Connect the Dots # 1
In tonight’s Connect the Dots, we will be looking at three stories/dots.
The first story appeared in the Wall Street Journal (19-11-18) and it is titled as Literary Dimensions. The news story is about the Sinan bookstore in Shanghai in China. The bookstore was open for 60 days initially and due to public demand has now established itself as a permanent place for reading. The bookshop is open every day from 4 -8 PM and it has become a hub for writers, editors and literary critics to share their ideas and thoughts. The existence of such a book club gathers importance in the context of the rise of the internet and e-commerce which have created a fragmented reading habit among people.
This description about the bookstore is quite alluring: A short stretch of narrow spiral stairs leads up to the bookshop, where book lovers find the decor and lighting resemble those of a typical Shanghai mansion in the early 1900s. Visitors can spend an entire day there, sitting on leather sofas or chairs, drinking coffee and reading. One of the founders of the bookstore, Kan Ninghui describes the bookstore as “the beating heart of books for book lovers.”
The second story/dot is from the archives of CNN and it is about the bookstore in Southampton known as October Books. The owners were forced to relocate their shop to another location which was 500 meters away from the old location. They were worried about the act of shifting 20,000 books and furniture to the new location. The volunteers behind October Books appealed for help and there was a huge response. Thousands of people came forward to ‘lift and shift’ the books and all the books were delivered to the new location within a few hours.
The third story/dot is the article from Business Insider which informs us that students learn more effectively from printed textbooks rather than from the screens. This is due to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension. The kind of engagement that we can have with the printed text (dog-eared pages, lines of text underlined and added with questions and reflections) is more than that of a digital text. The article exhorts that there should be a place for the printed text in spite of all the technology-based system of learning.
What is your response to these three dots? What kind of big picture is emerging from this? Please do leave your comments and feedback at the bottom.
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