18-year-old Emīls Vīksna leads a youth book club, aims to read 50 books this year

Emīls, an 18-year-old book blogger, leads a youth book club that operates under the Latvian reading-promotion movement 'Laiks lasīt' ('Time to Read'). The club is regularly attended by 10 to 15 young people, with new members joining each time — its shared group chat now counts more than 30 people. Any young person aged 13 to 30 is welcome to join.

The movement is built on the idea that every person has a book out there capable of drawing them in. Emīls says his approach comes from his own experience: as a young person himself, he knows how unpleasant forced reading can feel. That's why, on social media, he prefers to recommend books rather than insist everyone must read them.

Family influence

Emīls has been close to books since early childhood, and this year he hopes to read at least 50 of them. He describes his family as deeply literary. As a child, he and his grandmother shared regular trips to bookstores, while his grandfather once wrote out the family tree. His father also kept a large book collection, and whenever Emīls had nothing to do, his father would simply tell him to read.

Emīls says that in his family, reading and preserving culture are taken for granted — something that feels almost like it runs in the blood.