On April 16th Babel, a German multilingual learning platform, published a “European-wide study survey”. According to the report, France, the “old European book champion”, continues its fine tradition of loving physical books, reading them for an average of six hours and 54 minutes a week. The Nordic country of Sweden is on a par with France with the same “performance”.
Spaniards read physical books for 5 hours and 58 minutes a week, ranking third;
Germans also continued the habit of reading and thinking, reading physical books 5 hours and 42 minutes a week ranked fourth;
Italy, the home of the Renaissance, ranks fifth in Europe in reading physical books for 5 hours and 36 minutes a week.
According to the Analysis of the Babel Report, the above-mentioned countries, with the exception of Sweden, have a long tradition of “reading for all” and are keen on the interaction of various publishing houses and independent bookstores. The long Coronavirus outbreak and its response have allowed many people in these countries to significantly reduce their time away from work, leisure and recreation, much of which has been spent studying.
So which country in Europe doesn’t like reading physical books the least?
The publishing industry is highly developed in the United Kingdom
In the Babel report, Britons read an average of five hours and 18 minutes of physical books a week, the penultimate. According to the analysis, the British people increasingly love “light reading”, leaving a lot of reading time to fashion magazines and gossip tabloids, reading physical books will naturally be less time. And with the relatively fast spread of the vaccine and the reopening of recreational facilities such as pubs in the UK, it is harder for Britons to “go up against the trend” by spending more time reading each week.
When it comes to the publication of physical books, the largest spoken language in Europe is English, with more than 500,000 English physical books published each year. However, The British Physical Books In The European Translation Of The Physical Book Market Structure Is Single, The Vast MajoritY Of Shakespeare’S Works Are Of Various VersionS. The French physical book translation market is much more colourful, and children’s books, comics and novels “Made in France” are also popular outside Europe and Europe,such as Canada and Africa.
The French intellectual and publishing communities attach great importance to the popularization of physical books. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of France’s famous Long Act, which focuses on setting a “single price” for books to ensure that the average French reader can afford and read physical books. Compared with English-speaking countries, French book prices have been very popular, and the development of affordable pocket book industry, is recognized as the maintenance of French society “read physical book fever” the key measures.
Libraries, publishing houses and brick-and-mortar bookstores in many French cities are preparing to celebrate the unusual anniversary this year despite the impact of the outbreak. In the northwestern port city of Cherbourg, for example, independent bookstores in the north-west have decided to hold an unprecedented independent bookstore festival on an unprecedented scale from World Reading to The Remembrance Day of the Long Act (August 10), the 23rd consecutive year. Local writer Moni lists four reasons why “why buy books in independent bookstores”: atmosphere, professional book information, new little discoveries and surprises, encouragement and interaction with authors and bookstores, and winning over readers.
Countries that lag behind in the “weekly average reading index” are also “brave after shame”. For example, in the French-speaking part of Belgium, which has long been at the bottom of the OECD’s Weekly Average Reading Survey, this year’s World Reading Day theme initiative “is fine with reading, novels, comics, magazines, newspapers, whatever you read”. Some activists at schools and community centers have advocated “restoring the habit of reading ‘bedtime reading’ for 15 minutes a night before bedtime and getting rid of mobile phones.”
