Looking at the "book" with the façade |

Text | Li Guangchun

The construction of a bookish society makes reading a need for everyone, and social institutions will naturally not be absent. The library is linked between urban and rural areas, books are borrowed and returned, and there are always newspapers, magazines and books on the shelves of public spaces, so that everyone who wants to read books can be satisfied. Even in the lobby aisles of some hotels, restaurants, and shopping malls, there are stitches and needles placed on a few newspapers and magazines that have just come out, or classic masterpieces, so that passers-by can casually flip through when they stop and rest. Merchants decorate the façade with books, use public activity spaces to create a cultural atmosphere, will find another way in homogenization, have a sentimental pursuit in the pursuit of profits, and can play a high game in differentiation, this business is good.

This kind of casual flipping, for us, is to fill in the fragmented time with reading. However, such happiness can sometimes be lost. Everywhere I went, wherever there were books and newspapers, I would involuntarily stop, scan the shelves, and find the books I wanted to read quickly, which has become a habit for many years. Once I went to a restaurant and waited for people, habitually pulled out a world famous book from the bookcase, even if I knew that the brand new "book" was surprisingly light, and then I saw that it was a book box, and I casually touched the "books" on the shelves, all of which were in vain, which made people surprised. After chatting with colleagues afterwards, I learned that this is a special book box for decoration, which is specially used to decorate the façade to create an atmosphere.

There are many places to run, only to know that this kind of book box with a façade has quietly become a "fashion". The bookcases of urban study rooms, restaurants, and hotels are virtual and real, and people use real books where they can reach them, and fake book boxes where their eyes can see and their hands can't reach.

In the eyes of some people, such a popularity is very "meaningful". Correspondingly, do modern people, especially young people, still love books? Now some young people do not even want to decorate their homes, in an era that can not be quiet, do they still read?

People of insight will not give up their social responsibilities, and will always spare no effort to promote the cultivation of social reading habits. Various book sharing meetings, reader salons, knowledge lectures, new book launches, etc. have risen and fallen one after another, but promoters still feel that they are not satisfactory, thinking that young people do not read, so it is terrible. In fact, a generation has a generation's mission, and a generation has a generation's way of life and work.

Knowledge changes destiny, and today's young people are a generation of people who grew up reading, and their desire for knowledge will never be satisfied. The fierce competition in the workplace makes them dare not slack off in learning; the adjustment of current affairs policies makes them not sloppy in learning; the changes in industry trends make them unable to relax in learning. Many people have been reading, reading like a hunger, reading with a needle in the haystack, and reading non-stop. However, their reading style has changed, no longer holding a book, brewing a pot of tea, or sitting under the window sill, or reclining on the sofa, but a mobile phone or iPad, watching the world on one screen. Audiovisual reading has become an important way for this generation of young people to read.

Some people disagree with this and call it "shallow reading", not real reading. In their view, holding a paper book, sitting down to read slowly, and writing something with a pen is "deep reading". Turnip greens, each with its own love. What kind of reading can better and faster to receive new knowledge is a good way.

Since the beginning of the text, people are reading, and the carrier of reading is constantly adjusting and changing. The interest in reading the carrier itself is an area of study by a small number of experts. Ordinary people will not delve into oracle bones, nor will they hold bamboo to read. Iterative inheritance makes the knowledge storage of modern reading carriers richer and more convenient for flexible use.

Electronic reading and paper reading, the two parallel, symbiotic and co-growing, together expand the reading space. Reading is the universal pursuit of society, in the era of knowledge explosion, everyone knows that knowledge is power, reading changes fate, there is no need to use the "teacher" posture to belittle ridicule and even interfere with electronic reading. Choosing what you think is a more convenient, faster, and more effective way of reading should be respected. This is also the fundamental reason why publishing houses publish paper books at the same time, synchronously launch e-books for listing. Network society, digital economy is a big industry. E-reading does not depend on people's will, but becomes a new and effective way of reading. People no longer deliberately build a study to decorate the façade, but more to improve their own cultivation skills, to seize all reading opportunities, to recharge their own lives, to enhance their own value, so that "open the book is beneficial" becomes the motto, so that "cultivating the heirloom" becomes an heirloom.

The style of the book changes, a mobile phone or iPad is a portable library, a finger slips, the book turns over a page, which paragraph is important, screenshot preservation is very convenient, heart-to-heart comments, dipped in electronic ink, what color of the word can be written... Modern science and technology benefit mankind, and the blessings are not shallow. In the era when everyone carries the library with them, in order to retain their memories, some hotels and restaurants use fake books for the façade, which I prefer to understand in good faith: reverence for culture, business fortune does not forget to create a reading atmosphere; the inheritance of culture, public space reminds reading habits to develop; the spread of culture, the whole society nourishes the reading group. (The author is a special researcher of the College of Liberal Arts of Yangzhou University).