RAWALPINDI: One burgeoning global trend that has crept into Pakistan’s social media stratosphere is ‘bookstagram,’ a rising literary club for readers with a well-styled focus on bringing together reading and lifestyle to build online communities.
One #bookstagram search on social media platform Instagram reveals over 44 million images of books, many curated painstakingly next to mugs of tea, candles, snacks and desks from around the world, complete with book reviews and quotes.
Pakistani blogger Zainab Zaheer, 27, is the personality behind the Instagram account Zmeetsworld with nearly 10,000 followers. She has been ‘bookstagramming’ since January 2019 but was sharing her reading journey through her blog for over a decade before then-- since the age of 15.
“I didn’t know other people cared about and shared books online because reading culture in Pakistan is often so limited,” Zaheer told Arab News.
“It felt like a breath of fresh air to find this online space where people read a diverse range of books and discuss them at length,” she said.
Zaheer posts in-depth reviews of books she reads-- an average of six a month-- often highlighting passages and quotes in artistic posts that are eye-catching and encourage her audience to interact with her and one another.
She opts to share books on her blog and Instagram that she calls “socially-conscious.”
“I aim to discuss the difficult issues I come across in my reading and what that story is teaching us about them. Be it child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, heartbreak, infidelity, love. I try to make reading accessible or to pique people’s interest in books by sharing quotes that made me pause — this opens up the book in a way that people wouldn’t know if they just read a summary.”
“If I can make reading books more accessible (through bite-sized quotes), then I share what I learn, about how women and minorities experience the world, and share stories of love and loss that others can relate to. I wanted to lower the barrier that keeps people away from books or reading-- particularly for adult fiction,” she said.
Though Bookstagram accounts rarely have staggering followings like many fashion or lifestyle influencers, the pages are amassing a loyal and growing community of followers with a good deal of engagement.
Tamreez Inam has two book heavy accounts, the second focussing on Pakistani literature called @readingpakistan. 30th May, 2020. (Tamreez Inam)
“Tamreez Inam, 35, who works for the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai began ‘bookstagramming’ officially about two years ago, sharing her reading journey on her personal Instagram account @Tamreezi, as well as on a second account for Pakistani books she runs called @ReadingPakistan.
Inam said she reads five books on average a month-- about 60 a year-- and fell into ‘bookstagramming’ after stumbling across the hashtag on Instagram.
“I randomly came across a #bookstagram account and a whole new world opened up for me. I started seeking out other bookstagram accounts and started posting and sharing about books myself.”
But early on, Inam realized there was little to no representation of Pakistani literature in the digital space.
“About a year ago I started @readingpakistan. I used to try and read everything that was coming out of Pakistan. A few years ago it was only a handful of writers like Kamila Shamsie, Mohammed Hanif and Nadeem Aslam,” Inam said.
“Back then I could pretty much read everything that was being written. Now there’s so much new writing, in every genre, that is coming out of Pakistan that it is impossible to keep up. Which I think is so exciting.”
But apart from the love of reading that drives ‘bookstagrammers,’ there is an added visual component: style and curation.
Newer bookstagrammer Khadija Amir of @chaayekahani says in addition to the book discussions, it is the pleasing aesthetics of books that draw people to the niche section of social media. 28th May, 2020. (Khadija Amir)
New ‘bookstagrammer’ on the block Khadija Amir, 33, senior manager of programs at an environmental consultancy firm, said she was inspired by other accounts sharing their love of reading to start her own account ‘chaayekahani.’ Amir told Arab News that in addition to books and conversations, it was also aesthetics drawing in ‘bookstagram’ followers.
“It is still Instagram and it’s about pictures involved in books as well... but a little bit more specific,” Amir told Arab News.
“So I think people who love reading...or who want to start reading find inspiration on these accounts. They inspired me to follow through with reading more myself,” she said.
Arab News has compiled a list of Pakistani ‘bookstagram’ account recommendations from Zaheer, Inam and Amir, below:
