1.4 million in Kazakhstan’s reading marathon: habit or headline figure?

Kazakhstan’s Culture and Information Ministry said on 19 October that more than 1.4 million people are taking part in the “Reading Nation” marathon. They include pupils, students, teachers, families and employees. The project has a list of 345 books in Kazakh and Russian and a reading-nation.kz platform where participants post reviews.

Aktobe region leads in reviews with 25,557, followed by North Kazakhstan with 14,249 and Kyzylorda with 14,037. More than 20,000 video reviews have appeared on social media. These figures show participation, but do not by themselves measure how deeply books are read or understood: a review can be brief, and a book read may never be reviewed.

At a meeting, participants discussed book shelves in shops, author events, comics, book trailers and access to literature in rural areas. These are proposals, not measures already operating everywhere. Useful future indicators include book availability, regular reading and participation by rural schools and libraries. The most valuable outcome is a person wanting to read another book and being able to find it.

Cover: editorial illustration.

Source: Kazakhstan Ministry of Culture and Information.