Book culture isn’t dead, it’s just evolving

SINGAPORE - According to my mother, the first and only time I threw a public tantrum was over a book. I was three years old and didn’t want to leave the children’s book section in the two-storey Toys“R”Us opposite Parkway Parade. I could barely read, but had a meltdown anyway.

Books continued to hold my attention as I grew up. I got told off for reading at the dinner table and under my desk at school. I made myself carsick trying to read on the bus.

It was at university that reading felt like work for the first time. Snowed under by academic texts every week, I read fewer books of my choice. These days, I find it difficult to read for any length of time. Often, it’s just easier to drop the book, grab my phone and scroll through Instagram reels.

For many people, it seems the destination is no longer worth the journey. In October, American magazine The Atlantic published an article about how students at elite US colleges are struggling to read books from cover to cover. The reason: Having never been required to digest books in their entirety, these students now lack the staying power to do so.

The same malaise appears to be spreading in Singapore. Book borrowing at public libraries is down, and both indie and mainstream bookstores have either downsized or called it quits. Often, modern living and its digital distractions are held accountable for this.

All of us seem to be in agreement about the demise of book culture. But what if this is just half the story and we are wrong? Audiobooks have made it easier to read on the go. The rise of Booktube, Booktok and Bookstagram allows people to discuss books with those they’ve never met. Some serialised web novels have hundreds of chapters and amassed thousands of fans.

Book culture isn’t dead. It’s just changing to suit what modern readers want.

Reading in an age of distraction

Modern life is like living in a pinball factory. Every day from the moment you wake up, things around you ping, buzz and light up. Your attention rattles from one fleeting subject to the next, jolted from Reddit to Instagram, finally clinking to a stop on your e-mail inbox.

It’s no wonder that people find it difficult to read books, which lack bells and whistles and make you work for the payoff in a way TikTok doesn’t. At Singapore’s public libraries, book borrowing has not returned to the pre-pandemic high of 40.5 million in 2019. In April, the National Library Board (NLB) said people made 36.3 million physical and digital loans in 2023 – 2.3 million fewer than in 2022.

Another sign of the times: A 2021 study reported that a shrinking proportion of students in Singapore and elsewhere in the world said they enjoyed reading a lot. In Singapore, this number was 51 per cent, compared with 55 per cent in 2016 and 60 per cent in 2011.

It gets worse in university, according to Associate Professor Julien Cayla at Nanyang Technological University’s Nanyang Business School. He regularly asks his students what they read and laments the fact that they do not.

What was the last book you read? I don’t recall; I was 16 years old, his students reply.

Who are your favourite authors? C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling.

“Every time I ask these questions, I’m a little bit depressed,” says Prof Cayla, who has drawn up a list of 20 books – an even mix of fiction and non-fiction – he hopes his undergraduates will read. “From my perspective, it goes from Harry Potter to Harvard Business Review and there’s nothing in between.”

But a close look at the NLB’s 2021 National Reading Habits Study reveals more hopeful trends. While people are still far more likely to read the news than a book, 34 per cent said they read books at least once a week, up from 19 per cent in 2016. Fewer people read physical books, but the proportion of those who read e-books and audiobooks has grown.

The internet is also shaping what people read. In 2016, the most common way people discovered new reads was by word of mouth. Five years later, NLB data showed this had been overtaken by social media and online browsing, with the proportion of people who said they took recommendations from online reading communities going up from 8 per cent to 19 per cent.

These numbers suggest that if we want to build a nation of readers, bookstores and paperbacks may no longer be the best starting points. Instead, look to the digital formats that suit our modern lifestyles and the online spaces where people increasingly spend their time.