pay attention and read more of these types of books?
Sharing about this issue, young author Do Nhat Phi, who won first prize in the 5th Literature Contest for 20-year-olds (2014), a prestigious literary contest in Vietnam, said: "To make young people read more valuable books, we must start by improving people's knowledge. In addition, we need to tighten the input in publishing work, not allowing the situation of low-value books to be published widely."
The culture of each country in each period is partly reflected through the pages of books. Therefore, published books need to be strictly checked for content and widely disseminated. At the same time, promoting good books, so that useful books can reach readers more closely, then certainly reading culture will not only gradually be restored but the cultural knowledge of the people, especially the young people, will be increasingly improved.
Article and photos:Ly Lam
