LVIV – A large second-floor cafe terrace in the Lviv Palace of Arts smells of cigarette smoke and coffee, as more than 60 people sit behind tables or stand in the doorway, silently listening to a middle-aged man recite poems from his newly published book. The poet pauses and looks around the café over his glasses. A second pair sits on top of his head.
“If you have any questions or comments, please tell me,” he says.
“I want kids from you, you know that,” an adoring young woman shouts from the doorway as she tries to make her way closer to the improvised stage.
The poet she was speaking to was Yurko Izdryk, who was promoting “After Prose,” his latest book of poems to the annual International Lviv Book Forum. And the people listening to him were guests of Lviv’s 20th book fair and festival.
Anna Pylypenko, a public relations manager from Kyiv, says she already bought more than two dozen books at the forum, giving preference to modern Ukrainian authors.
“Izdryk’s ‘After Prose,’ the latest by Taras Prohasko and ‘Pyatyknyzhzhya’ by Grytsko Chubai and a lot of others. I don’t even remember everything,” she smiles and opens her notebook to show a long written list of books she is looking to buy.
But Pylypenko falls into the not-so-big category of Ukrainians who buy and read books. According to market researcher GfK Ukraine, only 24 percent of Ukrainians are buyers-and-readers, and most of them are women. Conducted in July, the study polled 1,000 respondents around Ukraine. It found that 49 percent of Ukrainians did not buy and read books within the last three months, while 27 percent of Ukrainians read books, but didn’t buy them.
“If a person is active and progressive than they are active and progressive in everything including reading books,” says Glib Vyshlinsky, deputy director of GfK Ukraine. “Our research found that reading doesn’t really depend on the increase of electronic books market share or the financial situation of the household, but on the lifestyle,” he says.
And it seemed as if the entire 24 percent of Ukrainians who buy and read books were gathered in Lviv’s Palace of Arts.
“Hey, please let me out,” a young woman cries, trying to squeeze out of the crowd near the children’s books section, carrying four bags of them. Her name is Tetiana Kolosovska, a stay-at-home mother of two children. She has never missed a Lviv Book Forum since 2000 and says she spends at least Hr 1,000 every time.
“My favorite publishers are Machaon-Ukraine and A-ba-ba-ga-la-ma-ga. We buy a lot as gift and for ourselves, we already gathered a whole library from the forums,” she says and suddenly turns to a friend who stands nearby. “Hey, have you seen what I’ve got!” she shouts and holds all four bags up.
The qualitative part of the GfK study, based on focus group discussions, found that the main factor for developing reading habits goes back to childhood and depends on how much time parents spent reading to their children.
“I read a lot to my kids and my parents used to read a lot to me. I think it’s basic,” Kolosovska says.
Children’s books are the most sold in Ukrainian book stores. Eight percent of buyers and readers buy books for children, followed by modern detective stories, practical literature and love stories, each preferred by four percent of buyers.
However, according to the same study, there is not a single author in Ukrainian modern literature that is known by at least 50 percent of respondents. The most recognized author is Lina Kostenko, familiar to 42 percent of respondents. Fifteen percent know writer and singer Irena Karpa, while 12 and 10 percent, respectively, go to Vasyl Shklyar and Maria Matios.
“Though there is a big gap between what people know and what they read,” says Vyshlinskyi of GfK.
Only 24 out of 42 percent who know Lina Kostenko have actually read any of her works, and only four percent have read books by Irena Karpa.
However, Karpa says that she is not disappointed, because she believes that “those who read do it with love” and those who don’t read might be at least listening to her music.
“But that’s how it usually works,” she smiles and recites a line from a popular Soviet children’s poem: “I haven’t seen Lenin but I love him.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
