Singapore 'Borders' closed

It is curtains for Borders in Singapore.

The only functional Borders outlet at Parkway Parade closed its door on Monday. For good.

Last Saturday, I made a trip to the bookstore. Books were being sold off at 70 per cent discount. I knew that all the good books would have gone by now. Still, I wanted to go to the bookstore one last time. So, I went. Like a pilgrim, I had to make that last journey.

As expected, there was a good crowd. Most of the books left in the store were crap. Yet, people thronged the shelves that had some stock left on them. Half the bookstore's shelves were without books. There were 'Out of Bound' signs to prevent the public from entering those spaces.

I spent more than an hour looking for books I could buy. I found a couple of novels and two books on screenplay writing worth buying. My daughter found two books that she wanted to buy. I waited for almost half an hour to make payment for my purchase. It was all very civil. When I paid for the books, the counter clerk looked me in the eye and said, "Thank you". If it were business as usual, she would have said, "See you again, sir." We both knew it was the last time. But there was nothing on her face. No smile, no sorry, no regret.

I stepped out of the store and looked at it one last time.

With Borders' closure, a chapter has ended for book-lovers in Singapore. I will miss a bookstore like Borders. I think it was not lack of customer support that killed the store. It was the rent. Singapore's escalating rent is killing many businesses, most of them small businesses. Selling books is not just business--it is more than that. Bookstores should be given the non-profit treatment, and every Mall should give discounts in the rental for bookstores. Bookstores are like parks in a city. What kind of ROI do we expect from them? If a bookstore goes, the loss is ours.

The difference between taste and judgment

We are very quick to pronounce our judgments on works of art: a book, a movie, a picture. I don't like this book. I love that movie. And so on. The point is, as long as we have a basic respect for a work of art, it is OK to express your opinion about it.

This and many other interesting points make Rick Gekoski's piece, It takes judgment, not taste, to pick a Booker winner, quite readable:

Claiming that something is right or wrong is generally regarded as more than mere opinion. Murder is wrong, being kind to old ladies is right: such conclusions are the result of first principles, argument and sustained consideration. If I prefer merlot to cabernet sauvignon, football to cricket, blondes to brunettes, spinach to mushrooms, that is a matter of taste, and I am under no obligation to defend my preference. But if I adore murdering, and am gratuitously beastly to old ladies, I am (in many ways) likely be called upon to defend myself.

Where does this leave us? With a clear distinction between matters of taste and matters of judgment. You like Mateus Rosé better than Château Pétrus? No problem. You think it is a better wine? You're wrong. You're clearly without the experience, palate, or discrimination to make such a judgment. As unfit as I would be to decide which sort of catalytic convertor to fit to my car. I simply don't know enough. This seems obvious, but increasingly such a position offends against the spirit of the times. Nobody is wrong these days. We are all "entitled to our opinion", and the notion that there is some gap between opinion and truth, assertion and argument, seems to be getting lost.

His final point:

You will have gathered by now that this is not about Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, or even John Banville, who merely provides its occasion. What is it about, then? Respect. For people, for texts, for the act of reading, and of talking about books and their authors. Implicit in this is John Stuart Mill's wise advice: it is easy enough to be grateful for friends who agree with you, but who we really need to value are our antagonists, for it is they who make us think harder, strive to refine and elucidate our judgments, making them (and ourselves) both clearer and better. I would love one day to argue publicly with Boyd Tonkin about The Sea. I think he was wrong. He thinks I was. Maybe one of us might actually change his mind?

Full text

Twilight of the books?

I have often wondered about this: most of my friends, who are not into writing or journalism, hardly read books. If they ever would, it would be Who Moved My Cheese or Blink kind of books, which gives them instant gyan and practical advice about life or careers. Women who used to read books or magazines have had their attention taken up by the soaps. Men have their gadgets, DVDs, video games or the gym, then they would head for the bar to talk about soccer or cricket.

In India, because there is a large, educated young population, even if only a few people are reading, it looks like a big market. There is a lot of excitement about this market, aided by the constant rise of new writers (mini-celebs) but most others feel the frustration. A friend of mine recently wrote to me:

"The more I interact with editors etc here and see the kind of new authors getting published, it seems to me that publishing fiction is a totally commercial venture. A 'product' is packaged for marketing, depending on what the publisher thinks will sell. A couple of professional editors candidly told me that many of these new writers submit manuscripts with major anomalies in plot, characters etc, and dont care about changing names of the hero halfway through the story even. I also get the feeling that the Indian scouts want ad jingles and blurbs, the catchier the better. They dont seem to have the patience to carefully read two pages of real writing.
Dwindling attention spans, I'm afraid."

I think this dwindling attention span thing is true, at least in the case of most readers/should-be readers today. I am sure you know about the theory of fractured attention. Google it if you don't.

Apparently, something nasty (am being lazy here) is happening in America in this regard. Let me quote this piece of fact from The New Yorker: "Americans are losing not just the will to read but even the ability. According to the Department of Education, between 1992 and 2003 the average adult's skill in reading prose slipped one point on a 500-point scale, and the proportion who were proficient -- capable of such tasks as "comparing viewpoints in two editorials" -- declined from 15% to 13."

Not just that, here is one more terrible piece of stats: Only 40%of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. But in reality, it could be even less: say 27%, argues Mike Elgan. But there is something far more worrying.

In Will cell phones save books? Mike Elgan says: "To me, even more alarming than the loss of reading skill -- and probably related to it -- is that many young people have lost interest in books."

Moot point:

I don't have the data to back this up, but I'm convinced that young people today are reading more than any other generation in history. By that I mean they're passing their eyes over and "processing" more words. But the words are coming in the form of IMs, text messages, blogs, social networking messages and other nonbook material. They gravitate to this not because it's trash, but because it's participatory. They're reading as part of a dialog that involves writing.

"Literacy" isn't about passively reading, it's about reading and writing. If we want to increase the reading of books, we'll need to figure out how to increase the writing of books, especially novels.

More

How? What do you think?