Following the recent Book Fair in Warsaw you would have thought that the whole world and his wife are total bookworms who do nothing else but pour over the pages of a good novel, relish in the delights of a detailed encyclopaedia or indeed enjoy the finely drawn lines of a decent comic book. Varsovians flooded the National Stadium in their droves to check out the latest in the world of books, met with authors and had a field day. It was a fine event, albeit a little crowded at times, and some very popular publishers deciding not to take up that much space, which made the crowding even more difficult to deal with, especially if one of their star authors rolled up to dish out a few autographs. Such is life. But while reading for pleasure is all well and good and should be thoroughly promoted, it doesn’t seem to be that Poles – or Varsovians, for that matter, as with any capital city, they seem to be a different breed – actually go in for books all that much at all. The literary frenzy seen at the National Stadium of late is an exception to the rule.
The latest stats from the National Library say it all, and are rather shocking. In a survey done earlier in 2015, it was revealed that as many as 10 million Poles, that almost a quarter of the population, do not actually own a single book. Furthermore, only 41 percent of Poles read more than one book in 2014, and as many as 19 million Poles didn’t hold a book in their hands, while 6.2 million didn’t read a book or even a periodical. That is pretty shocking by all accounts.
So when I travel daily on Warsaw public transport, it is no surprise that not many people can be found reading books. I, for one, read on public transport as it is the only time during the day when I can read what I want. Even if I don’t feel like it, I try to plough my way through the pages as a mental exercise. After all, once you get into it there’s no turning back. There is also some kind of solidarity among bookworms: a fleeting glance at someone else reading a book opposite you on the metro or on the tram reveals an unspoken camaraderie which goes to show that us book readers are rare and perhaps dying out, even.
Yet it doesn’t take long to wonder why. The marvels of technology have made it very easy for people to simply get out their mobile phones and invest their precious commuting time as a way to spend time checking out the latest status updates on Facebook or to listen to their favourite podcasts or simply to play games, such as the omnipresent Angry Birds or Candy Crush. Now, I’ve been known to dabble with such forms of mobile entertainment and even been ridiculed by my friends and family for wasting my time on such childish things. And while I won’t be putting my mobile away just yet, there is something to be said about how smartphones and tablets have taken away the very essence of how we see the world around us. I’ve even seen young mothers on the tram give their young’uns a tablet with some sort of pseudo-educational ‘game’ so that they give their self-centred parents the time to take selfies and publish them on Instagram. It is rather sad. I would have thought that all their kids would rather be doing is looking out of the window and soaking in the urban landscape which surrounds them.
On the metro all too often I see people engrossed in their luminescent screens, dying to read the latest on their news feeds or catch what’s going on on Twitter. For the time being, there’s only one mobile network which works underground, so I suppose it isn’t that bad yet, but above ground on the trams and buses, it’s another story. There’s so much light that it is akin to the floodlights at the very same National Stadium where so many bookworms assembled recently…
Next time you’re on public transport, instead of glaring at your mobile screen, how about lifting your head up and look through the window, or even, dare I say it read a book. At least the virtual reality conjured by the prose is a figment of your imagination and not a glowing gremlin which eats away at your brain…