Once Honore de Balzac remarked ‘As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion, ideas begin to move, smiles arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.’ The excerpt of Balzac is so catchy of what results to the train of thoughts when someone sips a cup of coffee. The chemistry between coffee addictions to the habit of reading is not new for us. It is not uncommon to see coffee houses. In fact the discussing the issue of stimulants for the virtuous act of reading is infamous. This piece is not to narrate the legend of coffee discovery and popularization through uncovering the story Kaldis’s goat helped the sudden break of coffee as edible and stimulant. Perhaps, that is an issue of Ethno-botanists as they scientifically identifies. Underscoring the coffee as home drink, I will just dwell on how often we use coffee for reading.
Naturally, human being is endowed with a unique faculty for reading as far as no one doubts the gift of thought. Technically, speaking there is no different chemistry behind reading other than shaping haphazard avenues of thinking into a productive train of thought. Reading steers thought life. As one remarked that the human brain browse and chartered for unending vagabond if his train of thought can’t helped with conscious efforts of reorienting towards productive focus on ideas. Here, it is the stimulant, which helps us for a better focus when we steer the wheel of the brain.
As one researcher revealed the history of Dublin city, the city was indeed a monumental and ideal city known globally to showcase reading culture. Notwithstanding an effort to exhaust all of the monumental efforts of Dublin’s reading hub, one can single out the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Library award. Once it was known to be dubbed as ‘the world biggest literary award, whose sustainability was sowed for the past 21 years of the award’s life. Interestingly, Coffee houses of those 18th centuries in Dublin city, later propagated throughout all over Europe, remarkably known for stocking NEWSpaper. The customer does not go to those coffee houses for sipping flavored coffee. Perhaps, the customer utility includes picking the fresh NEWSpaper and be updated of the contents of those papers.
Glimpsing at the trends within Ethiopia, It is not astounding that we Ethiopians are consumer of coffee. Almost all Ethiopians consume coffee irrespective of their cultural diversity. Many cultural communities do have coffee ceremonies. It is mesmerizing that when somebody found that there is some immaculate trade-off between coffee and reading culture. Indeed, some one may argue that the pervasive of coffee consumption doesn’t work in alignment with the habit of reading.
To our relief there are coffee houses in Addis Ababa which are serving as.
Even in our days reading clubs are named after ‘coffee’ as one is named as ‘coffee break reading club’, reminiscent of the mysterious relation between the caffeine stimulants found in coffee with the habit of reading.
And again let’s put the personal query like ‘what do we do even while we took out stimulants?’
In contrary, Sadly enough, now a days we have multiple coffee houses who neither bring NEWSpaper shelves for customers nor embrace a ‘reader customer’. To add a salt on the wounded injury, there are lousy houses who posts plate notice ‘customer at coffee service are not allowed reading due to shortage of seating space. It is worrisome to be witnessed so many coffee houses even the cosmopolitan Addis Ababa move in such socially irresponsible way.
Now we have a moral sprinting ground to question Addis Ababa coffee houses as why they don’t shelve reading materials for their coffee customers. Are the renowned Kaldis, Starbuks or any other flamboyant coffee servers are embroidered with branded kaleidoscopic colors while they are neglecting to host the best place of igniting the virtuous reading culture. I bet that once again coffee houses ought to be freed from hijack to reclaim their status as a reading hub just line in nineteenth century. Like it or not, we have take the reading genie into the bottle of coffee houses.