Literature and The Joys of Reading - Final

Submitted by:
Samiya Illias
2009-A
To:
Mr. Zarrar Zubair
Faculty: Business Communication
Pakistan Institute of Management
Dated: May 2009
1|Page
Literature and
the Joys of
Reading
Introduction
It is unfortunate that those who have been taught to read are not able to profit from their
acquired talent to do so……….. spending their lives removed from the wonderful and
joyous world of the written word……. The world of literature! Such is the definition of the
word ‘aliterate1’.
In this report, an effort has been made to explore the various and diverse fields of
literature, to identify the appealing aspects of each genre, and introduce the reader to
the wonderful world of reading, and the joys and benefits associated with it.
The history of the written word, the libraries of the antiquities, libraries and bookshops
around the world, and the importance of books and reading in the development of
nations have been touched upon.
A special section traces the history, explores recent trends and identifies issues related
to books, publishing and reading in general in Pakistan.
The importance and significance of reading and acquiring knowledge in Islam has
briefly been touched upon.
Obviously, this report or any such written material will most probably be read by only
those who already are in the habit of reading. It is my hope that after reading it, they are
able to help their friends in discovering the wonderful world of reading, and the delights
within!
1 A person who is able to read but rarely chooses to do so

Cover photo: http://media.photobucket.com/image/books/joyo131/books.jpg
Contents
Literature and The Joys of Reading.............................................................................................................1
The Written Word:...................................................................................................................................1
Reading:..................................................................................................................................................2
Literature:................................................................................................................................................3
History.................................................................................................................................................3
Poetry..................................................................................................................................................4
Prose...................................................................................................................................................5
Essays................................................................................................................................................5
Fiction.................................................................................................................................................5
Other prose literature..........................................................................................................................6
Drama.................................................................................................................................................7
Oral literature......................................................................................................................................8
Other narrative forms..........................................................................................................................8
Genres of literature.............................................................................................................................8
Greatest Works..........................................................................................................................................10
100 Most Influential Books Ever Written................................................................................................10
100 Most Influential Books of the Century.............................................................................................12
Books that Didn't Quite Make It.........................................................................................................15
Libraries around the World........................................................................................................................17
Early history...........................................................................................................................................17
Antiquity............................................................................................................................................17
Libraries in Persian Empire...............................................................................................................17
Libraries in the Hellenic World and Rome.........................................................................................18
Ancient Chinese Libraries.................................................................................................................19
Islamic Libraries................................................................................................................................19
Medieval Christian Libraries..............................................................................................................21
Early Modern Libraries..........................................................................................................................22
Public Libraries..................................................................................................................................22
Types of Libraries..................................................................................................................................23
Organization..........................................................................................................................................25
Library use.............................................................................................................................................25
Famous libraries....................................................................................................................................26
Bookshops and online stores.....................................................................................................................29
Famous bookshops...............................................................................................................................29
Online stores.........................................................................................................................................29
Free eBooks sites..................................................................................................................................29
Book clubs online.......................................................................................................................................30
Esaays on Joys of Reading.......................................................................................................................31
1 Kiran Piracha......................................................................................................................................31
2 George Wedd.....................................................................................................................................32
3 Dowling College Chapter...................................................................................................................38
Reading Habits and Tips...........................................................................................................................43
Reading Tips for Children......................................................................................................................43
Reading Tips for Students.....................................................................................................................43
Reading Tips for Adults.........................................................................................................................44
IQ, EQ and Reading..................................................................................................................................45
Books: comparison between the West and the Muslim World...................................................................46
Books and Publishing in Pakistan..............................................................................................................48
A short history of books in Pakistan......................................................................................................49
Pre-partition era:...............................................................................................................................49
Post-partition era...............................................................................................................................49
Urdu books............................................................................................................................................50
The beginning...................................................................................................................................50
Fiction...............................................................................................................................................50
Poetry................................................................................................................................................51
Children’s literature...........................................................................................................................51
Readership........................................................................................................................................51
Regional books......................................................................................................................................51
Sindhi................................................................................................................................................51
Punjabi..............................................................................................................................................52
Pashto...............................................................................................................................................52
Balochi..............................................................................................................................................53
English books........................................................................................................................................53
Fiction...............................................................................................................................................53
Non-fiction.........................................................................................................................................54
Children’s Books...............................................................................................................................54
Printing and publishing industry.............................................................................................................55
Emerging trends....................................................................................................................................56
eBooks..............................................................................................................................................56
Online book stores............................................................................................................................56
Reading Clubs...................................................................................................................................56
Book fairs..........................................................................................................................................57
Mobile bookshops.............................................................................................................................57
Issues....................................................................................................................................................57
Book piracy and copyright laws in Pakistan......................................................................................57
Plagiarism.........................................................................................................................................59
Incentives for writers.............................................................................................................................59
Decline in reading habits.......................................................................................................................59
Lack of libraries in the country...............................................................................................................59
Quran and Knowledge...............................................................................................................................61
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................62
Conclusion
Literature and The Joys of Reading
The written words...........symbols, shapes, lines, dots,..............all come together to form
a vivid image in the mind of the reader__ transporting to realms unknown, beyond
imagination, into wonderland............such is the power, the magic, the joy of reading!
Books, articles, magazines, letters, whitepapers, notes, memos, receipts, accounts,
memoirs, biographies, maps, diagrams, blueprints, outlines, and the list goes on and
on............ numerous are the uses people have put the written word to...... in fact it is
indeed difficult to imagine civilized life without written communication!
The Written Word:

The written word is supposed to have originated in Babylon2 around 4 millennium BC.
Before that, the cave
men wrote on walls
and rocks to express
their feelings, voice
their opinions and
explain themselves,
all through pictures.
These pictorial
displays slowly
molded into writing,
the most basic and
earliest know form of
which is Cuneiform,
founded in Babylon,
the first human
settlement in its true
form.
Over the centuries,
writing was
discovered in various parts of the world, namely Egypt, Greece, China, and Japan.
Very soon, the different civilizations had to employ translators who could interpret the
different languages. And soon, the world became quite literary, and we can attest to this
by the fact that scrolls and such have been found from Egyptian pyramids, from Greek
writings, and the blocks of stone used as letters in Cuneiform, and also, the blocks of
compact mud found at Moenjodaro and Taxilla and Harrappa.
2 Image source: http://oneyearbibleimages.com/babylon.jpg
1|Page submitted by: Samiya Illias

Reading:
What do we read? We read faces, looks, body
language, the written word and between the lines3.
Thus reading is defined as: Reading4 (process) is the
human cognitive process of decoding symbols or
syntax for the purpose of deriving meaning (reading
comprehension) or constructing meaning. Reading
(derived from "to read") is the process of converting
information, usually arranged in syntax, into a usable form.
Reading can be a fun activity, as seen from the joy on the faces
of this happy family5. Parents and children together can spend
many happy moments enriching their minds while bonding at the
same time.
The6 joys of reading go way beyond the pages of a book. Where you choose to read,
your surroundings can go a long way toward setting a mood and enhancing the read. I
met this young lady yesterday at the Old City Cemetery and Arboretum, in Lynchburg,
Virginia, enjoying a book while stretched out on a blanket in the grass beneath a willow
by a pond…I have enjoyed a few good reads here myself.
3 Newspaper image source: http://www.treehugger.com/20090219-ethiopia-newspaper-reading.jpg

4 wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading
5 Image source: http://www.cerritos.edu/reading/j0400239.jpg
6 http://dlennis.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/the-joys-of-reading/

Literature: 7
Literature is the art of written works.
Literally translated, the word means
"acquaintance with letters" (from Latin
littera letter). In Western culture the most
basic written literary types include fiction
and non-fiction.
The word "literature" has different

meanings depending on who is using it. It could be applied broadly to mean any
symbolic record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters. In a
more narrow sense the term could mean only text composed of letters, or other
examples of symbolic written language (Egyptian hieroglyphs, for example). An even
more narrow interpretation is that texts have a physical form, such as on paper or some
other portable form, to the exclusion of inscriptions or digital media. The Muslim scholar
and philosopher Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (702-765 AD) defined "literature" as follows:
"Literature is the garment which one puts on what he says or writes so that it may
appear more attractive." ….added that literature is a slice of life that has been given
direction and meaning, an artistic interpretation of the world according to the percipient's
point of views. Frequently, the texts that make up literature crossed over these
boundaries. Russian Formalist Roman Jakobson
defines literature as "organized violence committed on
ordinary speech", highlighting literature's deviation
from the day-to-day and conversational structure of
words. Illustrated stories, hypertexts, cave paintings
and inscribed monuments have all at one time or
another pushed the boundaries of "literature."
People may perceive a difference between "literature"

and some popular forms of written work. The terms
"literary fiction" and "literary merit" often serve to distinguish between individual works.
For example, almost all literate people perceive the works of Charles Dickens as
"literature," whereas some critics look down on the works of Jeffrey Archer as unworthy
of inclusion under the general heading of "English literature." Critics may exclude works
from the classification "literature," for example, on the grounds of a poor standard of
grammar and syntax, of an unbelievable or disjointed story-line, or of inconsistent or
unconvincing characters. Genre fiction (for example: romance, crime, or science fiction)
may also become excluded from consideration as "literature."
History
One of the earliest known literary works is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic
poem dated around 2700 B.C., which deals with themes of heroism, friendship, loss,
and the quest for eternal life. Different historical periods have emphasized various
characteristics of literature. Early works often had an overt or covert religious or didactic
purpose. Moralizing or prescriptive literature stems from such sources. The exotic
7 [wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature]

nature of romance flourished from the Middle Ages onwards, whereas the Age of
Reason manufactured nationalistic epics and philosophical tracts. Romanticism
emphasized the popular folk literature and emotive involvement, but gave way in the
19th-century West to a phase of realism and naturalism, investigations into what is real.
The 20th century brought demands for symbolism or psychological insight in the
delineation and development of character.
Poetry
A poem is a composition written in verse (although verse has been equally used for epic
and dramatic fiction). Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and
metaphor; they may take the form of measures consisting of patterns of stresses (metric
feet) or of patterns of different-length syllables (as in classical prosody); and they may
or may not utilize rhyme. One cannot readily characterize poetry precisely. Typically
though, poetry as a form of literature makes some significant use of the formal
properties of the words it uses – the properties of the written or spoken form of the
words, independent of their meaning. Meter depends on syllables and on rhythms of
speech; rhyme and alliteration depend on the sounds of words.
Poetry perhaps pre-dates other forms of literature: early known examples include the
Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dated from around 2700 B.C.), parts of the Bible, the
surviving works of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), and the Indian epics Ramayana
and Mahabharata. In cultures based primarily on oral traditions the formal
characteristics of poetry often have a mnemonic function, and important texts: legal,
genealogical or moral, for example, may appear first in verse form.
Some poetry uses specific forms: the haiku, the limerick, or the sonnet, for example. A
traditional haiku written in Japanese must have something to do with nature, contain
seventeen onji (syllables), distributed over three lines in groups of five, seven, and five,
and should also have a kigo, a specific word indicating a season. A limerick has five
lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBA, and line lengths of 3,3,2,2,3 stressed syllables. It
traditionally has a less reverent attitude towards nature. Poetry not adhering to a formal
poetic structure is called "free verse"
Language and tradition dictate some poetic norms: Persian poetry always rhymes,
Greek poetry rarely rhymes, Italian or French poetry often does, English and German
poetry can go either way. Perhaps the most paradigmatic style of English poetry, blank
verse, as exemplified in works by Shakespeare and Milton, consists of unrhymed iambic
pentameters. Some languages prefer longer lines; some shorter ones. Some of these
conventions result from the ease of fitting a specific language's vocabulary and
grammar into certain structures, rather than into others; for example, some languages
contain more rhyming words than others, or typically have longer words. Other
structural conventions come about as the result of historical accidents, where many
speakers of a language associate good poetry with a verse form preferred by a
particular skilled or popular poet.
Works for theatre traditionally took verse form. This has now become rare outside opera
and musicals, although many would argue that the language of drama remains
intrinsically poetic.

In recent years, digital poetry has arisen that takes advantage of the artistic, publishing,
and synthetic qualities of digital media.
Prose
Prose consists of writing that does not adhere to any particular formal structures (other
than simple grammar); "non-poetic" writing, perhaps. The term sometimes appears
pejoratively, but prosaic writing simply says something without necessarily trying to say
it in a beautiful way, or using beautiful words. Prose writing can of course take beautiful
form; but less by virtue of the formal features of words (rhymes, alliteration, metre) but
rather by style, placement, or inclusion of graphics. But one need not mark the
distinction precisely, and perhaps cannot do so. One area of overlap is "prose poetry",
which attempts to convey using only prose, the aesthetic richness typical of poetry.
Essays
An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view,

exemplified by works by Michel de Montaigne or by Charles Lamb.
'Essay' in English derives from the French 'essai', meaning 'attempt'. Thus one can find
open-ended, provocative and/or inconclusive essays. The term "essays" first applied to
the self-reflective musings of Michel de Montaigne, and even today he has a reputation
as the father of this literary form.
Genres related to the essay may include:

• the memoir, telling the story of an author's life from the author's personal point of
view
• the epistle: usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter
Fiction
Narrative fiction (narrative prose) generally favours prose for the writing of novels, short
stories, graphic novels, and the like. Singular examples of these exist throughout
history, but they did not develop into systematic and discrete literary forms until
relatively recent centuries. Length often serves to categorize works of prose fiction.
Although limits remain somewhat arbitrary, modern publishing conventions dictate the
following:
• A Mini Saga is a short story of exactly 50 words

• A Flash fiction is generally defined as a piece of prose under a thousand words.
• A short story comprises prose writing of between 1000 and 20,000 words (but
typically more than 5000 words), which may or may not have a narrative arc.
• A story containing between 20,000 and 50,000 words falls into the novella
category.
• A work of fiction containing more than 50,000 words falls squarely into the realm
of the novel.
• A novel consists simply of a long story written in prose, yet the form developed
comparatively recently. Icelandic prose sagas dating from about the 11th century
bridge the gap between traditional national verse epics and the modern
psychological novel. In mainland Europe, the Spaniard Cervantes wrote perhaps

the first influential novel: Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in
1605 and the second in 1615. Earlier collections of tales, such as the One
Thousand and One Nights, Giovanni Bocaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's The
Canterbury Tales, have comparable forms and would classify as novels if written
today. Other works written in classical Asian and Arabic literature resemble even
more strongly the novel as we now think of it – for example, works such as the
Japanese Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, the Arabic Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn
Tufail, the Arabic Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, and the Chinese
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.
Early novels in Europe did not, at the time, count as significant literature, perhaps
because "mere" prose writing seemed easy and unimportant. It has become clear,
however, that prose writing can provide aesthetic pleasure without adhering to poetic
forms. Additionally, the freedom authors gain in not having to concern themselves with
verse structure translates often into a more complex plot or into one richer in precise
detail than one typically finds even in narrative poetry. This freedom also allows an
author to experiment with many different literary and presentation styles – including
poetry – in the scope of a single novel.
Other prose literature
Philosophy, history, journalism, and legal and scientific writings traditionally ranked as
literature. They offer some of the oldest prose writings in existence; novels and prose
stories earned the names "fiction" to distinguish them from factual writing or non-fiction,
which writers historically have crafted in prose.
The "literary" nature of science writing has become less pronounced over the last two
centuries, as advances and specialization have made new scientific research
inaccessible to most audiences; science now appears mostly in journals. Scientific
works of Euclid, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Newton still possess great value; but since
the science in them has largely become outdated, they no longer serve for scientific
instruction, yet they remain too technical to sit well in most programmes of literary study.
Outside of "history of science" programmes students rarely read such works. Many
books "popularizing" science might still deserve the title "literature"; history will tell.
Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its

practitioners lament this situation than occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new
philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history –
Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche – have become as canonical as any
writers. Some recent philosophy works are argued to merit the title "literature", such as
some of the works by Simon Blackburn; but much of it does not, and some areas, such
as logic, have become extremely technical to a degree similar to that of mathematics.
A great deal of historical writing can still rank as literature, particularly the genre known
as creative non-fiction. So can a great deal of journalism, such as literary journalism.
However these areas have become extremely large, and often have a primarily
utilitarian purpose: to record data or convey immediate information. As a result the
writing in these fields often lacks a literary quality, although it often and in its better
moments has that quality. Major "literary" historians include Herodotus, Thucydides and
Procopius, all of whom count as canonical literary figures.

Law offers a less clear case. Some writings of Plato and Aristotle8, or even the early
parts of the Bible, might count as legal literature. The law tables of Hammurabi of
Babylon might count. Roman civil law as codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis during the
reign of Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire has a reputation as significant literature. The
founding documents of many countries, including the United States Constitution, can
count as literature; however legal writing now rarely exhibits literary merit.
Game design scripts are never seen by the player of a game and only by the
developers and/or publishers to help them understand, visualize and maintain
consistency while collaborating in creating a game, the audience for these pieces is
usually very small. Still, many game scripts contain immersive stories and detailed
worlds making them a hidden literary genre.
Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally

constitute "literature" in the sense under discussion. They may sometimes count as
"literary literature"; more often they produce what one might call "technical literature" or
"professional literature".
Drama
A play or drama offers another classical literary form that has continued to evolve over
the years. It generally comprises chiefly dialogue between characters, and usually aims
at dramatic / theatrical performance (see theatre) rather than at reading. During the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera developed as a combination of poetry,
drama, and music. Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently.
Shakespeare could be considered drama. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a classic
romantic drama generally accepted as literature.
Greek drama exemplifies the earliest form of drama of which we have substantial
knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with
religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical
or mythological themes. Tragedies generally presented very serious themes. With the
advent of newer technologies, scripts written for non-stage media have been added to
this form. War of the Worlds (radio) in 1938 saw the advent of literature written for radio
broadcast, and many works of Drama have been adapted for film or television.
Conversely, television, film, and radio literature have been adapted to printed or
electronic media.
Oral literature
The term oral literature refers not to written, but to oral traditions, which includes
different types of epic, poetry and drama, folktales, ballads, legends, jokes, and other
genres of folklore. It exists in every society, whether literate or not. It is generally studied
by folklorists, or by scholars committed to cultural studies and ethnopoetics, including
linguists, anthropologists, and even sociologists.
Other narrative forms
8 http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aristotl.htm#H2

Other narrative forms refers to a literary genre consisting of works which originate in
digital environments.
Films, videos and broadcast soap operas have carved out a niche which often parallels
the functionality of prose fiction.
Graphic novels and comic books present stories told in a combination of sequential
artwork, dialogue and text.
Genres of literature
A literary genre refers to the traditional divisions of literature of various kinds according
to a particular criterion of writing. See the list of literary genres.
List of literary genres
• Autobiography, Memoir, Spiritual autobiography

• Biography
• Diaries and Journals
• Electronic literature
• Slave narrative
• Thoughts, Proverbs
• Fiction
• Adventure novel
• Children's literature
• Comic novel
• Crime fiction
• Detective fiction
• Fable, Fairy tale, Folklore
• Fantasy (for more details see Fantasy subgenres; fantasy literature)
• Gothic fiction (initially synonymous with horror)
• Historical fiction
• Horror
• Medical novel
• Mystery fiction
• Philosophical novel
• Political fiction
• Romance novel
• Historical romance
• Saga, Family Saga
• Satire
• Science fiction (for more details see Science fiction genre)
• Thriller
• Conspiracy fiction
• Legal thriller
• Psychological thriller
• Spy fiction/Political thriller
• Tragedy

Greatest Works
The following are but a few lists, compiled by reputable authorities, but is in no way
exhaustive. Many more lists are available online such as at the following website:
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html
100 Most Influential

Books Ever Written9
…..,list compiled by
Seymour-Smith, Martin.
1. The I Ching10
2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The
Odyssey by Homer
4. The Upanishads
5. The Way and Its
Power, Lao-tzu
6. The Avesta
7. Analects, Confucius
8. History of the
Peloponnesian War,
Thucydides
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
11. History, Herodotus
12. The Republic, Plato
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of
Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions
of the Holy Laws, Philo of
Alexandria
18. The New Testament
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death
of the Divine Augustus,
Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
9 Seymour-Smith, Martin. 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1998.
© 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtinfluential.html
10 Image source: bigsmilinghead.com/?p=13

25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
26. The Koran
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner
100 Most Influential Books of the Century11

Boston Public Library Booklists for Adults
1. Adler, Alfred. Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical

Compensation12: A Contribution to Clinical Medicine. 1917
2. Adorno, Theodor. Philosophy of Modern Music. 1973
3. Agee, James. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. 1941
4. Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. 1953
5. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1949
6. Beck, Simone, Bertholle, Louise and Child, Julia. Art of
French Cooking.
7. Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. 1934
8. Bernays, Edward. The Engineering of Consent. 1955
9. Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Our Bodies Our
Selves; A Book by and for Women. 1973
10. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. 1923
11. Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. 1962
12. Camus, Albert. The Stranger. 1946
13. Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. 1936
11 Compiled by Dawn Cook, General Library, Adult Reader and Information Services, Boston Public
Library, May 2000 http://www.bpl.org/research/AdultBooklists/influential.htm
12 Image source: http://images.filedby.com/bookimg/0548/9780548198605.jpg

14. Carson, Rachael. Silent Spring. 1962
15. Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. 1904
16. Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. 1957
17. Clark, Arthur. 2001: A Space Odyssey. 1960
18. Comfort, Alex. The Joy of Sex: A Cordon Bleu Guide to Lovemaking. 1972
19. Conrad, Joseph. The Heart of Darkness. 1902
20. Denby, Edwin. Looking at Dance. 1949
21. Dewey, John. The School and the Child: Being Selections from the Educational
Essays of John Dewey. 1907
22. Dobzhansky, Theodosius. Genetics and the Origin of the Species. 1937
23. Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1917
24. Eliot, T.S. Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917
25. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925
26. Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. 1947
27. Frankl, Victor. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. 1962
28. Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 1890-1915
29. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. 1913
30. Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of
Brazilian Civilization. 1933
31. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963
32. Gandhi, Mohandas K. Satyagraha in South Africa. 1928
33. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1967
34. Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. 1956
35. Goodall, Jane. In the Shadow of Man. 1971
36. Gorky, Maksim. Creatures that Once Were Men. 1905
37. Gray, John. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A Practical Guide for
Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationship.
1992
38. Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. 1961
39. Haley, Alex. Roots: The Saga of an American Family. 1976
40. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. 1962, English Translation
41. Heisenberg, Werner. Uncertainty Principle. 1927
42. Heller, Joseph. Catch 22. 1961
43. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926
44. Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. 1927
45. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. 1925-26
46. Ho, Chi Minh. Reflections from Captivity. 1978
47. James, William. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. 1907
48. John XXIII, Pope. Encyclicals of Pope John XXIII. 1965
49. Joyce, James. Ulysses. 1922
50. Jung, C.G. Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and
Symbolisms of the Libido, a Contribution to the Evolution of Thought. 1916
51. Kafka, Franz. The Trial. 1925
52. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. 1957
53. Keynes, John M. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. 1936
54. Kinsey, Alfred C. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. 1948
55. Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon. 1940
56. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962
57. Lawrence, D.H. Lady Chatterley's Lover. 1928
58. Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. 1962
59. LÈvi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. 1969
60. Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt. 1922
61. Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression. 1966
62. Malraux, AndrÈ. Man's Fate. 1934
63. Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. 1924
64. Mao, Tse-tung. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. 1966
65. Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. 1954.
66. Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive
Youth for Western Civilization. 1928
67. Merton, Thomas. Seven Story Mountain. 1948
68. Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. 1956
69. Morgan, Thomas Hunt. A Critique of the Theory of Evolution. 1916
70. Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Method. 1912
71. Nabokov, Vladimir V. Lolita. 1955
72. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four, A Novel. 1949
73. Pavlov, I. Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Psychological Activity of
the Cerebral Cortex. 1927
74. Piaget, Jean. Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. 1924
75. Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author. 1921
76. Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. 1913
77. Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. 1957
78. Reed, John. Ten Days That Shook the World. 1919
79. Reich, Wilhelm. Function of the Orgasm: Sex-economic Problems of Biological
Energy. 1973
80. Remarque, Rainer Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. 1928
81. Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives.
82. Sagan, Carl. Intelligent Life in the Universe. 1963
83. Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. 1951
84. Sanger, Mary. Happiness in Marriage. 1926
85. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology. 1943
86. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. 1906
87. Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. 1971
88. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander. The Gulag Archipelago. 1974-78
89. Spengler, Oswald. Decline of the West. 1918-22
90. Spock, Benjamin. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. 1946
91. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939
92. Surgeon General's Office. Smoking and Health: A Report of the Surgeon
General. 1979
93. Tarbell, Ida. The History of the Standard Oil Company. 1904
94. Von Neumann, John. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. 1944
95. W., Bill. AA Big Book. 1939
96. Watson, James D. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the
Structure of DNA. 1969
97. Watson, John. Behaviorism. 1925
98. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics. 1948
99. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929
100.Wright, Richard. Native Son. 1940

Books that Didn't Quite Make It
1. Albee, Edward. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 1962

2. Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1970
3. Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 1900
4. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. 1952
5. Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man.
6. Brown, Claude. Manchild in the Promised Land.
7. Brecht, Berthold. Mother Courage and her Children.
8. Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. 1970
9. Buck, Pearl. Good Earth. 1931
10. C‚pek, Karel. R.U.R.. 1920
11. Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood.
12. Celine, Louis-Ferdinand. Journey to the End of Night.
13. Chomsky, Noam. Problems of Knowledge and Freedom. 1971
14. Christie, Agatha. Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
15. cummings, e.e. Enormous Room.
16. Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. 1976
17. Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity.
18. Fossey, Dian. Gorillas in the Mist.
19. Gibbs, W. Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics.
20. Hall, Radclyffe. Well of Loneliness. 1928
21. Hammett, Dashiell. Maltese Falcon.
22. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature. 1902
23. James, Henry. The Golden Bowl. 1904
24. Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life.
25. Keynes, John M. The Economic Consequences of the
Peace13. 1919
26. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. 1960
27. Lukas, J.A. Common Ground.
28. Metalious, G. Peyton Place. 1956
29. Milne, A.A. Winnie-the-Pooh. 1926
30. Nin, Anais. The Diary of Anais Nin. 1966
31. O. Henry. Four Million.
32. Peale, Norman V. Power of Positive Thinking.
33. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. 1965
34. Potter, Beatrix. Tale of Peter Rabbit.
35. Rilke, Rainer M. Sonnets to Orpheus.
36. Ruben, David. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but were
Afraid to Ask. 1969
37. Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS
Epidemic. 1987
38. Skinner, B.F. Science and Human Behavior. 1953
39. Stein, Gertrude. Making of Americans.
40. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Phenomenon of Man.
41. Tuchman, Barbara. Guns of August. 1962
42. Tzara, Trista. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lamisteries.
43. Von Braun, Werner. The Mars Project. 1953
44. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five.
13 http://www.prometheusbooks.com/images/endoflassezfaire.jpg

45. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. 1982
46. X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965
47. Yeats, W.B. Wild Swans at Coole.
48. Zangvill, Israel. The Melting Pot. 1909
Compiled by Dawn Cook, General Library, Adult Reader and Information Services,
Boston Public Library, May 2000

Libraries around the World14
Early history
Antiquity
The first two libraries were composed for the most part, of published records, a
particular type of library called archives. Archaeological findings from the ancient city-
states of Sumer have revealed temple rooms full of clay tablets in cuneiform script.
These archives were made up almost completely of the records of commercial
transactions or inventories, with only a few documents touching theological matters,
historical records or legends. Things were much the same in the government and
temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt.
The earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit; besides correspondence
and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching
new scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 B.C. and those at
Nineveh about 700 B.C. showing a library classification system.
Over 30,000 clay tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal have been discovered at
Ninevah [2], providing archaeologists with an amazing wealth of Mesopotamian literary,
religious and administrative work. Among the findings were the Enuma Elish , also
known as the Epic of Creation,[3] which depicts a traditional Babylonian view of
creation, the Epic of Gilgamesh[4], a large selection of “omen texts” including Enuma
Anu Enlil which “contained omens dealing with the moon, its visibility, eclipses, and
conjunction with planets and fixed stars, the sun, its corona, spots, and eclipses, the
weather, namely lightning, thunder, and clouds, and the planets and their visibility,
appearance, and stations.”[5], and astronomic/astrological texts, as well as standard
lists used by scribes and scholars such as word lists, bilingual vocabularies, lists of
signs and synonyms, and lists of medical diagnoses.
Libraries in Persian Empire
During the Achaemenid Persian Empire (558–330 BC) the religious and scientific books
of Persia since Zoroaster, were archived in the libraries of "Ganj-i-hapigan" in Takht-i-
Suleiman and "Dez-i-Napesht" in Persepolis.[6] These books were probably in the fields
of philosophy, astronomy, alchemy and medical sciences, the fields in which Magus of
Persia were master in. After the invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great all these
books were burned. It has been mentioned in the book Arda Viraf that :
"He came to Persia with severe cruelty and war and devastation... and destroyed the
metropolis and empire, and made them desolate... all the avesta and zand, written upon
prepared cow-skins and with gold ink, was deposited in the archives... he burned them
up."
14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libraries

Libraries in the Hellenic World and Rome
Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books (as opposed to the
state or institutional records kept in archives) appeared in classical Greece in the 5th
century BC. The celebrated book collectors of Hellenistic Antiquity were listed in the late
second century in Deipnosophistae
Polycrates of Samos and Pisistratus who was tyrant of Athens, and Euclides who was
himself also an Athenian and Nicorrates of Samos and even the kings of Pergamos,
and Euripides the poet and Aristotle the philosopher, and Nelius his librarian; from
whom they say our countryman[10] Ptolemæus, surnamed Philadelphus, bought them
all, and transported them, with all those which he had collected at Athens and at
Rhodes to his own beautiful Alexandria.
All these libraries were Greek; the cultivated Hellenized diners in Deipnosophistae pass
over the libraries of Rome in silence. By the time of Augustus there were public libraries
near the forums of Rome: there were libraries in the Porticus Octaviae near the Theatre
of Marcellus, in the temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Biblioteca Ulpiana in the
Forum of Trajan. The state archives were kept in a structure on the slope between the
Roman Forum and the Capitoline Hill.
Private libraries appeared during the late republic: Seneca inveighed against libraries
fitted out for show by non-reading owners who scarcely read their titles in the course of
a lifetime, but displayed the scrolls in bookcases (armaria) of citrus wood inlaid with
ivory that ran right to the ceiling: "by now, like bathrooms and hot water, a library is got
up as standard equipment for a fine house (domus).[12] Libraries were amenities suited
to a villa, such as Cicero's at Tusculum, Maecenas's several villas, or Livy the
Younger's, all described in surving letters. At the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum,
apparently the villa of Caesar's father-in-law, the Greek library has been partly
preserved in volcanic ash; archaeologists speculate that a Latin library, kept separate
from the Greek one, may await discovery at the site.
In the West, the first public libraries were established under the Roman Empire as each
succeeding emperor strove to open one or many which outshone that of his
predecessor. Unlike the Greek libraries, readers had direct access to the scrolls, which
were kept on shelves built into the walls of a large room. Reading or copying was
normally done in the room itself. The surviving records give only a few instances of
lending features. As a rule Roman public libraries were bilingual: they had a Latin room
and a Greek room. Most of the large Roman baths were also cultural centers, built from
the start with a library, with the usual two room arrangement for Greek and Latin texts.
Libraries were filled with parchment scrolls as at Library of Pergamum and on papyrus
scrolls as at Alexandria: export of prepared writing materials was a staple of commerce.
There were a few institutional or royal libraries which were open to an educated public
(like the Library of Alexandria, once the largest library in the ancient world), but on the
whole collections were private. In those rare cases where it was possible for a scholar
to consult library books there seems to have been no direct access to the stacks. In all
recorded cases the books were kept in a relatively small room where the staff went to

get them for the readers, who had to consult them in an adjoining hall or covered
walkway.
In the sixth century, at the very close of the Classical period, the great libraries of the
Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria. Cassiodorus,
minister to Theodoric, established a monastery at Vivarium in the heel of Italy with a
library where he attempted to bring Greek learning to Latin readers and preserve texts
both sacred and secular for future generations. As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus
not only collected as many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at
instructing his monks in the proper uses of reading and methods for copying texts
accurately. In the end, however, the library at Vivarium was dispersed and lost within a
century.
Through Origen and especially the scholarly presbyter Pamphilus of Caesarea, an avid
collector of books of Scripture, the theological school of Caesarea won a reputation for
having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000
manuscripts: Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study
there.
With education firmly in Christian hands, however, many of the works of classical
antiquity were no longer considered useful. Old texts were washed off the valuable
parchment and papyrus, which were reused, forming palimpsests. As scrolls gave way
to the new book-form, the codex, which was universally used for Christian literature, old
manuscript scrolls were cut apart and used to stiffen leather bindings.
Ancient Chinese Libraries
Little is known about early Chinese libraries[citation needed], save what is written about
the imperial library which began with the Qin Dynasty. One of the curators of the
imperial library in the Han Dynasty is believed to have been the first to establish a
library classification system and the first book notation system. At this time the library
catalog was written on scrolls of fine silk and stored in silk bags.
Islamic Libraries
In Persia many libraries were established by the Zoroastrian elite and the Persian
Kings. Among the first ones was a royal library in Isfahan. One of the most important
public libraries established around 667 AD in south-western Iran was the Library of
Gundishapur. It was a part of a bigger scientific complex located at the Academy of
Gundishapur. Upon the rise of Islam, libraries in newly Islamic lands knew a brief period
of expansion in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Like the Christian
libraries, they mostly contained books which were made of paper, and took a codex or
modern form instead of scrolls; they could be found in mosques, private homes, and
universities. In Aleppo, for example the largest and probably the oldest mosque library,
the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book
collection of which 10,000 volumes were reportedly bequeathed by the city's most
famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla. Some mosques sponsored public libraries. Ibn al-
Nadim's bibliography Fihrist demonstrates the devotion of medieval Muslim scholars to
books and reliable sources; it contains a description of thousands of books circulating in

the Islamic world circa 1000, including an entire section for books about the doctrines of
other religions. Unfortunately, modern Islamic libraries for the most part do not hold
these antique books; many were lost, destroyed by Mongols, or removed to European
libraries and museums during the colonial period.
By the 8th century first Iranians and then Arabs had imported the craft of papermaking
from China, with a paper mill already at work in Baghdad in 794. By the 9th century
completely public libraries started to appear in many Islamic cities. They were called
"halls of Science" or dar al-'ilm. They were each endowed by Islamic sects with the
purpose of representing their tenets as well as promoting the dissemination of secular
knowledge. The 9th century Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil of Iraq, even ordered the
construction of a ‘zawiyat qurra literally an enclosure for readers which was `lavishly
furnished and equipped.' In Shiraz Adhud al-Daula (d. 983) set up a library, described
by the medieval historian, al-Muqaddasi, as`a complex of buildings surrounded by
gardens with lakes and waterways. The buildings were topped with domes, and
comprised an upper and a lower story with a total, according to the chief official, of 360
rooms.... In each department, catalogues were placed on a shelf... the rooms were
furnished with carpets...'. The libraries often employed translators and copyists in large
numbers, in order to render into Arabic the bulk of the available Persian, Greek, Roman
and Sanskrit non-fiction and the classics of literature. This flowering of Islamic learning
ceased centuries later when learning began declining in the Islamic world, after many of
these libraries were destroyed by Mongol invasions. Others were victim of wars and
religious strife in the Islamic world. However, a few examples of these medieval
libraries, such as the libraries of Chinguetti in West Africa, remain intact and relatively
unchanged even today. Another ancient library from this period which is still operational
and expanding is the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi in the Iranian city of
Mashhad, which has been operating for more than six centuries.
A number of distinct features of the modern library were introduced in the Islamic world,
where libraries not only served as a collection of manuscripts as was the case in ancient
libraries, but also as a public library and lending library, a centre for the instruction and
spread of sciences and ideas, a place for meetings and discussions, and sometimes as
a lodging for scholars or boarding school for pupils. The concept of the library catalogue
was also introduced in medieval Islamic libraries, where books were organized into
specific genres and categories.
The contents of these Islamic libraries were copied by Christian monks in

Muslim/Christian border areas, particularly Spain and Sicily. From there they eventually
made their way into other parts of Christian Europe. These copies joined works that had
been preserved directly by Christian monks from Greek and Roman originals, as well as
copies Western Christian monks made of Byzantine works. The resulting conglomerate
libraries are the basis of every modern library today.
Medieval Christian Libraries
With the retrenchment of literacy in the Roman west during the fourth and fifth centuries,
fewer private libraries were maintained, and those in unfortified villas proved to be
among their most combustible contents.

In the Early Middle Ages, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and before the rise
of the large Western Christian monastery libraries beginning at Montecassino, libraries
were found in scattered places in the Christian Middle East.
Medieval library design reflected the fact that these manuscripts —created via the labor-
intensive process of hand copying— were valuable possessions. Library architecture
developed in response to the need for security. Librarians often chained books to
lecterns, armaria (wooden chests), or shelves, in well-lit rooms. Despite this
protectiveness, many libraries were willing to lend their books if provided with security
deposits (usually money or a book of equal value). Monastic libraries lent and borrowed
books from each other frequently and lending policy was often theologically grounded.
For example, the Franciscan monasteries loaned books to each other without a security
deposit since according to their vow of poverty only the entire order could own property.
In 1212 the council of Paris condemned those monasteries that still forbade loaning
books, reminding them that lending is "one of the chief works of mercy."
Lending meant more than just having another work to read to librarians; while the work
was in their possession, it could be copied, thus enriching the library's own collecion.
The book lent as a counter effort was often copied in the same way, so both libraries
ended up having an additional title.
The early libraries located in monastic cloisters and associated with scriptoria were
collections of lecterns with books chained to them. Shelves built above and between
back-to-back lecterns were the beginning of bookpresses. The chain was attached at
the fore-edge of a book rather than to its spine. Book presses came to be arranged in
carrels (perpendicular to the walls and therefore to the windows) in order to maximize
lighting, with low bookcases in front of the windows. This stall system (fixed bookcases
perpendicular to exterior walls pierced by closely spaced windows) was characteristic of
English institutional libraries. In Continental libraries, bookcases were arranged parallel
to and against the walls. This wall system was first introduced on a large scale in
Spain's El Escorial.
Early Modern Libraries

Johannes Gutenberg's movable type innovation in the 1400s revolutionized
bookmaking. From the 15th century in central and northern Italy, the assiduously
assembled libraries of humanists and their enlightened patrons provided a nucleus
around which an "academy" of scholars congregated in each Italian city of
consequence. Cosimo de Medici in Florence established his own collection, which
formed the basis of the Laurentian Library. In Rome, the papal collections were brought
together by Pope Nicholas V, in separate Greek and Latin libraries, and housed by
Pope Sixtus IV, who consigned the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana to the care of his
librarian, the humanist Bartolomeo Platina in February 1475. In the 16th century Sixtus
V bisected Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere with a cross-wing to house the Apostolic
Library in suitable magnificence. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw other
privately-endowed libraries assembled in Rome: the Vallicelliana, formed from the
books of Saint Filippo Neri, with other distinguished libraries such as that of Cesare
Baronio, the Biblioteca Angelica founded by the Augustinian Angelo Rocca, which was
the only truly public library in Counter-Reformation Rome; the Biblioteca Alessandrina
with which Pope Alexander VII endowed the University of Rome; the Biblioteca

Casanatense of the Cardinal Girolamo Casanate; and finally the Biblioteca Corsiniana
founded by the bibliophile Clement XII Corsini and his nephew Cardinal Neri Corsini,
still housed in Palazzo Corsini in via della Lungara.
A lot of factors combined to create a "golden age of libraries" between 1600 and 1700:
The quantity of books had gone up, as the cost had gone down, there was a renewal in
the interest of classical literature and culture, nationalism was encouraging nations to
build great libraries, universities were playing a more prominent role in education, and
renaissance thinkers and writers were producing great works. Some of the more
important libraries include the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Library of the British
Museum, the Mazarine Library in Paris, and the National Central Library in Italy, the
Prussian State Library, the M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library of St.
Petersburg, and many more.
Public Libraries
15
The earliest example in England of a library to be endowed for the benefit of users
who were not members of an institution such as a cathedral or college was the Francis
Trigge Chained Library in Grantham, Lincolnshire, established in 1598. The library still
exists and can justifiably claim to be the forerunner of later public library systems.The
beginning of the modern, free, open access libraries really got its start in the U.K. in
1847. Parliament appointed a committee, led by William Ewart, on Public Libraries to
consider the necessity of establishing libraries through the nation: In 1849 their report
noted the poor condition of library service, it recommended the establishment of free
public libraries all over the country, and it led to the Public Libraries Act in 1850, which
allowed all cities with populations exceeding 10,000 to levy taxes for the support of
public libraries. Another important act was the 1870 Public School Law, which increased
literacy, thereby the demand for libraries, so by 1877, more than 75 cities had
established free libraries, and by 1900 the number had reached 300. This finally marks
the start of the public library as we know it. And these acts led to similar laws in other
countries, most notably the U.S.
1876 is a well known year in the history of librarianship. The American Library
Association was formed, as well as The American Library Journal, Melvil Dewey
published his decimal based system of classification, and the United States Bureau of
Education published its report, "Public libraries in the United
States of America; their history, condition, and management."
The American Library Association continues to play a major role
in libraries to this day, and Dewey's classification system,
although under heavy criticism of late, still remains as the
prevailing method of classification used in the United States.
As the number of books in libraries increased, so did the need

for compact storage and access with adequate lighting, giving
birth to the stack system, which involved keeping a library's
collection of books in a space separate from the reading room,
an arrangement which arose in the 19th century. Book stacks quickly evolved into a
fairly standard form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the
bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of translucent blocks to
15 Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libraries

permit the passage of light (but were not transparent, for reasons of modesty). With the
introduction of electrical lighting, it had a huge impact on how the library operated. Also,
the use of glass floors was largely discontinued, though floors were still often composed
of metal grating to allow air to circulate in multi-story stacks. Ultimately, even more
space was needed, and a method of moving shelves on tracks (compact shelving) was
introduced to cut down on otherwise wasted aisle space.
Library 2.0, a term coined in 2005, is the library's response to the challenge of Google
and an attempt to meet the changing needs and wants of the users by using web 2.0
technology. Some of the aspects of Library 2.0 include, commenting, tagging,
bookmarking, discussions, using social software, plug-ins, and widgets.[22] Inspired by
web 2.0, it is an attempt to make the library a more user driven institution.
Types of Libraries
Smaller libraries can sometimes be found in private homes.
Libraries can be divided into categories by several methods:
• by the entity (institution, municipality, or corporate body) that supports or

perpetuates them
○ academic libraries
○ corporate libraries
○ government libraries
○ historical society libraries
○ private libraries
○ public libraries
○ school libraries
• by the type of documents or materials they hold

○ data libraries
○ digital libraries
○ picture (photograph) libraries
○ slide libraries
○ tool libraries
• by the subject matter of documents they hold

○ architecture libraries
○ fine arts libraries
○ law libraries
○ medical libraries
○ theological libraries
• by the users they serve

○ military communities
○ users who are blind or visually/physically handicapped
• by traditional professional divisions

○ Academic libraries — These libraries are located on the campuses of
colleges and universities and serve primarily the students and faculty of
that and other academic institutions. Some academic libraries, especially
those at public institutions, are accessible to members of the general
public in whole or in part.
○ Public libraries or public lending libraries — These libraries provide service
to the general public and make at least some of their books available for
borrowing, so that readers may use them at home over a period of days or
weeks. Typically, libraries issue library cards to community members
wishing to borrow books. Many public libraries also serve as community
organizations that provide free services and events to the public, such as
reading groups and toddler story time.
○ Research libraries — These libraries are intended for supporting scholarly
research, and therefore maintain permanent collections and attempt to
provide access to all necessary material. Research libraries are most
often academic libraries or national libraries, but many large special
libraries have research libraries within their special field and a very few of
the largest public libraries also serve as research libraries.
○ School libraries — Most public and private primary and secondary schools
have libraries designed to support the school's curriculum.
○ Special libraries — All other libraries fall into this category. Many private
businesses and public organizations, including hospitals, museums,
research laboratories, law firms, and many government departments and
agencies, maintain their own libraries for the use of their employees in
doing specialized research related to their work. Special libraries may or
may not be accessible to some identified part of the general public.
Branches of a large academic or research libraries dealing with particular
subjects are also usually called "special libraries": they are generally
associated with one or more academic departments. Special libraries are
distinguished from special collections, which are branches or parts of a
library intended for rare books, manuscripts, and similar material. [1]
The final method of dividing library types is also the simplest.
Many institutions make a distinction between circulating libraries (where materials are
expected and intended to be loaned to patrons, institutions, or other libraries) and
collecting libraries (where the materials are selected on a basis of their natures or
subject matter). Many modern libraries are a mixture of both, as they contain a general
collection for circulation, and a reference collection which is often more specialized, as
well as restricted to the library premises.
Also, the governments of most major countries support national libraries. Three
noteworthy examples are the U.S. Library of Congress, Canada's Library and Archives
Canada, and the British Library. A typically broad sample of libraries in one state in the
U.S. can be explored at Every Library In Illinois.
Organization
Libraries usually contain long aisles with rows of books.

Libraries have materials arranged in a specified order according to a library
classification system, so that items may be located quickly and collections may be
browsed efficiently. Some libraries have additional galleries beyond the public ones,
where reference materials are stored. These reference stacks may be open to selected
members of the public. Others require patrons to submit a "stack request," which is a
request for an assistant to retrieve the material from the closed stacks.
Larger libraries are often broken down into departments staffed by both
paraprofessionals and professional librarians.
…….
Library use
The Vietnam Center and Archive, which contains the largest collection of Vietnam War-
related holdings outside the U.S. federal government, catalogs much of its material on
the Internet.
Patrons may not know how to fully use the library's resources. This can be due to some
individuals' unease in approaching a staff member. The greatest impact, though are the
ways in which a library's content is displayed or accessed. An antiquated or clumsy
search system, or a staff unwilling or untrained to engage its patrons will limit a library's
usefulness. In United States public libraries, beginning in the 19th century these
problems drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which advocated
library user education. One of the early leaders was John Cotton Dana. The basic form
of library instruction is generally known as information literacy.
Libraries inform their users of what materials are available in their collections and how
to access that information. ………………………….
Finland has the highest number of registered book borrowers per capita in the world.
Over half of Finland's population are registered borrowers. In the U.S., public library
users have borrowed roughly 15 books per user per year from 1856 to 1978. From 1978
to 2004, book circulation per user declined approximately 50%. The growth of
audiovisuals circulation, estimated at 25% of total circulation in 2004, accounts for about
half of this decline.
………………………………
Famous libraries
Some of the greatest libraries in the world are research libraries. The most famous ones
include The Humanities and Social Sciences Library of the New York Public Library in
New York City, the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, the British Library in
London, Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, National Library of Spain in Madrid,
and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C..

• Abbey library of St. Gallen founded in 612 and now a UNESCO World Heritage
Site.
• Ambrosian Library in Milan opened to the public, December 8, 1609.
• Baghdad's House of Wisdom, founded in 8th century AD.
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) in Paris, 1720.
• Bodleian Library at University of Oxford 1602, books collection begin around
1252.
• Boston Public Library in Boston, 1826.
• British Library in London created in 1973 by the British Library Act of 1972
(Originally part of the British Museum founded 1753).
• British Library of Political and Economic Science in London, 1896.
• Butler Library at Columbia University, 1934
• Cambridge University Library at University of Cambridge, 1931.
• Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, 1895.
• Carnegie library Total of 2,509, between 1883 and 1929.
• Carolina Rediviva at Uppsala University, 1841.
• Dutch Royal Library in The Hague, 1798.
• Egypt's Library of Alexandria (founded in 3rd century BC) and modern
Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
• Egypt's library of Cairo, founded in 10th century.
• Firestone Library at Princeton University, 1948
• Fisher Library at the University of Sydney (largest in the Southern Hemisphere),
1908
• Franklin Public Library in Franklin, Massachusetts (the first public library in the
U.S.; original books donated by Benjamin Franklin in 1731)
• Free Library of Philadelphia in Philadelphia established February 18, 1891.
• Garrison Library in Gibraltar, 1793.
• Geisel Library of UCSD, part of University of California, San Diego.
• Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, 1924.
• Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the Canada-US border.
• House of Commons Library, Westminster, London. Established 1818.
• Islamic Spain's library of Cordoba, founded in 9th century.
• Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, founded between 669-631 BC.
• The European Library, 2004
• Tripoli's Dar il-'ilm, destroyed in 1109.
• ITU Mustafa Inan Library. Established 1795. The largest collection on technical
(science and engineering) materials in Turkey.
• Jagiellonian Library at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, 1364.
• Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia founded 1802.
• John Rylands Library in Manchester 1972.
• Leiden University Library at Leiden University in Leiden began at 1575 with
confiscated monastery books. Officially open in October 31, 1587.
• Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 1800.
• Library of Sir Thomas Browne, 1711
• Mitchell Library in Glasgow (one of the largest public references libraries in
Europe)
• Multnomah County Library in Oregon, largest public library west of the
Mississippi River, 1864.
• National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia
• National Library of Belarus in Minsk, 1922.
• National Library of Iran, 1937.
• National Library of Ireland in Dublin, 1877.
• National library of Israel (formerly: Jewish National and University Library) in
Jerusalem, Israel, 1892.
• National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, 1925.
• National Library of Spain in Madrid, 1711.
• National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, 1907.
• New York Public Library in New York
• Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
• Powell Library at UCLA, part of the UCLA Library.
• Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, one of the largest repositories of
books in the world.
• Royal Library in Copenhagen, 1793.
• Russian State Library in Moscow, 1862.
• Sassanid's ancient Library of Gondishapur around 489.
• Seattle Central Library
• Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
• State Library of New South Wales in Sydney
• State Library of Victoria in Melbourne
• Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, 1931.
• St. Marys Church, Reigate, Surrey houses the first public lending library in
England. Opened 14 March 1701.
• The St. Phillips Church Parsonage Provincial Library, established in 1698 in
Charleston, South Carolina, was the first public lending library in the American
Colonies. See also Benjamin Franklin's free public library in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
• Trinity College Library, in Trinity College, Dublin, the largest library in Ireland.
Since 1592.
• Vatican Library in Vatican City, 1448 (but existed before).
• Wellcome Library in London
• Widener Library at Harvard University (Harvard University Library including all
branches has the largest academic collection overall.)
Some libraries devoted to a single subject:
• Chess libraries
• Esperanto libraries
• Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, the world's largest genealogy
library.

Bookshops and online stores
Famous bookshops
• Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht
• El Ateneo in Buenos Aires
• Livraria Lello in Porto
• Secret Headquarters comic bookstore in Los Angeles
• Borders in Glasgow
• Scarthin's in the Peak District
• Posada in Brussels
• El Péndulo in Mexico
• Keibunsya in Kyoto
• Hatchards in London
Online stores
• Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/
• Powells Books
http://powells.com/
• Borders Books
http://www.borders.com/
• Barnes and Nobles
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
• Liberty Books
http://libertybooks.com/
• Chapters.indigo.ca
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/
Free eBooks sites

• eSnips.com
http://www.esnips.com/
• Shareware eBooks.com
www.sharewareebooks.com

Book clubs online
An online book club is a website or online community where the discussion of books
takes place, including various Web forums, Yahoo! Groups, and email-based reading
groups16.
Book clubs online are a great resource. You can discover new titles, get suggestions
from like-minded people, reviews, discussions, analysis, and so much more, all from
the comfort of your home.
Some of the recommended online book clubs are:
• SeniorNet
http://discussions.seniornet.org
• Utne Reader's Book Club
http://cafeutne.org/cafe/?enter+Literature.Utne_Book_Club
• Salon.com Table Talk – Books
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@114.sxcAajHRfod.0@.ee6ced0
• Reader's Paradise Forum
http://glyphs.gardenweb.com/forums/paradise/
• Constant Reader Message Board
http://www.constantreader.com/
• Shakespeare High Cafeteria
http://www.shakespearehigh.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi
• BookWire Discussion Forum
http://bookwiredforum.ipbhost.com/
• Bookworms
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Styx/3544/
• Book a Month
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/booksamonth
• Literary Fiction Lovers
http://www.geocities.com/chrissy3861/
• The Bookies
http://www.geocities.com/bookiestoo/
• Usenet Book Newsgroup
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=rec.arts.books
• Usenet Book Review Newsgroup
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=rec.arts.books.reviews
• Shelfari
http://www.shelfari.com
16 http://www.book-clubs-resource.com/online/

Esaays on Joys of Reading
1 Kiran Piracha
Curling17 up with a book and a cup of hot coffee on a cold winter night may be sound
like fun to some people out there but those of us who are addicted to reading know just
how wonderful it feels to lose yourself into a whole new world. So we also know exactly
what Gustave Flaubert was trying to say when he exclaimed, "Read in order to live'.
And don't we all want to live and not just exist?
I was exposed to books at a very young age, when my father would clutter this
cupboards and every available space with books ranging in subject anywhere from
management to history to science. It was then only natural that I grew up loving the
printed matter, I read just about anything from newspapers to books to magazines.
Reading is such a passion with me that I am absolutely certain that nothing else would
ever be able to replace it. So is the case with all book-lovers, with varying intensity.
Reading always works its magic, regardless of who you are and what is it that you are
reading, provided it's not trash.
The most wonderful thing that reading offers is a peep into another world. when you
pick up a book and lose yourself into it, its like you have transcended your present
situation. This temporary escape from our routine life is of great significance when it
comes to your mental health. We all have day-to-days tasks to take care of, and many a
times we go to bed all tense and frustrated and sometimes just downright bored with
life. This is when reading comes to our rescue and we should welcome it with open
arms if we truly want to be happy and alive. To be able to forget our problems, or simply
to forget ourselves for sometime, is not only healthy… it is essential too, if one wants to
keep ones sanity intact. Reading offers us a chance to see the world from someone
else's eyes, thus broadening our horizons and opening our minds to new possibilities.
Don't ever forget the words of Sir Richard Steele, who said, "Reading is to mind what
exercise is to the body".
You emerge out of this trance-like situation, fully refreshed, with a clearer vision and
rejuvenated spirit. So the next time you feel as if your mental batteries could do with a
recharge, pick up a good book and immerse yourself into for a good hour or so. And
mind you, this solution comes with a guarantee card.
Whether you read for pleasure or information, you are bound to benefit in one way or
another because fiction and non-fiction both offer something of value and therefore their
company must be cherished. Though non-fiction varies in category from self-help books
to those concerning science and geography, they can do anyone lots of good. When I
was going through a particularly painful adolescence, such non-fiction was what I
sought help from. Therefore I recommend that if you mainly read for fun, you must from
17 http://www.essortment.com/all/joyofreading_rdxc.htm Written by Kiran Piracha - © 2002 Pagewise

time to time switch to reading of some pure non-fiction too. A good book of famous
quotes or something concerning religion or human psychology is not a bad way to begin
your journey into the world of non-fiction. Do read for knowledge and information too, if
you want to get the most out of reading.
But we must not forget that the merits associated with reading can only be taken
advantage of when we read books of value. Reading trashy stuff, will only rob you of
your precious time, money and energy giving you nothing of importance in return. John
Ruskin aptly remarked, "Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to
waste none of them in reading valueless books".
It's very tragic to see that many people, usually those who are not much into reading
themselves, don't expose their children to the wonderful world of books. As a result,
many kids would either do drugs or get into excessive drinking during their difficult
adolescence. I am sure I would have done the same in my early teens had I been
unaware of the pleasure of reading. Books would not only increase a child's knowledge
of the world in general, it would always develop their imaginative faculties which is so
very essential for the healthy mental growth of a child.
I agree that reading is like an infection which can be caught, not taught, but it is your
responsibility as a parent to expose the kid to germs at least. Chances are they would
catch the disease because their immunity system isn't all that strong at that age. Keep
Galileo's words in mind, "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him
discover it within himself".
2 George Wedd
BACON18 said 'Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an
exact man'. (I recall a favourite undergraduate howler: "'Eating maketh a full man"
(Bacon)'.) We are told that the age of the printed word between hard, or even paper,
covers is passing. It has had a long run. Half a millennium of moveable type: well, we
cannot justly complain if it is replaced by something intangible, ethereal and electronic;
just as long as 'the Word' remains. 'In the beginning was the Word', as St John thought-
provokingly says, and so it will remain until some clever man in the West of America
discovers a way to communicate thoughts direct from your skull to mine without
using the tiresome formula of subject-verb-object. Almost all of us can read. England
was largely literate in the sixteenth century, and became nearly completely so when a
Liberal Minister followed up manhood suffrage by saying 'We must educate our
masters'. It is slightly shocking to be approached in the post office by a nervous man
asking help to fill in a form, 'because, you see, I cannot read'. It is a sign of illness.
Although practically all of us can read, not all of us do. There are various degrees of
indifference and aversion.
There was an old lady who was eventually prescribed glasses but would not wear them,
saying 'It's all bloody seeing!' (She died when knocked down by a car.) An aunt of mine
would meet me returning in triumph from W.H. Smith's, having spent my infant pocket-
money on a Penguin (six old pence -- eheu, fugaces) , with the words 'But you've got a
18 George Wedd "The joys of Reading".
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1640_281/ai_91971268/

book already!' I sometimes share a newspaper with a fellow-drinker in the village pub:
he wants nothing but the sports pages at the back, while I want everything but them. His
fingers trace the headlines and the picture captions; then he gives up and his lips cease
to move. He is in a prison, but does not realise it. (So, no doubt, am I, but in a larger,
open, one.)
What do we read, and why? Everyone has his or her own story. I declare my interest. I
am in my seventies. I went to the village school on my fourth birthday, and thanks to the
burning-glass of my mother's concentration on me I could already read. So I have had a
long acquaintance with print. I had poorish eyesight, not diagnosed for a very long time,
which made me a duffer at all games involving balls moving rapidly -- especially cricket,
which involved small, hard balls aimed directly at me, and to which I have a long
aversion. Then, of course, there was the Second World War and its aftermath, when
there was little else to do. Even getting around to see the world was difficult. Buses
were few and usually ran to factories, and at the railway station there were posters
asking 'Is your journey really necessary?' I had a bicycle, but in our hilly district ten
miles was about the perimeter for that. Thank Heaven, there was a library -- a poor one
even by the standards of the time, but there were books, rooms full of them, and I
worked systematically along the shelves. (Actually, the first library I joined had no visible
books; there was a card-index on the wall. You took a card and presented it through a
hatch to an unpleasant man who would interrogate you and, if satisfied, get the book --
slowly -- from some back room. That was in D.H. Lawrence's home town, and I have
wondered sometimes if he used it as a boy and, if so, what the 'librarian' and he made
of each other.)
I therefore read -- and read -- and read. I knew the names of the important, classic,
authors, and the library was old-fashioned enough to have them. This was not, in fact,
as much of a good thing as it sounds. I did not understand half of what I read; not just
romantic love, but much to do with adult affairs of all kinds was beyond a juvenile
appreciation. And, having read them too young with incomprehension, I find they are
spoiled for me. It sounds very grand to have read Bleak House or The Brothers
Karamazov at the age of twelve, but it makes them heavy going now. My mother had a
shelf or two of the better popular novels of the 1920s and 30s, and I read with
enjoyment Jeffrey Farnol and Rafael Sabatini; I wish I could find The Sea Hawk, The
Amateur Gentleman and The Constant Nymph again, but some house move or other
has claimed them. Her odd taste for French (in translation) leads me to say, with
Dorothy Parker,
`I read, and did not cease,

Dumas pere et Dumas fils,
Until I found I did not care
For Dumas fils and Dumas pere'.
My grandmother's bookshelf was made of sterner stuff. When the Prophet Mohammed
enjoined his followers not to dispute with 'the People of the Book', he had Christians
generally in mind (and Jews, too, of course). But the English of a hundred or so years
ago were 'People of the Book' with a vengeance, and the Books in question were the
King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, Hymns Ancient and Modern, Pilgrim's
Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. For what it's worth, I do not think you will go far
wrong if you know those well. Foxe is pretty well forgotten now, but his descriptions of
the grandeur and courage of men and women dying fearfully for their beliefs were burnt
into an impressionable mind. I cannot think of a more stirring passage in English
literature than his description of the trial and condemnation of Dr Rowland Taylor, rector
of Hadleigh in Suffolk, for denying transubstantiation. Dr Taylor was condemned in
London and taken back to Hadleigh to be burned at the stake. As the procession approa
ched Hadleigh, he slipped off his horse 'and leaped and took a frisk or two, as men
commonly do in dancing. Why, master doctor, said the sheriff, what do you now? He
answered, Well, God be praised, good master sheriff, never better, for now I know I am
almost at home. I have but two stiles to go over, and I am even at my Father's house'.
As a student, I read with furious determination. I typed up my lecture notes to fix them
in my mind. As a civil servant, one-third of my working life was given over to reading
and one-third to writing (the rest to discussion).
In those days of strict anonymity, nothing printed carried an author's name. It rankles
ever so slightly, still, that a dozen or more heavyweight publications appeared simply as
'published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office for the Department...'. Had I been in
academic life, I would have seen my name on the spines. Still, most of them were
of their time and for their time and would not bear re-reading. For my own leisure
reading, I found that fiction gradually lost its hold on me. One concludes a novel
wondering, Am I any better, or any better-informed? Very rarely; I have simply passed
some time. Time is not to be killed; it is to be used. History -- the account of people who
did not know what was going to happen next (a very un-Marxist view: Marxists always
know what is going to happen next, as the historical dialectic unfolds) -- held its grip. I
would make one exception to this: Thomas Hardy. For some reason, I would generally
finish a Hardy novel feeling better for it. But that is a personal quirk. Trollope I enjoyed,
but really as a side-light on nineteenth-century history. He tells one how people thought
and felt as they moved through that momentous century.
To jump decades, as I approached my retirement I felt singularly ill-read, and in the last
year or two I amused myself by making a list of the minor classics which I would get to
grips with in my retirement. I don't suppose English literature is unique in having a large
stock of really worth-while books, which have played their part but which have passed
from the scene. Here are some I jotted down, and read. Eothen by Kinglake (including a
notable description of Cairo in the plague); Discourses on Painting by Reynolds (a very
straightforward book); Religic Medici by Browne; The Great Rebellion by Clarendon;
Arabia Deserta by Doughty; Eminent Victorians by Strachey; The Idea of a University by
Newman. I would have another go at Strafford by Browning, urged on by the thought
that Strafford was the most eminent member of my old college. I would try to finish any
novel by George Meredith. I would try to understand, and be patient with, any novel by
Henry James -- and not react as a friend does, who says her react ion at about page 50
of any James novel is to think 'when you have decided what you want to tell me, send
me a post-card'. I would try not to admire Kipling quite so much, and to get rid of the
feeling that MacAndrew's Hymn is one of the finest poems in the language. I would try
to see what I am assured is the innate vulgarity of Longfellow and not enjoy Hiawatha --
undeterred by the example of Winston Churchill who in his seventies stunned a dinner-
party by reciting most of King Robert of Sicily, which he said he had learnt for pleasure
at Harrow.
In this category of minor classics are some books and authors who have truly ferocious
secret admirers. John Betjeman is one. He clearly isn't going to be ranked with Milton,

or even Dryden. However that may be, in any party of reasonably literate people a line
from Betjeman will be recognised, and capped. Another name came up when I was
discussing with a junior Minister -- a nice man, but one I had not thought of as having
any special literary taste -- public transport, of all mundane things, and I said 'We have
come to our coaches, forsooth', instantly drawing from him 'It was not so in Queen
Elizabeth's time, before the civil warres'; and so I recognised a fellow-lover of Aubrey's
Brief Lives. If I had to chose one prose work to survive from the seventeenth century, I
think Aubrey's warm, catty, gossipy book would be it -- and so marvellously improper,
too. His notes on Sir Walter Raleigh -- now, there's something (especially the passage
beginning 'He loved a wench well...', by which Aubrey does not mean any special
wench, but any passing girl).
Then there's the strange passion aroused by The Wrong Box (RLS and Lloyd
Osbourne); a very good book indeed but not one, I would have thought, to have such
admirers. But RLS draws people by the dichotomy of his personality -- lighthearted and
romantic on the surface, and, not too far down, a depressed Calvinism. I don't much
want to know how Turandot would have ended, but I wish heartily to know how Weir of
Hermiston would have turned out.
I wish I could remember why I liked Quiller-Couch so much for so long; perhaps one has
to like the 'delectable Duchy' of Cornwall he loved. Now he is in a box I am sure I shall
not re-open, along with the boyhood stories of G. A. Henty. These occupied a glass-
fronted bookcase at my grandmother's. They were treated with reverence, and I was
made to wash my hands before handling them: the reason, I realised much later, was
that they had been given as school prizes to my uncles, who had not returned, poor
boys, from the Western Front, and they were kept as mementoes and evidence that
they had been good scholars. They were wholesome yams with a vengeance, in which
clean-living English lads, patriotic and Protestant, performed brave deeds, doing much
more than their duty. By Pike and Dyke and By England's Aid were about the Dutch
revolt; With Clive in India and No Surrender: a Tale of La Vendee went further afield
(these English lads got about).
School prizes are an ephemeral influence, and the next generation has no use for them.
I recall a second-hand bookshop in Norfolk I visited once. The sound of a circular saw
came from a back room, and when the proprietor appeared I asked what literary
function this served. He showed me a large stock of handsome leather-bound Victorian
school prizes. The only customers for these were Americans who wanted the
appearance of a book-lined wall without the nuisance of the books, and the circular saw
was used to remove the spines neatly with about an inch of the pages. I bought books I
did not want to save them from this indignity. In so doing, I acquired great riches --
Macaulay's Essays, Lays of Ancient Rome and his History. Was there ever an historian
like Tom, so vivid, passionate and prejudiced? Could anyone make the past come to life
as he did? Just compare the description of the Roman Empire under the Antonines at
the beginning of Gibbon, which was thought in its day to be good social history, with the
descri ption of England in 1685 which opens Macaulay's narrative. His men and women
live; you would recognise them if they came into the room, and you would admire or
hate them, as he does, the moment they opened their mouths.
Macaulay is such an immediate, day-by-day writer, giving you the impression that he
has just quit Milord Sunderland and run into William Penn (and doesn't think much of
either of them, although for different reasons) that he leaves the same impact on the
mind as a diarist.
Diaries deserve to be mentioned. They have so many advantages, one of them being
that they break down for easy bed-time reading. A day or two of Kilvert's or Woodford's
life are good with a nightcap. They swerve and plunge and carry you into the writer's
immediate mind. Kilvert, for example, writing in 1870, moves straight from describing
village girls -- he's fond of doing that -- to tell us that 'Metz has fallen, with 150,000 men
and four Marshals of France'. Parsons make the best diarists, Pepys always excepted;
they are literate men, often with not much company in the parish. On Monday or
Tuesday, with last Sunday's sermon safely behind and a day or two before next
Sunday's must be begun, what better occupation to keep the mind exercised than
describing one's doings, family, neighbours and so forth?
The finest of all clerical diarists, without doubt, was the Reverend James Skinner of
Camerton, near Bath, in the diocese of Bath and Wells. From 1800 to 1839 he
attempted to guide an unruly parish -- Camerton was then a coal-mining village -- with
little success. He was paranoid, obsessive, perfectionist, thin-skinned and self-
righteous, and his diary is the long story of a man going mad and taking forty years over
it. He held his parishioners in much contempt. He records a marriage thus: 'It was a
wedding after the Camerton mode. That is to say, the bride was pregnant, the groom
was drunk and the bridesmaid was a thirteen-year-old prostitute from Bath'. He was
called to an accidental death in a pit; a miner has lost his footing and fallen hundreds of
feet down the shaft. Skinner commented 'Sad to say, his last word was an oath'. He
quarrelled with the squiress because her peacock roosted near the rectory. He
quarrelled with the bell-ringers: when they had done their job, why would they not come
into service , but sit smoking on the step of the tower door? One Sunday evening some
years ago, I made my way to Camerton, but misjudged the time and Evensong had
begun. As I walked round the outside of the church, I found the bell-ringers of 1985
doing exactly what Skinner had complained of in 1825. I asked the way to his grave. 'Let
'un bide, can't 'e: let 'un bide' was the slow reply. The best edition of Skinner I know is a
paperback selection by the OUP. It has a moving introduction by Virginia Woolf, who
knew for herself just what torments he suffered. In 1839, it all became too much, and
after forty years of struggling with himself, his God and the world around him, he took a
shotgun into the woods, which is why there is no memorial to him in the churchyard.
A contemporary of Skinner, at the other end of Somerset, was the Reverend Mr

Holland, an altogether better balanced character. His diary brings life on the Quantocks
vividly before us. What were those two young men doing, walking on the cliffs, talking,
gesticulating, making notes? Probably French spies, looking at places for a landing (not
so silly a suspicion; the French had indeed made an abortive landing in Wales, while
looking for Ireland, not long before). They were in fact Mr Wordsworth and Mr Coleridge,
deeply suspect for their opinions. Mr Holland didn't like Mrs Coleridge; meeting her in
the street he thought she was a hoyden, 'fit wife for such a Democrat' (not a term of
approval in 1800).
A minor classic which ought to be better known is Victorian Miniature by Owen

Chadwick. Imagine a village in Victorian Norfolk, rather off the beaten track. The squire,
Sir John Boileau, and the vicar, the Reverend Mr Andrew, were both highly literate men
who didn't get on -- and both kept diaries, largely about each other. Professor Chadwick
got hold of both, and wrote a brilliant and sympathetic comparison. Andrew was an
active, proselytising Evangelical; Sir John, though a deep Churchman, was not. Andrew
was called to minister to a condemned man who was hanged in Norwich gaol. He
composed a sermon about the experience, which made him locally famous. People
came from near and far to hear this address. Sir John disapproved of strangers in his
parish church, and posted his gamekeepers on all the roads into the village on Sundays
to keep interlopers out. No-one except Mr Andrew thought that this was going too far.
My own career as a diarist was of the briefest. For my eighth Christmas I was given a
diary. The entry for January 1 reads 'I am going to keep a dairy ...'. There was no further
entry. My mother recovered it, and would bring it out from time to time. It was regarded
as meritorious to take the uppity young down a peg or two.
`... et nos mutamur in illis'. So we do; but the vast deposit of Eng. Lit. lies behind us,
around us and before us.
When I hear what students, purporting to study for English degrees, know and do not
know nowadays, I seem to sense huge doors shutting quietly behind us. The Greek
door had closed behind me, but I just squeezed through the Latin door. Middle English
and Chaucer closed just after me (the Anglo-Saxon door never opened, I'm afraid). The
door labelled Shakespeare is kept firmly wedged open by a whole industry devoted to
keeping it so; but the century after him is shutting down. Milton; the Bible; even
Restoration literature; all are going, going, gone ... It is not just the students; the
instructors themselves regard Paradise Lost with incomprehension, and the very Bible
as a quaint subject for obsessional eccentrics. They do not know what they are missing.
But into the harsher world into which we may be moving, older values may return. In Ian
Hay's The First Hundred Thousand, a captain who has packed for active service before
advises the young subalterns to save a pound or two of the forty pounds of luggage
they are allowed for a couple of books, and strongly recommends Vanity Fair and
Pickwick as likely to be good company in the trenches. I do so agree.
3 Dowling College Chapter

When19 I was first asked to make this short speech, I was struck by the title “What
Reading Means to Me.” My knee-jerk reaction was “What doesn’t reading mean to
me?” As a professional librarian, I thought of all of our standard platitudes: “Reading is
Life.” “Reading is Fundamental.” “There is no such thing as too many books.” I might
easily have gone on and on along this vein, until I remembered that, for me, it hadn’t
always been that way. Not by a long shot.
My approach to reading as a child was quite different than it is today. I can still
remember clearly how scientific my approach was at the ripe old age of ten. “Dad,” I
would say, “next time you’re at the library, get me a book for my book report.” I did give
him some direction, however. “Remember, it should only be about this big…..it can’t be
more than 100 pages…..and please, make sure it has lots of pictures.”
You can only imagine my reaction when he proudly walked in the door once with a copy
of The Call of the Wild. “Dad!” I screamed. “Dad! This is like, huge – OhmyGod – 221
pages??! And, there’s like, practically no pictures. Anywhere! I tooolldd you -” “Dave,”
he responded, only mildly irritated, “it’s Jack London! It’s a classic!” I stared at him. All I
could muster in response was “Daaaaddd!!”
19 Dowling College Chapter - English Honor Society - 14 April 2003

Prior to this crisis, my only memories of going to the library were when we would drive
my Grandmother there every Saturday afternoon when we took her on errands, right in
between our stops at the bakery and the cobbler shop. I was thankful that my Gramma
only read Westerns, since these were shelved in the coolest section of the library. There
was a big overhang above the Westerns section, right underneath the stairs which led
up to a balcony, and it was a great place to hide in the shadows and throw things or
jump out at people. I definitely loved visiting the library in those days.
My library career began at this same library, just as auspiciously as my reading career.
It was Boy Scout Government Day, 1971, and all the young boys in our town were to be
elected to political posts throughout the community. Naturally, there was great interest
in running for Police Chief, or Fire Chief, or better yet, Principal of your own school,
where you could have all manner of fun sitting in the school office and haranguing your
friends who were stuck in class while you weren’t.
I quickly read through the lists of positions for election and zeroed in on the one slot for
which no one had signed up to run. “Library Director.” That was it. I knew what I was
going to go for. I think in my selection essay, I wrote something like “I believe that
libraries and books hold the future of mankind, and I would like to dedicate my life to
them.” Basically, I wanted the day off from school. As soon as I found out I had won the
election unopposed, I faced only one dilemma. Although the Boy Scouts had efficiently
sent me all the paperwork I needed about running the library for a day, no one had
actually told me where the library was. Lord knows I hadn’t memorized the route
whenever we drove my Grandmother there. In the car, I was always too busy plotting
new ways to harass my sister under the balcony stairs. Fortunately, for me and the Boy
Scouts, my father came through again.
While I did get through that one Boy Scout Government Day somewhat unscathed, I
was amazed to be re-elected to this post the following year, again, unopposed. To
make matters worse, the library actually had the nerve to offer me a paid part-time job in
the library, shelving books as a student page. “Daaaddd!” was all I could say. “How do
you get to the library again? I gotta go back this year, too.”
Now, I mention these anecdotes for one very important reason, to illustrate that there is
hope for all of us. For most of my life, I was what might today be called “Reading
Challenged,” and, if not for the persistence of parents and teachers and librarians, I
would likely have remained that way. In fact, in my life as a reader, I have discovered a
very fundamental paradox. Even though I do believe everyone is a born reader, I do not
believe everyone is born to read. I believe that while most of us possess the ability
innately, we need somebody to jump start us, to take our dormant flint and steel and get
a spark going. We don’t have to “become” readers. We need to “see” reading as the
vital part of life that it is. To me it is a privilege to open someone up to the world of
books, but it can be frustrating since it’s not one of those things you can make happen,
and you never really know you’re doing it once you actually do it. There is some reason
why I kept going back to that library of my youth, and it wasn’t just to throw things at my
sister under the balcony stairs. I was seeing reading in action. I was seeing people
choosing to spend some time between the covers of a book. They weren’t at the
movies, although they may have been going later that day. They weren’t watching TV
or playing sports at that moment, although they certainly may have been earlier that
day. I was seeing people voluntarily bringing books home with them without measuring
thickness between their forefinger and their thumb.
My grandmother was not able to move around that easily in her final years, but nothing
was going to keep her from her weekly visits to the library. My dad, whom I was
convinced knew nothing about anything, had known who had written The Call of the
Wild. ‘Nancy Drew’ was not one of my sister’s friends from school, yet my sister kept
talking about her. And Dr. Seuss books were not Christmas ornaments that had fallen
off of the tree. They had been left there for a reason. People around me were showing
me books. People around me were living with books. People around me were reading
books, demonstrating their love of reading without drumming it into my head, and in
spite of my efforts to resist, I began to understand why.
Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Throughout much of my childhood, I was convinced
I did not know how to read. I was a good student, I knew my alphabet and my phonics,
and I even managed, in spite of myself, to get my book reports in on time, although I do
distinctly remember once deciding to settle for a grade of ‘F’ rather than continue
reading My Antonia for even one more day. But what this had to do with that strange
concept called “reading,” however, was beyond me. You see, I knew I knew “HOW to
Read.” I just didn’t think I was “A READER.” Thank goodness others taught me
otherwise.
My father never stopped bringing home those classics, some of which I actually read.
Mrs. Hamilton, my speed reading teacher in high school, kept saying “David, you really
are a good reader. You’re just not a very fast reader.” Mrs. Bragdon, the Children’s
Librarian, started putting aside books just for me, once it became clear to her that I had
indeed figured out how to get to the library. Bedtime stories were the norm, and, thank
goodness, there were still plenty of publishers including pictures in their books.
Once I made that voluntary, unassigned decision to open a book and read, just for its
own sake, I was hooked. Reading became a hobby, then a passion, then a need.
Suddenly, I was saying things like “Oh, I’ve read that,” or, “You know, the book was
much better than the movie,” or, perhaps most surprisingly, “Daaaddd! I wanna go to
the library!”
In reading, I had discovered a way to make dozens of new friends, without having to
actually meet anybody. I became a Hardy Boy, a Happy Hollister, and sometimes even
the third Bobsey Twin. I played with Curious George, the Cat in the Hat, and, when
desperate, even Madeline, or Amelia Bedelia.
Later in life, I became notorious for giving people books as gifts, and, likewise, I became
very easy to shop for. Throughout our house, various doorstops and table leg props and
high chair booster seats began disappearing as I began reading them. My mother,
whose oft-spoken phrase “I don’t know why you kids don’t like to read!” had developed
into something of a mantra, was now wailing and gnashing her teeth. “Would you
please stop bringing books into this house!”
Technically, I’m an adult now, but I still feel like a kid with my love of reading. When I
read, I feel like I’m bingeing on calorie-free ice cream, and nobody can make me stop.
Reading has become a healthy indulgence, a positive form of escape, a chance to be
transported, teleported even, without having to leave your chair or have your cells
reconstructed. It is virtual reality without the safety goggles.

Reading makes far away places seem close by, and makes nearby places seem far
away. Reading showed me why Narnia’s Kingdom was in a closet, and it helped me
learn how to calibrate my spark plugs. Reading taught me the importance of things like
good nutrition, safe sex, and a Red Sox World Series, and why Rodgers and
Hammerstein had to re-write the South Pacific about a dozen times.
Reading has taught me about hatred, and about love, about fellowship and about
aloneness. It has helped me to care that Rosa Parks would not give up her seat, it
assured me that I wasn’t the only kid who had certain fears, and it continued to prove to
me that no one – absolutely no one – could keep me from finding out about something if
I really wanted to.
Reading has taught me how to think more than teachers have taught me how to think,
but I do credit teachers for showing me the importance of being able to think. And,
reading has also taught me there is absolutely no reason why I couldn’t have been one
of those people who fought in the Revolution, or who traveled in space, or who ran in
the Boston Marathon, or who planted a tree. In short, to paraphrase the popular
expression, “Everything I need to know, I learned by reading.” Well, okay, almost
everything.
In his recent memoir titled On Writing, Stephen King refers to reading as the “only
proven method of time travel.” I will paraphrase his explanation: “I am writing this
sentence on May 5, 1989, and the one thing I know for sure is that you’re listening to
me at some other time, in the future…and you think I’m talking to you right now.” That’s
pretty powerful stuff.
The theorist Walter Ong says that reading helps us “develop an interiority,” and that our
“human spirit is meant for knowledge…something only reading can give us.” I love
words like that, seeing as I work for a college. But I sometimes prefer very basal
explanations that only a fellow reader can give.
For example, Jimmy Durante, in his comic song “The Day I Read a Book.” He
alliterates wonderful rhymes such as “I couldn’t believe it! Didn’t think I could read it!”
And I can only echo his refrain. “I’ll never forget it! The day I read a book!”
In a similar, though less musical vein, I have a cousin who rivals my voracious appetite
for books. I remember how shocked I was to discover this, and I asked him why he
read so much. His answer was both as simple and as mind-blowing as Mr. Durante’s.
“You can get smart for free. It’s awesome.”
I’m somewhat of a fan of the writer Julia Cameron. Her series of books on The Artist’s
Way have encouraged hundreds of readers to convince themselves of the importance
of nurturing their own creative spirits. My favorite book of hers is titled The Right to
Write, and in it she confesses that, when she meets St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, she
hopes to share one thing only: that she convinced someone to write. That, she says,
will be plenty to be proud of.
As a librarian, I think I’d like to tell St. Peter that I convinced someone to read.
In the end, however, I always seem to end up referencing what is, for me, one of the
most fundamental manifestations of American culture: the Broadway Musical, and my
own, personal favorite iconoclast, Stephen Sondheim.

When I finally try to boil down to just a few words what reading means to me, what
comes to mind, oddly enough, is the title of Mr. Sondheim’s composition “Being Alive,”
from the musical Company. I’d like to share one passage from that song that makes me
think not only of love for another human being, but, for some reason, of reading.
Someone to hold you too close

Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
And ruin your sleep
And make you aware of being alive.
Someone to need you too much

Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell
And give you support for being alive.
Being alive.
When I read, I’m reminded of all of my senses and sensations and imaginations. When
I read, I’m reminded I have a brain, and a heart, and a soul.
When I read, I’m reminded I’m alive.

Reading Habits and Tips
Reading Tips for Children

Ten good reading tips for inculcating the love of reading in your child: [source]20
• Read aloud with and to your child every day
• Create a print rich home environment
• Model reading and writing
• Read and write with your children in your home language
• Cook, read recipes and labels, with your child to develop literacy
• Explore books together
• Tell stories together
• Write with your child
• Communicate regularly with your childs teacher about his literacy development
• Visit the library often
Reading Tips for Students

Critical21 reading—active engagement and interaction with texts—is essential to your
academic success at Harvard, and to your intellectual growth. Research has shown that
students who read deliberately retain more information and retain it longer. Your college
reading assignments will probably be more substantial and more sophisticated than
those you are used to from high school. The amount of reading will almost certainly be
greater. College students rarely have the luxury of successive re-readings of material,
either, given the pace of life in and out of the classroom.
While the strategies below are (for the sake of clarity) listed sequentially, you can
probably do most of them simultaneously. They may feel awkward at first, and you may
have to deploy them very consciously, especially if you are not used to doing anything
more than moving your eyes across the page. But they will quickly become habits, and
you will notice the difference—in what you “see” in a reading, and in the confidence with
which you approach your texts.
• Previewing: Look “around” the text before you start reading.
• Annotating: “Dialogue” with yourself, the author, and the issues and ideas at
stake.
• Outline, summarize, analyze: take the information apart, look at its parts, and
then try to put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you.
• Look for repetitions and patterns.
• Contextualize: After you’ve finished reading, put the reading in perspective.
• Compare and Contrast: Fit this text into an ongoing dialogue
Reading Tips for Adults
20 http://www.rif.org/parents/tips/tip.mspx?View=66
21 http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/lamont_handouts/interrogatingtexts.html

Most adults, inspite of having the ability to read, shy away from books. The main reason
appears to be the poor reading habits they developed as kids which makes reading a
tedious task. They, thus, miss out on this rich and joyous hobby which has and
continues to delight so many.
To22 really get rid of a bad habit, you should replace it with a good one. You have to
want to get rid of the bad habits, and you must practice and work at it in order to
change. The following are some of the bad habits which tend to cause people to read
slowly. Ask yourself whether you are guilty of any of the following:
Moving your lips when you read

Moving your lips slows you to a fast talking rate, about 150 words per minute. Put your
fingers on your lips to stop the motion.
Vocalizing
Vocalizing means that you are pronouncing words in the voice box of the throat without
making sounds. This also slows your reading rate to that of speaking. To check, rest
your fingertips lightly against the vocal cord area of your throat. If you feel a vibration, or
if you find that your tongue is moving, you are vocalizing.
Reading everything at the same speed
When reading, set your rate according to your purpose for reading and the difficulty
level of the material. Practice adjusting your rate to suit your material. The more difficult
the material, the slower the rate.
Regressing out of habit
Regressing means rereading a word, phrase, or sentence out of habit and not because
of need. Sometimes, it is necessary to reread something, especially in a difficult
passage. But habitual, unnecessary regressing really slows you down. Use a card or
paper to cover the text after you read it to prevent regressing.
Reading one word at a time
Do you think one word at a time, or in phrases? Slow readers tend to see only one word
at a time. Good readers will see several words at a time and their eyes will stop only
three or four times as they move across a page. Reading in idea-phrases speeds your
reading and improves your understanding of what you have read. Mark the phrases in
the sentences of a passage, then practice seeing more than one word at a time.
The best way to read faster is to practice reading just a little faster than is comfortable.
Changing reading habits is not easy, after all you have been reading that way for many
years. It takes several weeks of conscious effort in order to change bad reading habits.
22 http://www.ctl.ua.edu/CTLStudyAids/StudySkillsFlyers/Reading/badreadinghabits.htm

IQ, EQ and Reading
Studies have shown that American children who learn to read by the third grade are
less likely to end up in prison, drop out of school, or take drugs. Seventy percent of
prison inmates score in the bottom quarter on reading tests. Adults who read literature
on a regular basis are nearly three times as likely to attend a performing arts event,
almost four times as likely to visit an art museum, more than two-and-a-half times as
likely to do volunteer or charity work, and over one-and-a-half times as likely to
participate in sporting activities. Literacy rates in the United States are also more highly
correlated to weekly earnings than IQ. A graph showing this relationship is shown
below. Reading books is generally regarded as being a relaxing pastime, while at the
same time requiring the brain to process text so it can be stimulated. Because of this it
is sometimes considered to cause at least a temporary increase in one's mental
faculties23.
PHONICS. It's Profitable24.

As the graph below shows, it pays to read well.
The table to the right also shows the relationship
between literacy level and earnings. Phonics
works, and it pays.
23 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)#Intelligence
24 http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/profitable.html The data for the graph and the table are
from the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, or NALS. You can see the source data at National Centre
for Education Statistics, or NCES.

Books: comparison between the West and the Muslim
World
Bernard Lewis, in his book The Crisis of Islam25, compares the muslim world’s
contribution to books publications and translations and states that:
Books sales presents an even more dismal picture. A listing of twenty-seven
countries, beginning with the United States and ending with Vietnam, does not
include a single Muslim state. In a human development index, Brunei is number
32, Kuwait 36, Bahrain 40, Qatar 41, the United Arab Emirates 44, Libya 66,
Kazakhstan 67, and Saudi Arabia tied with Brazil as number 68.
A report on Arab Human Development in 2002, prepared by a committee of Arab
intellectuals and published under the auspices of the United Nations, again
reveals some striking contrasts. “The Arab world translates about 330 books
annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece translates. The accumulative total
of translated books since the Caliph Maa’moun’s [sic] time [the ninth century] is
about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year.” The
economic situation is no better: “The GDP in all Arab countries combined stood
at $531.2 billion in 1999--- less than that of a single European country, Spain
($595.5 billion).” Another aspect of underdevelopment is illustrated in a table of
“active research scientists, frequently cited articles, and frequently cited papers
per million inhabitants, 1987.”26
COUNTRY RESEARCH ARTICLES WITH NUMBER OF
SCIENTISTS 40 OR FREQUENTLY
MORE CITED PAPERS
25 Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, Ch VII: A Failure in Modernity
26 The Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations,
sponsored by the Regional Bureau for Arab States/UNDP, Arab Fund for Economic and Social
Development

PER MILLION
CITATIONS PEOPLE
United States 466,211 10,481 42.99
India 29,509 31 0.04
Australia 24,963 280 17.23
Switzerland 17,028 523 79.90
China 15,558 31 0.03
Israel 11,617 169 36.63
Egypt 3,782 1 0.02
Republic of Korea 2,255 5 0.12
Saudi Arabia 1,915 1 0.07
Kuwait 884 1 0.53
Algeria 362 1 0.01
This is hardly surprising, given the comparative figures for illiteracy.

In a ranking of 155 countries for economic freedom in 2001, the Arab Gulf States
do rather well, with Bahrain number 9, the United Arab Emirates number 14, and
Kuwait 42. But the general economic performance of the Arab and more broadly
the Muslim world remains relatively poor. According to the World Bank, in 2000
the average annual income in the Muslim countries from Morocco to Bangladesh
was only half the world average, and in 1990s the combined gross national
products of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon----that is, three of Israel’s Arab
neighbours----- were considerably smaller than that of Israel alone. ……
The contrast with the West and now also with the Far East, is even more
disconcerting…………….
Jordan Centre for Public Policy Research and Dialogue’s findings27 are just as
disconcerting as Bernard Lewis’s assessments.
27 Knowledge in the Arab Countries http://info.worldbank.org/etools/library/latestversion_p.asp?

objectID=243222&lprogram=8

In terms of Knowledge and the Economy, both Production of Knowledge and Diffusion
of Knowledge is dismally low across the Muslim World. While some Muslim nations can
shield behind the ‘lack of resources and poverty’ excuse, the oil-rich Arab world has no
such excuse. The general apathy towards reading, writing and the general acquisition
and dissemination of knowledge is appalling, and is the major reason why the Muslim
nations lag behind.

Books and Publishing in Pakistan28
The publishing industry of any country is the representative of the level of literacy of its
population. Books, newspapers, magazines etc. are the part and parcel of any civilized
society. Pakistan is still struggling to catch up with the developed world where literacy is
concerned. The literacy rate of the country is low; the majority of the literates only being
able to sign their name. With the official literacy rates at 46 percent, it is no surprise
then when one finds out that the book culture here is almost non-existent. And this is
heightened more by the digital age and the onslaught of other media. However,
Pakistan does have a culture of literature. Pakistan has had its share of excellent poetry
and prose writers in Urdu, English and other regional languages. Altaf Hussain Hali,
Mohammad Hussain Azad, Shibli Nomani, Molvi Nazir Ahmed, and Saadat Hasan
Manto to name a few are those writers whom the majority can identify with. Having said
that, we can move to explore a little about the background of book publishing in the
subcontinent and what later became known as Pakistan.
In a country like Pakistan which shared a literary and cultural heritage with India for
hundreds of years, it’s hard to point out the exact point of origin of the book industry.
Nonetheless, it can be said that the first book in Urdu was published in the early
seventeenth century in this region.
In the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, poetry was the most popular form of all
books in sub-continent. Mir Anis, Muhammad Hussein Azad, Altaf Hussain Hali, Shibli
Nomani, Abdul Haleem Sharar and Akbar Allah Abadi were the names associated with
the genre. These were the great names in early Urdu poetry who voiced the Muslim
culture in the diverse climate of the sub-continent.
Prose writers of the time too, namely Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Shibli Nomani, Abdul
Haleem Sharar and Molvi Nazir Ahmed, took upon the task of educating and imparting
values among the Muslims. It was feared that the Hindu majority will eventually
overshadow the Muslim thought and belief. It were these literary pioneers who took
upon the task to educate the millions of Muslims of the sub-continent who were already
very rigid to study or go beyond their set religious books.
Post-partition era
It can be said that the efforts of the early poetry and prose writers bore fruit and the
Muslims rose in their own defense against tyranny. Eventually Pakistan came into being
in 1947.
The riots and the communal tension at the time of independence of Pakistan gave birth
to a new genre of fiction in the region. A large number of prose writers and short story
writers took upon the task of writing about the horror of riots and the politics of religion.
This genre of fiction became to be generally known as Tales of the Riots and the
writings represented the misery of human suffering at the time. A rich culture of short
stories was born after independence and Pakistan saw some of the best prose writers in
28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_and_publishing_in_Pakistan

the era. Out of the many writers, Saadat Hasan Manto is one name which merits
undisputed acclaims for his unbiased writings. His writings like Thanda Gosht, Khol Do,
Toba Tek Singh, Iss Manjdhar Mein, Mozalle, Babu Gopi Nath etc became legendary.
Realism became the key word in the decade after independence. Writers explored the
realms of social change and adjustment, human nature, class stratification etc. Qurat ul
Ain Haider, Ibraheem Jalees, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Intizar Hussain, Asad
Mohammad Khan, Mansha Yaad, Rashid Amjad, Mohammad Hameed Shahid, Mubeen
Mirza, Asif Farrukhi etc all wrote classic pieces of literature based on these issues.
A short history of books in Pakistan
Pre-partition era:
In a country like Pakistan which shared a literary and cultural heritage with India for
hundreds of years, it’s hard to point out the exact point of origin of the book industry.
Nonetheless, it can be said that the first book in Urdu was published in the early
seventeenth century in this region.
In the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, poetry was the most popular form of all
books in sub-continent. Mir Anis, Muhammad Hussein Azad, Altaf Hussain Hali, Shibli
Nomani, Abdul Haleem Sharar and Akbar Allah Abadi were the names associated with
the genre. These were the great names in early Urdu poetry who voiced the Muslim
culture in the diverse climate of the sub-continent.
Prose writers of the time too, namely Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Shibli Nomani, Abdul
Haleem Sharar and Molvi Nazir Ahmed, took upon the task of educating and imparting
values among the Muslims. It was feared that the Hindu majority will eventually
overshadow the Muslim thought and belief. It were these literary pioneers who took
upon the task to educate the millions of Muslims of the sub-continent who were already
very rigid to study or go beyond their set religious books.
Post-partition era
It can be said that the efforts of the early poetry and prose writers bore fruit and the
Muslims rose in their own defense against tyranny. Eventually Pakistan came into being
in 1947.
The riots and the communal tension at the time of independence of Pakistan gave birth
to a new genre of fiction in the region. A large number of prose writers and short story
writers took upon the task of writing about the horror of riots and the politics of religion.
This genre of fiction became to be generally known as Tales of the Riots and the
writings represented the misery of human suffering at the time. A rich culture of short
stories was born after independence and Pakistan saw some of the best prose writers in
the era. Out of the many writers, Saadat Hasan Manto is one name which merits
undisputed acclaims for his unbiased writings. His writings like Thanda Gosht, Khol Do,
Toba Tek Singh, Iss Manjdhar Mein, Mozalle, Babu Gopi Nath etc became legendary.

Realism became the key word in the decade after independence. Writers explored the
realms of social change and adjustment, human nature, class stratification etc. Qurat ul
Ain Haider, Ibraheem Jalees, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Intizar Hussain, Asad
Mohammad Khan, Mansha Yaad, Rashid Amjad, Mohammad Hameed Shahid, Mubeen
Mirza, Asif Farrukhi etc all wrote classic pieces of literature based on these issues.
Urdu books
The beginning
Urdu literature has a long and colorful history that is inextricably tied to the development
of that very language, Urdu, in which it is written. While it tends to be heavily dominated
by poetry, the range of expression achieved in the voluminous library of a few major
verse forms, especially the ghazal and nazm, has led to its continued development and
expansion into other styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana. It is
today most popular in the countries of India and Pakistan and is finding interest in
foreign countries primarily through South Asians.
Fiction
We can trace back Urdu fiction from the pre-partition times when pioneers like Mirza
Haadi Ruswa wrote classics like Umrao Jan Ada. These writers wrote not only to
entertain but to educate the masses and to revive the culture in the Indo-Pak at a time
when the society was greatly over shadowed by British values.
Coming to the present age, although the number of prose writers is increasing the
quality of fiction being churned out is very low. The writers mainly focus on profit and
thus give less preference to the quality. Trashy romance novels, low cost thrillers,
formula books, television soaps turned into novels etc are abundant in the market.
That is not to say that we don’t have good quality writers. One recent name is that of
Saadat Nasreen who published her first collection of short stories last year.
Humour too is a very popular form of fiction. Shafiq Ur Rehman is one of the names
among loads of others who have contributed generously to this colorful genre of
literature.
Apart from this, several successful attempts have been made at translating major works
of English and other languages into Urdu, these range from popular titles like
Shakespeare to present age fiction like Harry Potter.
Poetry
Poetry is one of the richest and oldest forms of Urdu literature and famous names like
Ghalib, Mir Allama Iqbal, Altaf Hussain Hali, Molalana Abul Kalam Azada, Ahmad
Faraz, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Qateel Shifai, Mohsin Naqvi, Parveen Shakir, Meer Dard,
Amjad Islam Amjad, Wasi Shah, Sheheryar Khurram Butt and etc had already created a
name for themselves before partition. More recently there have been notable poets like

Faiz Ahmed Faiz whom one can fondly remember as being the maestros of their time.
Even at present there are a number of poetry collections being taken out every year.
Poets in the sub-continent and in Pakistan too, have focused on a wide range of topics
from social awareness, to politics, to religion and even romance.
Children’s literature
A colorful bookshelf full of books is an ideal part of any child’s library. Urdu offers a
beautiful range of books for children from folk tales to poetry to novels and short stories.
Even religious books have been written keeping in mind the tender age of children. The
low cost books like the popular thriller series also contributed a lot in developing the
reading culture in children. Recently there has been a trend of writing awareness books
of children on issues like health, environment and even child abuse. These have
received wide appreciation due to their content and good quality printing with
illustrations. One popular series is the Mina series initiated by the UNICEF. Other NGOs
are also working on such books for children.
Readership
From non-existent to rapidly growing, the readership of Urdu books is now stagnant.
The decline can be attributed to a number of factors. Television is one of the oft quoted
culprits of declining reading habits but that is not the only one. The fact is that now
people don’t give much importance to quality literature maybe because a dearth of
writers.
Regional books
Sindhi
Sindhi is one of the most ancient languages among the regional languages of Pakistan
and Sub-continent.It has a 5000 thousand years oldest one civilizational back ground.
The first translation of the Quran was into Sindhi. It has a rich literature, there are
thousand of books written in Sindhi from time to time on religion, philosophy, medicine,
Sociology, Logic, literature, history, politics and culture.
Sindhi Language has a greatest poet of the world entitled [Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai]who
is one of the most renowned name in the Sindhi poetry and he is widely read and
understood by people all over the world. Shah jo Risalo is his Book of Bait and Vaiyes
( Verses ). Another name is that of Sachal Sarmast whose poetry is also very popular.
Sindhi Language has a Greatest Web Portal about its Literature and Language entitled
www.sindhikitab.net, it is first ever web portal of any language of Pakistan and India,
which is in(RTF).
Sindhi Adabi Board has been involved in publishing many original and translated works
into Sindhi. Amongst the works translated is Dry Leaves from Young Egypt by Eastwick
in 1973.

Punjabi
Among Pakistan’s several regional languages, Punjabi is the closest to Urdu and the
most colorful one too. And because of that, many singers have adopted Punjabi to add
‘spice’ to their songs. and also er. And this tradition is not new, poets like Waris Shah
and Bulleh Shah etc contributed tremendously to the genre of Punjabi poetry and their
poetry has been adopted by singers since very long. Punjabi literature however, was not
as developed as the Sindhi literature. The roots of Punhabi prose can safely be traced
back to Baba Nanak’s Janam Sakhis, but the lack of attention paid to the medium
hampered its growth.
The literary scene was dominated by Urdu even until the 50s and no one paid a second
thought to a group of people publishing Punjabi books and taking out a magazine.
But it was these people who took the initiative and can be termed as building the
Punjabi literary scene from the scratch. And now, it’s obvious that their efforts did not go
in vain. Last year the Lehran Adabi Board published a book Lehran Behran, which is a
collection of critical articles on Punjabi language and literature.
Also an autobiography, Sahwan Da Visa, by Sharif Kureishi, a biography, Ahmad Rahi:

Batan Mulaqatan by Ahmad Salim and a travelogue by Prof Asjiq Raheel were among
the important books of prose published last year. Several notable poetry collections
were also published along with two translated works.
Pashto
Early pushto writers, after independence were ‘passive nationalists, progressive
nationalists, radical nationalists and Marxists. Except the passive nationalists, almost all
of them were politically motivated.’ (ref; Pashto Literature - A Quest for Identity Fazlur
Rahim Marwat)
Pushto literature developed within the Pushto struggle for freedom from what they saw
as oppression of the ruling class, and this was clearly reflected in their writings. Taking
a look at last years Pushto literary pieces we can say that Pushto writing has moved
towards objectivism to subjectivism. The quality of books has also improved
considerably.
Balochi
Poetry is the only form of literature in the language which has seen some activity lately.
Poetry was and still is a considerably major part of Balochi literature, with a rich history
of 600 years. Last year too was an important year for Balochi poetry and a number of
noteworthy collections were published. Darya Chankey Housham Ent by Munir Momin
is the most significant of them all.

English books
Fiction
It is very difficult to categorize writers in this genre. There are a few very good novel and
short story writers who have won accolades not only nationally but also internationally,
but it seems hard to draw the line between Pakistani and non-Pakistani writers here.
The main problem being the fact that most of these writers are although born in
Pakistan but they never really lived here and hence have no contact with their origins.
Zulfikar Ghose’s Murder of Aziz Khan was the first cohesive modern English language
novel published in 1967. The plot no doubt was purely a Pakistani theme but the fact
remains that Ghose never really did live here and the rest of his novels were set in
South America.
In 1980, renowned novelist, Bapsi Sidhwa published her first novel, the Crow Eaters,
from England. Ms. Sidhwa is thus far considered to be amongst the best known authors
of Pakistani origin.
Some of the best English literature came from expatriate Pakistanis in the West. One
such author, Hanif Kureishi, wrote a haunting memoir, The Rainbow Sign (1986), trying
to bring together the two worlds he lived in. Another, Aamer Hussein, wrote a series of
acclaimed short story collections.
English literature grew rapidly over the next few years and several writers came on the
scene and won international awards. Adam ZameenZad, Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam
and Bapsi Sidhwa all received several awards for their writings.
In recent years, there has been a crop of younger writers. Amongst them are Bina
Shah, Kamila Shamsie, Uzma Aslam Khan and Sehba Sarwar, all who have proved to
be authors extraordinary. Most of these writers, explore the issue of identity for
expatriates, for Muslim women, and other social issues. Bina Shah’s 786 Cyber Café,
for example delves into the lives of three young Pakistani men and a young women
confused about her priorities. Then there’s Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography, which details
the life in Karachi with the protagonists belonging to the elite section of the society.
Although it’s a riveting tale, it hardly depicts the life in Karachi. Or maybe it does, but
then that only a very small faction of our society so full of other social evils.
Since 2000, Uzma Aslam Khan, Mohsin Hamid, Saad Ashraf, Sorayya Khan and Feryal
Ali Gauhar have published several consummate new novels. Mohsin Hamid's Moth
Smoke was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won other awards. Coming to
the present era, in 2004, novels of Nadeem Aslam and Suhyal Saadi, two Pakistani-
British authors, were long listed for the 2006 IMPAC Dublin Award. They have also won
several other prestigious awards. Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses has also been long
listed for the 2006 Prince Maurice Award.
A number of poetry collections were also published last year. Pakistani- British, Moniza
Ali published her fifth poetry collection How the Stone Found its Voice. The first part of
her collection reflects the event after the 9/11 and its effects.

There was also a collection of Faiz’s poems published by OUP under the title of Culture
and Identity: Selected English Writings of Faiz. In 2007, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant
Fundamentalist was also published, exploring the effects of 9/11 on a Pakistani man in
New York.
Non-fiction
Last year saw a number of good autpbiographies like Salma Ahmad’s Cutting Free, Rao
Rashid’s Roller Coaster: My Early Years, Shaukat Mirza’s From Exxon to Engro and
several others. Then there was a reprint of Tariq Ali’s Street Fighting Years: An
Autobiography of the Sixties, Nehru and the Gandhis: An Indian Dynasty. Another
exciting series is that of the historical reprints by Mohatta Palace on Karachi. In
Travelogues there was Salman Rashid’s Jhelum: City of Visata.
Previously religious books were published only in Urdu, but in the last few years the
trend has changed and now a number of publishers are taking up the task of either
translating major works of religion from Urdu to English or are publishing original pieces.
One such place is Darussalam which is quite well known for its excellent content and
quality.
Children’s Books
Although there is a treasure trove of children’s books in Urdu, Pakistan fails to provide a
good bookshelf of English fiction for children. There have been attempts, yes, but the
market is full of international authors like Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and the popular Sweet
Valley, Famous Five, Hardy Boys etc series. Very recently, Mahnaz Malik, a Pakistani
born British, published her first story book for children, which serves as a fund raiser
project for The Citizen’s Foundation. Mo’s Star, illustrated by Cora Lynn Deibler and
published by Oxford University Press, is the colorful story of a young penguin reaching
out for the stars. The book was received with much appreciation from home and abroad,
and was unveiled in a colorful launch ceremony held in a local hotel.
Printing and publishing industry

Very close to the literary scene is the printing and publishing industry as the books are
nothing if they don’t get a publisher or a printer. Like every other thing in the region, the
printing industry is with its own sets of problems the initial ones being the unfavorable
socio-economic conditions, lack of mass education and the development of local
languages. Given these conditions, the establishment of the publishing industry in
present day Pakistan can be traced back to the 19th century. Still, the subject matter of
the books dealt mainly with religious or philosophical themes and was also very
restrained.
World War I bought newer printing methods, and with these improved printing methods
the industry moved a step further towards development. Press now ventured into the
realms of subjects as diverse as philosophy, Islamic thought and literary criticism. Even
more encouraging was the fact that quality books were being translated from other
languages into Urdu where we lacked the expertise. These included chemistry, physics,
economics, and political science and commerce books.

Another important milestone was the introduction of the printing of modern novels and
short stories. Russian, French and Bengali novels were also translated to add flavor to
the local literature. The Second World War also bought a significant change in the
industry. The printing methods were further improved and the publication industry saw a
boost in sales and production with the rising literacy rates and the political awareness in
the masses.
Since after the World War 2 the publishing industry has been steadily growing despite
the many hurdles like the low purchasing power of the masses and the lack of facilities.
The principle centers of publishing are Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. Lahore stands
out with its numerous publishing houses and has been the hub of the industry from the
pre-partition era. Even now, getting a book published from Lahore is much easier than
elsewhere.
Pakistan’s publishing industry also has a lucrative market for Urdu and religious books
abroad. A considerable number of books and periodicals are exported to countries like
Malaysia, East Africa and the Middle East. Also, a very large number of books is
imported in Pakistan mainly from UK and USA. The Inter-Media Growth program of
Pakistan and USA have signed an agreement whereby Pakistan can import books and
still pay for them in its local currency.
Emerging trends
Time and technological advancements play a pivotal role in shaping the trends over the
passage of time. As Pakistan too enters the digital age, traditional distinctions in media
become blurred. This can be negative as well as positive. It can be seen as furthering
the book culture but it can also at the same time be seen as the force behind loosening
the bond between the book and its reader.
eBooks
The biggest contribution of the internet in the book industry would be to digitize books
and grant them a wider readership. A number of online websites have sprung up in the
last few decades. Quite a lot of these sites are free and others charge a very nominal
fee and provide unlimited access to ebooks. They can either be downloaded or read on
screen. These obviously have become popular because of easy accessibility and the
low cost. In Pakistan where a huge majority of people cannot afford the expensive
original foreign titles, websites like Project Gutenberg provide a wonderful opportunity to
familiarize with foreign literature. Even some Urdu websites have started to offer online
versions of books for foreign readers. This helps in promoting one’s culture as well as to
help the expatriate Pakistanis.
Online book stores

Closely related to e-books are the online book stores, another wonder of the internet.
An extension of the traditional book stores, online book stores give the option to search
and read reviews of books, browse through categories, view the covers, author

information, reader ratings and then order these books online. Although they are not
free and even charge a shipping fee, its very convenient to search and order books
online saving the hassle. Critics however say that it deprives one of having the pleasure
of going through new books at a store and discovering exciting new books. But
whatever the case be, these book stores are gaining popularity especially in the fast
paced lives of ours where we hardly have time to go and browse books at a book store.
Some of the largest online books stores are http://www.paramountbooks.com.pk,
http://www.libertybooks.com, http://www.vanguardbooks.com and
http://www.multilinebooks.com
Reading Clubs
Though not a new phenomenon, reading clubs are a breath of fresh air into the dying
book culture. There are a number of book clubs/reading clubs online and offline. People
sit and discuss their favorite books or simply talk about what they are reading these
days.
Readers' Club One of the exemplary example is of a "Readers'club" at the University of

Karachi, which is moderated by a teacher who is Lecturer at the Department of the
International Relations. There is also a community of this club on the Orkut with the
name of Readers' Club and also a yahoo group Readers-Club@yahoogroups.com. Its
sessions are held six days a week, only if there happens to be no hindrances. In this
club one may find Article of the week and Book Culture. Discussions are held on various
topics from domestic issues to global trends.
An example of an online book club can be that of one managed by Saba Ali on Orkut.
Here people discuss their favourite or least favourite titles, recommend and ask for
recommendations or simply put up what they loved or hated about a particular book.
Then there’s also a Pakistani Book Bloggers club where one can share simply anything
related to books whether it's reviews, likes, dislikes or any other comments
Book fairs
The first International Book Fair was held in Karachi and Lahore last year at the expo
centre and it was well received by the public at large despite the fact that all the books
were originals and were highly priced. People thronged the premises even if they didn’t
really buy much. The sad thing to note was that the Indian publishers had a very
impressive collection of reference books on various subjects, while one finds it very
difficult to find books on those topics by Pakistani publishers.
Then there are also the annual book fairs held at various places especially in schools,
colleges and universities.
Among weekly affairs, the Koocha-e-Saqafat and Frere Hall book fairs are worth a visit.
They have a huge collection of books on a wide range of topics. They are usually
second hand or reprinted, although it’s a clear violation of the copyright law but a large
number of Karachiites gather at the spot for book hunting.

Mobile bookshops
The concept of a Mobile Bookshop was first used by the Welcome Book port some
years back. Recently, Oxford started its own mobile book shop and it has been touring
the city for quite some time now. Set on a truck, with the back converted into a small
book shop with shelves and a counter set snugly at the end, the book shop attracted
people outside various schools and universities.
Issues
Book piracy and copyright laws in Pakistan
The Copyright Ordinance of 1962 came into force in 1967 in Pakistan and has been in
effect since then. A number of conditions are given in the ordinance which determines
when a work is in violation of copyright.
Pakistan is also a member of Berne Convention on copyright as well as the Universal

Copyright Convention.
The boom in the education industry created a vast market for text books, both for
primary and professional levels. Where the primary sector is largely catered to by the
local text book boards, there is a serious dearth for books on professional subjects like
medical, engineering or business. Thus increased the demand for foreign books. Due to
import limitations the prices of these books were totally out of reach of an average
Pakistani student. The National Book Foundation was set up to reprint and translate
foreign titles with the permission of the original publisher. This was to make the prices
affordable and within reach. But even this effort was not as successful as hoped
because most of the reprinted titles were either obsolete or were very old editions.
The grave vacuum in the industry was sensed by the pirates and so began a very
successful industry of pirated books. Almost all major tiles were reprinted illegally and
were sold at a fraction of the original price. Not only were text books pirated but the
recent years have seen a number of local and international fiction works being pirated
even before the release of original tiles in paper back.
The release of the Harry Potter books can be taken as a classic example of this case.
The book was all set to be released on 12th of August and there was a huge hype
surrounding its release. Almost all major book stores throughout the world had millions
of books booked prior to the release. Even in Pakistan, a couple of leading bookstores
were providing the facility of pre-ordering the book and getting a nominal discount. The
price of the book was 1450 Pak rupees. But what do the pirates offer? The pirated
version was in market the very next morning on a shameful price of 300 Pak rupees! A
huge difference of 1150 rupees between the prices! Of course people didn’t consider it
to be a bad bargain.
The trend of illegally reproducing books is not limited to international bestsellers.

Usually one doesn’t find the pirated version of books by Pakistani authors so easily but
there is a market for such books as well. Tehmina Durrani’s My Feudal Lord, Bapsi
Sidhwa’s An American Brat, are only but two examples.

When asked about the situation, Bapsi Sidhwa, a leading Pakistani English prose writer,
says “Piracy is a problem because of the steep prices. However some pirates are
developing a conscience and assigning my previously pirated books to publishers. They
have made a packet off me, but so long as books are read, I don't mind as much as I
should. If we have more publishers and a larger reading public, the prices could be
better controlled.”
There have been numerous raids in the past and recently too at Urdu Bazaar for selling
pirated books but all that is merely just a show and nothing has yet been done to
seriously think of a solution. The piracy industry is deeply rooted and cannot be curbed
with a few raids on shops which don’t even print those books
Plagiarism
Another menace apart from piracy is the problem of plagiarizing stuff. That is, either
simply copying out whole extracts or stealing the idea or characters. Plagiarism is an old
problem and a big worry for authors who spend time and money on writing a piece of
good writing and then someone else copies it and sells it at a lower cost. Then there are
one-time authors who just reproduce material from some international author and make
money by claiming it as their own. If its any comfort, then we should know that
Pakistanis are not the only ones in this practice. Recently a young Indian author was
under fire for stealing material from famous American Best Sellers. And the young writer
happens to be from Harvard!
Incentives for writers

Those who don’t reproduce work and are genuinely interested are hardly encouraged.
How many good writers will actually venture into the field when the encouragement they
get is only meager at best? The government, the NGOs and the intellectuals hardly ever
take the initiative to encourage young and budding writers of the country. This results in
most of the young authors getting their works published under foreign publishers. At
least they get the recognition they warrant in foreign waters. Yet, there are a few
committed souls who work tirelessly to make a place for themselves in the literature
deprived country.
Khadija Hasan, a young Pakistani writer says, we should really laud the efforts of the
Pakistani writers, they simply have no reason to work, and the government gives them
no incentive at all. They are not facilitated in any way and rather find it difficult to work in
such conditions.
Decline in reading habits

There has been a visible decline in reading habits in last few decades. This can be
attributed to a number of factors like television, internet and other means of
entertainment. And if we look around we’ll see that there is also a dearth of good
authors, people simply don’t have time to write and go through the hassle of getting a
book published.

Lack of libraries in the country
Public libraries used to be a lively place for one to sit down for a good read. Students
and professionals used the libraries for study purposes. Ask an old timer and you’ll see
how important those libraries were. That also includes the small one room libraries in
every neighborhood. That trend sadly is no more. Partly because of the decline in
reading habits and people just don’t find it lucrative enough to invest in. The lack of
importance attached to this important institution can be gauged by the fact that recently
an under construction women library complex has been decided to be turned into a
hospital instead. Not only would it be a waste of resources but also it will deprive the
female students of a very excellent opportunity.

Quran and Knowledge
Acquisition of knowledge is a sacred duty enjoined upon all muslims. According to
tradition, the very first revelation to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) reads as
follows:
1 Read: In the name of thy Lord Who createth,
2 Createth man from a clot.
3 Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
4 Who teacheth by the pen,
5 Teacheth man that which he knew not.
…..The Holy Quran: Ch 96, translation by M. Pickthall
Many other verses throughout the Holy Quran continuously exhort the reader to ponder
and reflect and study the signs all around. Examples of scientific nature are given all
over the Quran which only those who have studied the sciences are able to
comprehend and appreciate. Another verse reads as follows:
35:28 ….. Those truly fear Allah, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for
Allah is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.
The first battle Muslims fought was the battle of Badr. When the small number of ousted
Muslims triumphed against the men of Makkah, many of their former friends and
relatives were held as prisoners.
Muslims during the first years of the Islam comprised mostly of the poor and illiterate -
they were mostly those who escaped undue discrimination and mal-treatment of the
wealthy. When these Muslims captured the people who had once tortured them in their
homeland Makkah, Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) forbid any
unkindness towards the Quraysh prisoners.
Instead, he ordered for them to be quartered amongst Muslims and to be treated with
kindness. Some were allowed to buy their freedom through ransoms. Some were given
the alternative: to teach 10 Muslims how to read and write. Upon doing so, they
would be free.
The importance attached to literacy by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is quite clear. It is

attributed that he said that a Muslim should seek knowledge even if be in China (which
in those days was a very distant land, very difficult to reach).
It is amply clear that neither the Pagan prisoners of war nor the non-Muslims in
China would have anything in terms of religious instruction to impart to the
Muslims, thus knowledge here definitely implies worldly knowledge, and for
which, reading is a must!

Conclusion
Books are wonderful companions, the ability to read liberates us from the shackles of
space and time, and transports to all realms imaginable. Since ancient times, ever since
humans could write, books were written and the process continues till the present day.
All imaginable topics have been written upon…… a wealth more precious than gold, a
fountain of knowledge simply waiting to be tapped!
Libraries and bookshops around the world, online book stores and ebooks, articles and
papers……… as the world shrinks into a global village, access to more and more
reading materials is becoming far easier than in yonder years. Children, teens and
adults alike can tremendously benefit from the seemingly limitless choice of
conveniently available material. Emails and chat boards have already succeeded in
attracting far more people than those who would otherwise have shied from even writing
letters.
To have the ability to read, and yet not fancy reading, is like staying locked in a self-
imposed cage. Why people avoid reading is because they are not familiar with the art
of reading for joy. It is a talent that can be acquired, and continues to profit throughout
one’s life.
Reading liberates the mind and broadens the vision. People who are avid readers also
develop a higher EQ (emotional quotient), and tend to live more stable lives. The level
of many social problems can be significantly lowered by actively encouraging more and
more people to read.
Studies have shown that reading and acquiring knowledge is crucially linked with the
development and progress of nations. That the Muslim world lags behind in today’s
highly competitive world can directly be attributed to low literacy and knowledge
development levels.
Reading is both: an important need and a wonderful hobby, such that those who are
infected simply do not wish to be cured!29
29 Image source: http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us/srp%202008%20web%20banner.jpg

Literature and The Joys of Reading - Final

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1 A person who is able to read but rarely chooses to do so

The Written Word:

2 Image source: http://oneyearbibleimages.com/babylon.jpg

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3 Newspaper image source: http://www.treehugger.com/20090219-ethiopia-newspaper-reading.jpg

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The word "literature" has different

People may perceive a difference between "literature"

1|Page submitted by: Samiya Illias

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An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view,

Genres related to the essay may include:

• A Mini Saga is a short story of exactly 50 words

3|Page submitted by: Samiya Illias

Other prose literature

Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its

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Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally

Other narrative forms

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• Autobiography, Memoir, Spiritual autobiography

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100 Most Influential

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100 Most Influential Books of the Century11

1. Adler, Alfred. Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical

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1. Albee, Edward. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 1962

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Libraries in Persian Empire

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Ancient Chinese Libraries

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The contents of these Islamic libraries were copied by Christian monks in

Medieval Christian Libraries

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Early Modern Libraries

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As the number of books in libraries increased, so did the need

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Libraries can be divided into categories by several methods:

• by the entity (institution, municipality, or corporate body) that supports or

• by the type of documents or materials they hold

• by the subject matter of documents they hold

• by the users they serve

• by traditional professional divisions

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The final method of dividing library types is also the simplest.

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Some libraries devoted to a single subject:

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Free eBooks sites

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Some of the recommended online book clubs are:

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17 http://www.essortment.com/all/joyofreading_rdxc.htm Written by Kiran Piracha - © 2002 Pagewise

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