'Dead tree' reading is getting so cool

Who would have thunk? Well, the older lot would have, and did - the notion that books, physical 'dead tree' versions, that is, were dead for millennials. Well, read this: young people are reading physical books, and how. Nielsen BookData shows that those born between 1997 and 2012 are endorsing reading, yes, reading - and here the plot thickens - physical books rather than their digital variety. More proof of this pudding comes from BookTok charts, a subsection of (India-banned) TikTok, that Gen Z is reading a lot of literary fiction, memoirs, translated fiction and classics. Not just The Monk Who Sold his Kindle.

28-year-old model Kendall Jenner seems to have become the unofficial face of this new readers' club at least in Britain when she was pictured on a yacht off the Cote d'Azur reading a collection of essays on the objectification and commodification of the body. Yes, we know what pre- Gen Z-ers are thinking - blue seas, yacht.... Was Kendall actually reading? That same glib sexism was meted out a generation ago to Marilyn Monroe when she was 'caught' in a photo reading James Joyce's Ulysses. So, dial forward and enjoy the technological prowess and countercultural oomph of physical books. Vinyls are cool, aviators are cool, bell bottoms are cool. Books can join this spiffy trend for smart, young things.