Interest in reading is growing in Kazakhstan. This year, readers read 88.9 million books. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Information, over the past year, public libraries issued 88.9 million copies to readers. Of these, 53.4 million, or 60.1%, were books in the Kazakh language.
The ministry stated: "During the year, 906,500 new copies were received by public libraries, of which 662,300 were books in Kazakh. The stock of Kazakh-language literature in Kazakhstan's libraries reached 30.3 million copies. This is 41.7% of the total library fund."
Demand for fiction is particularly high. The majority of readers are young people and children. According to the ministry, among them are 1.75 million children under 15 and 1.38 million young people. The number of adult readers is 2.4 million.
By region, the most avid readers are in Pavlodar Region, where 47% of all readers in Kazakhstan reside. Next are North Kazakhstan and West Kazakhstan regions.