‘Book fair attracts avid, novice readers’

AMMAN — A book festival in downtown Amman attracted a “great audience” who sought to quench their thirst for reading and were encouraged by the low prices of books, organisers said Saturday.

Organised by the Greater Amman Municipality and Uzbakiyet Amman from Thursday to Saturday, at Hashemite Square and the Roman Theatre, the “Our Mother Amman, A City that Reads” festival attracted book lovers mainly from surrounding areas in downtown Amman, according to the supervisor of Uzbakiyet Amman, Hussein Yassein.

Yassein said 8,000 books were sold during the first two days, about 60 per cent of which were novels.

“This generation of readers reminds me of the 1980s generation, who loved reading more than anything,” he told The Jordan Times in an interview on Saturday.

Uzbakiyet Amman, a downtown bookshop, is named after the Uzbakiyyeh Wall in Cairo, where 132 bookshops are located.

“The opening ceremony was covered by local and international satellite channels such as Roya TV and BBC, while the official Jordan TV channel was absent,” Ghazi Theibeh, the media spokesperson of Uzbakiyet Amman, said.

Theibeh urged private and public institutions to support such festivals for their important role in promoting reading in the country, thanking Cairo Amman Bank and Safeir Press for supporting the three-day book fair.

The organisers mainly depended on volunteers in holding the festival, he said, adding that 15 volunteers participated in the fair, which consisted of 55 booths showcasing used and new books in English and Arabic covering a wide array of topics.

Nayef Qabain, one of the volunteers, said the fair encouraged some downtown residents to take up reading as a hobby.

“A young man came and told me that he doesn’t usually read and asked me to choose a book to encourage him to read,” Qabain told The Jordan Times.

According to Yassein, Uzbakiyet Amman held 35 book fairs in 2013 and has organised 20 fairs since the beginning of 2014. The 55 exhibitions attracted around 150,000 visitors.

Amman Mayor Aqel Biltaji, who inaugurated the event on Thursday, paid an unannounced visit on the second day and discussed the possibility of organising similar fairs in different areas of Amman with Yassein.

Um Haytham, a visitor to the book fair, told The Jordan Times that the festival was a great way to “attract different age groups of readers through the variety of books available at affordable prices”.

“Readers nowadays are fewer than in the past due to technological progress that has diverted people from reading,” Um Haytham noted.

Mohammad Attal, another visitor, said he knew about the event through Uzbakiyyeh’s Facebook page, and would like to see more festivals organised at universities.

“People have more important things to care about than books due to the economic conditions these days, but this festival offered visitors an opportunity to buy books at low rates,” Attal added.