Venezuela’s revolutionary reading
The BBC News has just published an article on Venezuela’s Revolutionary Reading Plan, which offers some interesting insights into the politics of reading.
The government has given out tens of thousands of free copies of Don Quijote by Cervantes and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, saying that such events “promote reading for the construction of socialism and humanist values”.
The part of the article that caught my eye was the role of “book squadrons”,
Beyond the book give-aways, another key part of the Reading Plan are thousands of “book squadrons”. These are basically roving book clubs that are intended to encourage reading on the metro, in public squares and in parks. Each squadron wears a different colour to identify their type of book. For example, the red team promotes autobiographies while the black team discusses books on “militant resistance”.
Is there an idea for a library program in there somewhere? Some day will we see roving librarian book squadrons on the TTC, really meeting the users where they are? And will they be talking about “militant resistance“?
The real question in my mind is – what’s on the list? Surprisingly, it turns out that it’s really difficult to find the actual list online (I haven’t succeeded yet); just lots of articles that mention that it contains Marx, Guevara, Cervantes, etc.
The book squadrons idea is an interesting one, but I can’t imagine that it would actually function well in practice. It’s an interesting project though, I hope we hear more about it in the future.