YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. 122 titles of children's, popular scientific, encyclopedic, jubilee and translation books will be published within the framework of state order in 2007 as compared with nearly 130 titles of 2006. For this purpose RA government allocated 135 mln 400 thousand drams (nearly 370 thousand USD) to Book Publishing Agency of RA Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs. As Seyranuhi Geghamian, Head of Publishing Department, said in her interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent, Sergei Dovlatov's collection "Zona" will be published for the first time in Armenian and Khachik Dadayan's work "Armenians and Baku" in Russian. Encyclopedia "I am Citizen of Armenia" will be also published for schoolchildren this year. In S.Geghamian's words, 120-130 titles of books have been published within the framework of state order since 2002, which is equal to the number of books published before, but its circulation is still inferior to the index of the Soviet years: formerly they were published in 50-100 thousand copies, while now they are published in 500-700 copies. At the same time, according to S.Geghamian's observations, demand for books has increased, the evidence of this are opening of 5-6 new bookstores in 2005-2006 in Yerevan. Saying that a great number of Russian-language literature is currently brought to Armenia, S.Geghamian mentioned that this does not mean that books published in Armenian are not of much demand. Fiction published in Armenian almost is not sold, but children's, popular scientific and encyclopedic literature is sold very well. In Geghamian's words, readers prefer to read works created in the past: the modern writers do not attract them. Nevertheless, in her words, one should not disregard the modern writers and the modern literature should be published for it to be studied and estimated by literary critics in the future.

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