We see these books on racks labeled «bestsellers» and on the stands of the International Book Fair; the same titles in publicly sold magazines. These names are seasonal, as fashion should be. Books have long been an indicator of «cultural context»: tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are. Is it bad or good?
Somehow imperceptibly, Russia has ceased to call itself «the most reading country in the world.» According to polls by the Levada Center, over the past 12 years, the number of people who say they «practically do not read books» has grown from 23% to 37%. At the same time, the number of books published since the beginning of the 90s has been continuously increasing and has long surpassed the indicators of the Soviet years. Who and what reads today in the former «most reading» country?
It is quite obvious that in recent years we have developed an assortment of fashionable books, that is, one that is fashionable to read. We see these books on racks labeled «bestsellers» and on the stands of the International Book Fair; the same titles in publicly sold magazines. These names are seasonal, as fashion should be. Books have long been an indicator of «cultural context»: tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are. Is it bad or good?
For publishers, the emergence of a fashionable reading public in Russia is a great prospect: you can count on such readers, their circle is growing and expanding. This is not only the “humanitarian” student youth, but also young teachers, graduate students and those who receive a second education, etc. For them, books and talking about them are part of their leisure, image, social life, they want to “be in course” and be able to maintain a conversation on this topic in order to become part of a certain circle and lifestyle. This is not bad for all of us: a new culturally dynamic group is ready to develop, expand its semantic horizons; she has already become a model for other people, as is the case with fashion phenomena. And the very presence of fashion suggests that in addition to stratification, there is also dynamics in society and culture. People who claim to be the political, economic, cultural elite read books to feel themselves part of a large, open world of science, culture, public life with its diversity and competition, personal choice and responsibility for this choice.
In the international space, a global model of modern literature has already taken shape, which is read by everyone. This is not necessarily fiction, the non-fiction genre is also popular. Fashionable books present the whole structure of the semantic world of modern man: they contain ethnography, astronomy, medicine, history — what is significant today. The showcase of a Moscow bookstore differs little from that of a store in London or Warsaw: seven to eight recognizable titles plus three to four books by actual local authors. Russia has just joined this circle, but it has a future: fashionable literature will undoubtedly correlate with “high”, problematic literature, for which Nobel Prizes are later given.