Worthy of reading

NOV 17 -
Reading is regarded as a way for people to acquire knowledge. But reading just anything cannot easily provide satisfactory knowledge. I read the content that interests and fascinates me. For example, I read newspapers, essays, articles and dozens of books every month.

There are several ways to read. Some people read thousands of pages very quickly. Such type of reading technique is called skimming. When someone takes a longer time to read text then it is called scanning. However, it depends on what type of material a reader is reading. Some may prefer to scan newspaper columns and essays. Moreover, other may prefer to read or briefly reread novels, stories and poems. It is not how you read but what you read that matters.

In my opinion, in our society we lack good readers. This can be seen from the literary merit and scarce number of works published by Nepali writers. There are works of many great Western contemporary writers that are quite popular in our motherland. On the contrary, not many Nepali writers are well known or well read in the West. This leads to burgeoning questions such as how many Nepali writers have published their readings at either the national or international levels. On the other hand, how many literary critics has Nepal produced or how many people here are interested in what our nation’s own authors have written. I think this lack of interest is due in part to the lack of reading. Our literary circle does not necessarily have clear expertise.

Everybody is trying to make money out of literature. But litterateurs should rather focus on making people more literate. Some people in villages do not even have textbooks to read, a newspaper to purchase nor the Internet to surf.  It wouldn’t be very surprising to find that many people from rural areas have never seen Google or Facebook. A reader therefore, would be much more interested to read the works that provides him knowledge and ideas rather than worthless information.

It seems to me that, the well-known publishers are publishing the works of well-known writers and the small faction of literary critics is promoting them. Moreover, much of

the media attention is given to those writers or publishers who are relatives of some political parties or editors

in one way or the other.  Until and unless this form of nepotism is not longer prevalent in our society, it would be difficult to receive genuine criticism and review of writer’s work. Thus, a publisher should focus on publishing content that can be beneficial to society or the community in general rather than beneficial to just himself or herself.

Nothing is permanent in this world and everything changes with time but an idea always survives. In my short lifespan, I have accumulated thousands of great ideas and knowledge from the works of many known and unknown writers. My simple idea in this short column was to exemplify that I would love to spend my valuable time on worthy material rather than worthless material and I think reading is just a way to know how.

Posted on: 2010-11-18 07:38
Published: The Kathmandu Post