Reading has a lot of write choices

My invitation to attend this week's Beijing International Book Fair included a request to participate in a survey aimed at charting the reading habits of foreign authors.

Since all six of the non-fiction books I've written for North American publishers are devoted to the same subjects that dominate my library - sports and pop culture - my initial reaction was, "Who the hell cares?"

Still, once I got into answering the questions, it was kind of a kick ... until it came to naming a single "favorite title" that I would recommend to a total stranger.

For me, the thought of having a total stranger recommend anything - books, cigars, the best places to meet desperate divorcees - is revolting. And narrowing a lifetime of reading down to a single favorite title is next to impossible.

If a favorite book reveals something about you, it's best to be cognizant of the message. My preference has always been non-fiction, especially history and politics, so this can be tricky.

I've enjoyed reading Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and Edward Luttwak's Coup d'Etat: A practical handbook multiple times, but would I recommend any of them to a stranger? No. Ditto for Emil Ludwig's seminal Napoleon or Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. Why risk being thought of as a weirdo?

As for fiction, Franz Kafka (The Trial, Metamorphosis) and Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are at or near the top of my list, alongside Robinson Crusoe, a lot of alternate history ... and everything penned by H.G. Wells and Mark Twain. But again, what's the point of foisting oddball personal preferences on unsuspecting strangers?

In the end, I responded to the "recommendation" query with a question mark, and pointed out that it hardly matters because nobody under the age of 35 reads real books anymore - except in China.

Last year, Beijing Normal University conducted an online survey that found 52 percent of 30,000 respondents favored printed books, followed by 26.8 percent who liked doing their reading on smartphones or other electronic devices.

Those numbers appear to reflect what has transpired since the goal of building "a nation of readers" became part of the annual Government Work Report. Over the past four years, reading and publishing in China have hit double-digit growth, which is projected to continue.

According to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, there were 215,000 new books published in 2015, of which 37,000 were targeted at young readers - an increase of 11.9 percent over 2014.

On top of that, every level of government is promoting reading. For example, by the fall of 2015 there were 126 self-service library kiosks in Beijing's Chaoyang district alone - and more are planned.

China also routinely tops the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's annual monitoring of both the number and type of books published per country per year as an index of standard of living, level of education and national self-awareness.

All things considered, I'm convinced the best response to the question of what book to recommend to a total stranger is obvious: anything published in China.

Contact the writer at murraygreig@chinadaily.com.cn