İzmirians hold reading festival despite low reader numbers

About 50 people, mostly young and mostly women, are lying on the grass on the Kordon, the coastal front at the center of İzmir, reading their books. It is Oct. 30, İzmir's Book Reading Festival, a spontaneous festival that surfaced on social media. It is strikingly simple - with no activities or sponsors: "Just bring your book, a cushion and a cup of coffee."

It is a beautiful day; mothers have dragged along their little children. A group of women say they have come together from Gaziemir, one of the poorer suburbs of the city. Two women, one uncovered and the other wearing a dark red headscarf, are reading a bit far away with their kids, too. One is reading the recent bestseller, Elif Şafak's "Daughters of Eve" - a book that explores religion and the bourgeoisie through the eyes of three different women. The woman wearing the red headscarf is reading Maksim Gorki's "Mother." Other book titles include William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and Turkey's new-generation writer Emrah Serbes '"Müptezeller" (The Addicted). 

İzmirians like to boast that their city, which has a reputation for prestigious high schools and universities, reads more than the rest of the country. The İzmir Book Fair, a seven-day affair that takes place every year in April, has brought together writers, publishers and authors over the last two decades. It is the little sister to Turkey's largest book fair, in Istanbul, which starts in mid-November.

The city has also been the hometown of many great writers, from İhsan Oktay Anar, whom many people deem worthy of a Nobel prize "if only his complicated and playful use of Turkish could be translated" to Ece Temelkuran, the angry young woman who recently authored "Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy."
But despite all...

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