(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) But can technology do the same thing Bookworm Enid Parker is reluctant to accept the changes coming her way Being a long-time resident of the city and a bibliophile it was with a heavy heart that I witnessed the closure of bookshop after bookshop in Dubai from Magrudy’s in BurJuman and Deira City Centre to Booksplus in Lamcy. For me the primary attraction of a mall has always been its bookshop. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find more than one in the same mall… like Deira City Centre’s Book Corner which I frequented never realising that its days were numbered.
The existing shops in most malls with the exception of the superstore Kinokuniya which still stocks a huge collection of books are beginning to cater more to kids’ toys and accessories stationery and other gift items. The books in the bookshops are being phased out. Sounds a bit funny but it’s true. It’s kind of like Virgin gradually minimising its music section because of course hardly anyone buys CDs anymore.
While I know that CDs are losing their shelf life because of increased digitisation of music (at times I prefer to live in denial and dust off my battered old tape deck) books always seemed to be made of sterner stuff like no one could really mess with them. Nothing could have us book lovers visualise a scenario where physical reading matter might actually become redundant someday. Is the fate of bookshops in Dubai tied up in any way to the increasing popularity of electronic readers There could be other factors involved like the profitability of running and maintaining one. I’m no business analyst rather a sentimental wordsmith for whom the smallest bit of nostalgia can trigger a huge reaction.
My reading journey began in this city. The first books I (or rather my parents) bought us in Dubai were secondhand from an old furniture shop in Karama which had a few shelves in one corner dedicated to these treasures. My first Enid Blytons emerged from here as did a part of Dad’s now enormous collection of dog-eared spy novels and detective capers. I became a big fan of Blyton and began to seek out her books in our school library too. In the early ‘80s hardcover Hamlyn editions with beautiful illustrations were extremely popular. Those are the images I will forever associate her characters with. I feel happy now that a lot of the old books we read went through a lot of kids’ hands before reaching ours. The stories resonated universally even though most of them were small town tales of adventurous English kids who seemed to survive quite well even when their parents weren’t around. Parents existed just in the backdrop in most Blyton stories to our delight. We liked to think a world existed where kids could sail away to a set of islands get shipwrecked and survive just fine on their own then become unlikely heroes all with minimal or no adult assistance whatsoever.
While I continue to mourn the loss of old bookshops and am ever stubborn in my refusal to purchase an electronic reader of any kind there remain not many options. So I drown my sorrows in the sometimes overwhelming Kinokuniya and popular secondhand store Book World (Karama and Satwa) dreading the day my choices will become even more limited. But one must adapt to technology eventually; I just hope that in my case it will be later rather than sooner.
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