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| Australia's Book Week Poster - Aug 17 -23, 2024 |
At this time of the year, there are several days which highlight the importance of literacy and education. Beginning in late August, Australia has had Book Week which it has been holding since 1945. On September 8th the world celebrates International Literacy Day, on the 9th it’s the International Day to Protection Education from Attack and on October 5, it's World Teacher’s Day.
Book Week is all about celebrating the importance of books
and the joy of reading. Over the last week or two there have been all kinds of colourful
characters on buses and in schools and kindergartens as children dress up as their
favourite characters from books they know and love. It has also meant lots of
story -telling, parades, celebrating home – grown literature, book awards, author
signings in book shops and events in libraries.
Many other countries celebrate books as well. The USA for example, has a Book Month coming up in October with book fairs, author readings and literacy campaigns in schools and libraries. However it also has a lot of other days on which books of various kinds are celebrated, including Children’s Book Week in both May and November, a National Book Lover’s Day on Aug 9, a National Donate a Book Day, Days for specific genres – Mystery, Biography and so on. You can see the full list here.
India celebrates National Book Week on the 19th of June, Scotland on the 14th to the 20th of November and The Philippines between November 14th and 20.th
France holds Book Festivals in different cities all year, with literary discussions and celebrations of French literature. I am personally rather taken with Spain’s Dia de Libro (Day of Books), held on the 23rd of April each year. In addition to the usual activities such as book fairs and author signings, there’s a tradition of giving books and roses.
Book Cities
Did you know that there are whole cities devoted to books? UNESCO recognises 53 International Book Cities in 39 countries. They usually have a literary heritage e.g. being the birthplace of a famous writer, they have lots of bookstores and libraries, festivals and fairs dedicated to books, a history of publishing, educational programs – e.g. workshops to encourage literacy and creative writing and cultural exchange and collaboration between authors. Typical examples include Dublin, home to writers such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, Edinburgh, Scotland – the first UNESCO Book City and surprisingly Melbourne, Australia, with its strong literary tradition of writers’ festivals and Australia's oldest library. Strasbourg France, has been designated as this year’s World Book Capital.
Why Books Matter
Many past and present cultures have wonderful oral traditions, but books enable us to glimpse the culture, wisdom and stories of cultures which no longer exist. Our earliest novels - reading for fun rather than serious or religious texts, have their origin in the Icelandic Sagas which captured stories of past heroic deeds (and feuds between families) and were written down in the C14th. In the same vein, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387 -1400), which recorded the stories told by pilgrims at a story telling competition on the way to Canturbury, is not only funny, but tells us a great deal about the lives of ordinary people at the time. Much of the scientific knowledge which underpins human progress has also been transmitted through books.
Books allow us to communicate across time and space and to future generations,
even if the power goes out, batteries die or some other catastrophe engulfs our
society. Imagine what it meant for Europe and the Western world to discover
works of Maths, Science, Medicine and Philosophy during the Crusades, after the five
centuries of the darkness which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire during which most of Europe went into decline.
Thanks to the foresight of the rulers of Alexandria with its great library
which disseminated knowledge throughout Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East, it
sparked the great burst of creativity and engineering we call the Renaissance, despite the original
library being lost and despite Europe losing so much of its intellectual capital
due to the Black Death (1346 – 1953). The Library of Alexandria continues to
have a profound influence on Western thought - including art, architecture and
design and how we value and store knowledge, long after its demise.
The Future of Books
Books and publishing may be in decline due to the onslaught
of electronic media – it is better for trees and the planet, but books are
still the way we permanently capture and preserve ideas over time. We do not
need a permanent record of that receipt from the coffee shop, or the parking
ticket we got last week, but for important ideas, or things we want to read
time and time again, books will continue to have a place in our lives.
[A small plea here. Could we please make them out of annual crops such as hemp, or the mountains of waste clothing littering the world. What was wrong with papyrus anyway? And while I am at it, has anyone tried making paper with Marrum Grass or any other invasive species?].
The Real Threat to Books
It’s true that some books are a waste of time and do not deserve to be kept for posterity. Some may indeed inflame the passions or the masses, or propagate silly or evil ideas, but it grieves me all the same, to see Book Burning and Banning– last seen in Nazi Germany during Hitler’s reign, making a comeback. Back then it not only meant a loss of valuable knowledge and cultural heritage, but was about controlling thought and expression. Many prominent authors including Hermann Hesse, left the country.
May those events continue to serve as a warning about the
dangers of censorship and the suppression of intellectual freedom and one which
we should be wary of. Should anyone be
allowed to decide what others can read? We do not know what may be relevant to
future generations. In my humble opinion, one of the greatest strengths of Western civilisation has always been the relatively open access to the widest possible range of literature and information. If we must restrict it for any reason, then let it be done by our
finest scholars and teachers, not our politicians. Those who do not know history, are doomed to repeat it.
Now you’d think that with all those books and Book Weeks, there wouldn’t be a person left on the planet who can’t read, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. We’ll talk about that in the next post.
-Thanks to Microsoft Bing AI for answers to my questions and lots of references.
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