British national sport? READING!

Statistics say that over 60 percent Poles don't read books. At all! Only 11 percent of Polish people read seven or more books a year. This is terrible and means that reading is getting less and less popular, since in years 1994 - 2004 more than seven books read about 24 per cent of us. Only 8 per cent of teenagers look into books every day. This makes my hair curl! Youth admitt that they prefer synthetic form of text to long descriptions appearing in books. No wonder that Twitter or Instagram win with books :(

What does the situation with reading look like in Great Britain? From my observations the British read a lot. They read everywhere: on buses, trains, in parks, waiting rooms, in queues and even at work during breaks. Books are everywhere in UK, wherever you go. They sell them in numerous book and stationery shops, supermarkets, charity shops and at car boots (where we can buy used books for next to nothing (a pound or even 50 p). 

In some supermarkets there are special bookshelves or tables with books that are on exchange. Book swapping is really popular in UK. It works like that you bring a book you've already read, leave it and, in return, you may take another one home. The exchange is not supervised. ' This is a frequent practice in youth hostels where travellers can leave a book and take a different book with them. Some railway stations in Great Britain have informal book exchanges and one has also been set up in a phone box in Kington Magna' (source: wikipedia.org). 

You can read about the Kington Magna Book Exchange here:   book exchange box

General availability of books is the first reason why reading is such a popular activity in UK. Another reason is the fact that books are relatively cheap to wages. If we compare local book prices and Polish ones, they don't differ at all. Income do. Prices of new books range from £3 to £12, depends on a book and where we choose to buy one (if online we may pay less). In Poland books are relatively expensive to Polish salaries. There aren't many places where we can buy used books - secondhand bookshops are not as popular as they used to be. Many of them closed down.

Another reason for the popularity of reading here is getting young children into the habit of reading. Primary school pupils bring books home from school library to read with parents. In secondary schools each English lesson begins with about 30-minute reading time. Each student has their own book borrowed from school library and they are supposed to read it quietly. In this way reading becomes their natural everyday wont.

I personally think their idea of promoting reading is fantastic. I wish Polish schools 'borrowed' this method and implemented it. And you? Do you like British culture of reading? And how many books do you usually read a year? ;)

Cheerio!