Emblematic of living in Doha...

[qatarperegrine]

Caryl and I walked into a furniture store today and asked where we'd find bookshelves. The furniture store employee looked stumped and said, "Er... maybe in Home Office?" But he was wrong: we found bookshelf there, not bookshelves. How can you have a furniture store without bookshelves? I guess the same way that you can provide university employee housing without bookshelves. Owning books is not exactly de rigeur here.

On the way out of the furniture store we passed a booth set up to sell Valentine's Day gifts. Promimently featured was a display of heart-shaped bathroom scales -- because nothing says lovin' like a thinly veiled demand for weight loss.

Comments

What you are telling is true ,but

[(Anonymous)]

I have heard the same complaints on your country the USA .There was a famous book in my country "I was a stay at home mum in the United States " written by a Hungarian psychologist in th 1980's -who lived some years in different parts of the states and she claimed that the bookshelves are non existing in the American homes .
We keep hearing such things in Europe that" The Americans do not read ".In Budapest everybody is reading everywhere : in the metro , on the tram , at the doctor's waiting rooms , keeping a book under the desk during a boring lecture ...

Re: What you are telling is true ,but

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I think it's likely true that American read less than Europeans. When I lived in London I noticed that most commuters on the Tube bring along a book and read while they're waiting; that's less common in the States.

But the difference between the U.S. and Qatar is much, much more extreme. Until last year, not a single mall in Doha had a bookstore. There was only ONE bookstore that sold English-language books, and it's actually an office supply store. (And the problem isn't the "English-language" part -- there aren't many Arabic-language books either.) Now, the best bookstore in town is the Virgin Megastore, which is actually a music store.

According to a United Nations report:

"Arabs constitute five percent of the world population, yet they produce only one percent of the world’s books. Meagre as this output is, a much higher percentage than the world average of this production is dedicated to religious books. Religious books account for 17 percent of all books published in Arab countries, compared to a world average of about five percent. Books on social sciences, literature and the arts command a much smaller percentage. In 1996, Arab countries produced no more than 1945 literary and artistic books despite a readership of 280 million in the 22 Arab countries. This is less than what a country such as Turkey produces, with a population about one-quarter that of the Arab countries. In general, the usual print run for novels or collections of short stories ranges from 1,000 to 3,000 copies."

Re: What you are telling is true ,but

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was the wrong report. That quote was from this report.