With more than 70,000 visitors attending the 15^th International Book Fair in San Jose, organizers and exhibitors were certainly pleased to see that reading is still capturing the interest of many people in Costa Rica. For the second year in a row, the International Book Fair expanded its presence beyond the Antigua Aduana (Old Customs Building), and held activities at the nearby Casa de Cuño, shopping malls and even Bar El Sótano (The Basement).

 

This year also marked the second edition of Leer Es Pura Vida, a national campaign designed to encourage both reading and writing in Costa Rica. Through most of the 20^th century, Costa Rica was known as the nation with the highest rate of adult literacy and a very active segment of readers. In recent years, however, both rates of literacy and reading have receded, leaving sociologists and philologists wondering if our country would ever return to such cognitive prestige.

 

It turns out that yes, it seems as if Costa Rica is in the right track with regard to reading. Adult literacy is slowly recovering thanks to competitive in the job marketplace, and reading is making a strong comeback as can be appreciated by the success of the International Book Fair and the results of the 2013 Latin American Survey on Cultural Practices and Habits, which places Costa Rica along with Mexico and Uruguay in terms of reading for business, educational and personal purposes. According to this survey, people in Costa Rica read an average of 4.5 books per year.

 

What People in Costa Rica are Reading Now

A late August report from La Nacion explained that major booksellers such as Librería Lehmann brought out nearly 1,000 new titles each day during the fair. Interest in books published in English has been rising steadily over the last few years; to this effect, the United States Embassy has been a supporter of Leer es Pura Vida. A strong focus of the campaign has been on encouraging children to read without forcing them to do so. Spanish author JJ Benitez, who is known for his Caballo de Troya (Trojan Horse) 10-volume novel about UFOs and the life of Christ, was on hand to sign books at Multiplaza in Escazu and Curridabat as well as at the Antigua Aduana; he explained that forcing children to read is a bad idea, but he added that children should not limit their reading to what they find online.

 

Mr. Benitez may not like the observations of Carlos Calvo, who represented the esteemed publisher Editorial Costa Rica at the Fair. Mr. Calvo explains that his publishing house is seeing a lot of interest being paid to audiobooks, ebooks and graphic novels. Readers are also getting younger, and thus teen novels are competing against police and detective titles, particularly those that feature Costa Rica as a backdrop. Self-help remains a popular genre, although more readers are turning to New Age and do-it-yourself books on design, cooking, handcrafts, and more.