We buy books but we don’t read them

”We bring home more and more books from bookshops, supermarkets, and libraries but we do not read the way we used to any more”, Lene Koogi, DR Kultur journalist, believes. 

On our bed-side tables and kitchen shelves we have detective novels by Stieg Larsson and cookery books lying around. Over the last eight years when book prices dropped immensely, we have been spending more and more money buying absolutely everything. Last year there were sold 31 million books. And we still borrow some from libraries. This means that on average there are 11,5 books per person. And what about those books we borrow from family members, friends, or buy from used book dealers?
 
However, in spite of the fact that there are more and more books on bookshelves statistics prove otherwise. According to the survey of the Danish Booksellers Association (Boghandlerforeningen), Danish adults read no more than seven books a year.

One of the reasons of massive book purchase is supermarkets. Their shelves are full of our favourite detective stories, biographies, and other bestsellers. According to Lars Esbjerg, lecturer at the Department of Business Administration at Aarhus University, supermarkets perfectly deal with the task of selling us a book we have no idea about but are convinced that this very book is absolutely essential for us to read. Their marketing techniques are terrific. For example, when buying veal or milk the person will definitely pay attention to a greatly made cookery book displayed in the same department. Thus, supermarkets make customers buy on impulse.

“Danes buy books spontaneously, also because they can afford it”, Tove Arendt Rasmussen, lecturer at the Department of Communication at Aalborg University, thinks. “This is an absolutely different way, I would say a wild “by contradiction” way; we do not use books for the same reason as we used to, which is for increasing cultural and educational development of society. Now we can buy books and not read them”, Tove Arendt Rasmussen says.

Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Ph.D at Aarhus University, also thinks that the reason for what is happening is low book prices. “Books have come into general use so much that today it doesn’t matter what you buy, a literary work or another recipe book”, she says.

 

 

Original text, photo:  DR.dk