I’ll just echo what Jill said: This is sad.
Update: Lauren notes in comments that the survey has a reductive definition, limited to “literature” and excluding non-fiction. While I think fiction should be part of one’s reading diet, I also think that it’s stupid to think you don’t get the benefits of complexity if you only read non-fiction. Plus, histories aren’t literature but can be as rich in story-telling detail as novels.
I’m usually the first to decry the hand-wringing over young people these days and calls of social decline. I even have a blog category called “Signs Of The Non-Apocalypse”, I’m so dedicated to my opposition to moral panics. But I can’t help but think there’s a problem when people don’t read books at all. Hopefully the surge in Internet use indicates that people are reading something, though.
I’m not going to bash other forms of entertainment, like TV or video games. In fact, I think different mediums improve different kinds of intelligence. My skill at picking up foreshadowing has improved more from watching “The Wire” than reading a dozen novels, so that show has ironically made me a better reader of novels. Video games have taught my clumsy ass some necessary motor skills, and weirdly they’ve really improved my self-esteem. I don’t feel the need to defend movies—they’ve finally been allowed into the pantheon of culturally redeeming media by the reactionary snob patrol.
Reading does provide some unique things that video games and TV don’t (and vice versa), though. It’s still the best way to absorb megatons of information and understand complex things that take a long time to understand. I really got a lesson in the dangers of our illiterate society during the whole Edwards dust-up last year.* The insistence that you should convey everything you need to know about a subject in one TV-ready catchphrase worked in the advantage of the simple-minded fools that were attacking Melissa and me and clutching their pearls at out-of-context jokes that were being read on air. Like I said at the time:
What does this have to do with the clash between bloggers and the mainstream media/political establishment? Having my words taken out of context and used to discredit me showed me how the soundbite culture contributes to anti-democratic elitism and shutting the rabble out of the political system. In the mainstream media right now, politics is a long, drawn-out game of “gotcha”, and the result is that everyone who wants to be in politics is scared to ever say anything interesting or thoughtful for fear that it will be taken out of context and used relentlessly to discredit them. The result is that ordinary people are routinely turned off to politics, to the point where getting more than half of registered voters to vote in any one election is considered some sort of amazing victory.
Sloganeering politics kills liberalism. We all know it. The image of the pontificating liberal who thinks in shades of gray has become an unpleasant stereotype, and it was used against Gore and Kerry effectively. But there’s nothing inherently bad about being a thoughtful, worldly intellectual. It’s become a negative stereotype through the logic of envy. The right wing pitch to make it a bad stereotype is something like: “Look at that book-smart, pontificating liberal! Why, he thinks he’s better than you.” It would be a much harder sell if there weren’t that many people who don’t read and are looking for justification for behavior they probably feel mildly ashamed about.
Of course, after I wrote that, I realized I might be looking at this all backwards. Maybe the decline in reading has less to do with will and more to do with access. Reading for pleasure is a middle class privilege, because you need the time to do it, the money to afford books, and the storage space to keep them. As the American middle class is receding, maybe middle class privileges like reading for pleasure are disappearing with it. If so, then this news is even sadder, because people are losing out on the pleasures and advantages of reading, and it’s not even their choice.
*Can you believe it’s been a whole year?
72 Responses to “Americans don’t read”
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It’s remarkable how stable the percentages of readers are regardless of age. The youngest group has a slightly lower number, but no doubt due to vastly more required reading.
Once a reader, always a reader?
People read all the time. They read “people”, Harry Potter, and the local paper to see who died.
Hmm…
I’m not sure this trend signals anything except a broader range of available pastimes, some of which are arguably as rewarding as reading books.
True, video games certainly don’t replace books (and I’d argue that the numbers for casual readers would be even lower now, since the Warcraft behemoth didn’t even get started until ‘03, I believe), but how about.. say… reading Pandagon for about 20 minutes a day, Eschaton for another 20 minutes, Drum for yet another 20 minutes, and about half a dozen others for another hour or so? The internet was completely absent from reality in 1992. It altered the leisure landscape so radically that I have a hard time getting worked up over a 7% decline in traditional reading.
And not to give liberal bloggers a big head or anything, but speaking as a book-a-month reader, I don’t find reading novels any more rewarding than reading blogs on a daily basis.
Hmm…
I’m not sure this trend signals anything except a broader range of available pastimes, some of which are arguably as rewarding as reading books.
True, video games certainly don’t replace books (and I’d argue that the numbers for casual readers would be even lower now, since the Warcraft behemoth didn’t even get started until ‘03, I believe), but how about.. say… reading Pandagon for about 20 minutes a day, Eschaton for another 20 minutes, Drum for yet another 20 minutes, and about half a dozen others for another hour or so? The internet was completely absent from reality in 1992. It altered the leisure landscape so radically that I have a hard time getting worked up over a 7% decline in traditional reading.
And not to give liberal bloggers a big head or anything, but speaking as a book-a-month reader, I don’t find reading novels any more rewarding than reading blogs on a daily basis.
I don’t understand people who don’t read for pleasure. About the only thing people can say to me that makes me upset is “I don’t read at all.” And since some people take a perverse pride in it (just like some people are kind of proud about how they don’t do math) those people are shocked when I just start freaking out on them.
And, by really upset, I mean, to the point where my opinion of them is actually damaged. Most people who know me know I like be moderately pissed off most of the time and would scoff at my previous comments phrasing.
I think you’ve come close to it at the end. Even among (what is left of) the middle class, reading is surely declining and it’s mostly due to a lack of time. We just don’t have time. I love to read. I read every single book in my elementary school library so that by 6th grade the librarian kept the new books for me to read first. I’d have them back in 2 days tops anyway.
Now, I have half a shelf of books I haven’t read because I don’t have time to do so. I’m working, running the kids about, working some more, cleaning, cooking, washing, laundering, vacuuming, sleeping, working, and on and on. Weekends are for car repairs, working, grocery shopping, errands, working, running the kids about, cleaning, etc. It never ends, it never stops and it never slows down. Actually, it’s getting worse.
And call me a conspiracy theorist but I don’t think it’s a mistake that the majority of the electorate is kept too busy and/or tired to even think let alone read.
As an avid Anime fan, the number of people who pop up in “Sub vs Dub”* debates and are actually offended by the notion of having to read is maddening.
Ditto for my job at a movie theater, where I see the same thing whenever we have a foreign movie.
*Japanese dialogue subtitled in English vs dubbed in English.
“Read a book”? This figure isn’t meaningful without a time metric (over one week, month, year, lifetime).
And are people not aware that public libraries exist? You can get books for free! (though you may have to pay if you’re late returning them or lose them).
I agree, books have become way too expensive. I’ve ordered hyped SF novels from the library because i didn’t want to spend $26.95 on the hardback and find out that I didn’t like it.
On reading vs. other media, I’m reminded of a passge in Ian MacDonald’s River of Gods, set in India in 2047; one of the characters visits a cyber-criminal who is imprisoned in a Panoptic prison without any net access or electronic media. Out of desperation, the prisoner is trying to read a paperback book.
“All this in 1.6 megs? It’s not very interactive.”
“But [the experience] is different for each one who reads it.”
Seeing film adaptations, even good film adaptations, of my favorite books always makes me want to bang my head against the wall, because we get the director’s vision, maybe not at all the way each of us imagined it for ourselves.
KysoK, imagine getting such folks as customers in a bookstore!
I’ll stop reading when you pry the books out of my cold, dead hands…
I think there is also the aspect of schools not really teaching people how to read well or that reading can be a thing to do just for fun. I have had a few friends who it would take literally an hour to read a few pages of a book they found fascinating. If reading is such a chore than even if you are enjoying the story it doesn’t seem worth it when there are so many other entertainment options that require less effort.
I also think that the best way to get kids into reading is to read to them from a very young age and to read your own books in front of them. A lot of parents don’t have the time or ability (for a huge variety of reasons, too tired after working all day, no interest in reading yourself, can’t get to a library or afford books, etc.) to do that so kids grow up not seeing reading and therefore not thinking of it as an entertaining thing to do.
You can get books for free!
Libraries are woefully inadequate in the U.S. If a book is popular, someone else will have checked it out before you get to it. And though you don’t spend money, you have to spend time to get to the library and dig up the book, while bookstores are everywhere (and online). I used to check books out of the library all the time when I worked right across the street from one. Not so much anymore.
You’re a conspiracy theorist. And I think you’re right.
I don’t know if I’m reading fewer books, but I’m reading different ones, and the ones I do read, I’m reading differently. (The difference for me is a toddler, without changes in socioeconomic condition, but I think that’s probably somewhat comparable to other kinds of shrinking-middle-class stresses.) If it requires sustained intellectual effort to follow the argument, say continuity of thoughts and references over several chapters, I’m not going to read it. There goes most of the book-length nonfiction. If it has a complicated plot or one full of characters who must all be kept in mind, nuh-uh. If it has gorgeous language that really calls for a relaxed yet alert mind to appreciate it, why bother — I don’t have either of those for more than half an hour or an hour at a time. Heck, I’ve even stopped watching “serious” film or TV drama.
Good, absorbing books can be a wonderful solace away from the stresses of the rest of one’s life, but there is a certain minimum entry fee to be paid, and past a certain level of stress or fatigue the ante just ain’t there. (So middling or bad absorbing books may work as well, or anything, including blogs, that can be read in snippets.)
I don’t read all that much. I don’t take great pride in that but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, either. I got through maybe three books last year, even though I probably bought about 10. I started each and every one but eventually got bored or just didn’t have the time to finish them. I’ve been off fiction for years, though - perhaps I should go back.
Part of it too is that I read and write all day at work, and my brain just wants a break by the time I get home. A little TV and then bed, you know? And on a Saturday afternoon I’ll opt for a movie over a book every time. I might be ambitious and take a book to read on the bus on my way to the movie, but usually it just sits on my lap as I stare out the window and get lost in my thoughts. I’ve become a bit of a daydreamer in my old age, I guess.
The weird thing is I used to read all the time when I was a kid. I think it actually was after college that I stopped reading for pleasure.
As I said at Feministe, the issue is not that people aren’t reading, it’s that the reading police believe that people aren’t reading “literature” — and the study itself considers literature as “novels, short stories, plays, or poetry” alone.
If I pick up Naomi Klein in lieu of Toni Morrison, I’m still reading.
Also, a study with these results is released every five years or so to the same public disdain. It’s ridiculous to posit that reading non-fiction of any medium is somehow lesser than reading literature, even for those of us who love fiction.
I read virtually nonstop every day. The problem is it’s almost exclusively online.
I love books, have read hundreds, have many (read and unread) on my overflowing bookshelves, but I just don’t sit and read often enough.
The last couple years I’ve tried to make time to get some pleasure reading in. My latest tactic is to download free online books (usually old classics), and convert them to read on my PDA. That way, when I have a few spare minutes, I can read with no fuss.
But I still need to do more…
I read a lot of nonfiction, as well as listening to audiobooks. Fiction, on the other hand I have real trouble with. I’ve learned a bit more about how to get more out of well written fiction by reading blogs (really!). Making Light in particular has been very helpful, as has Pandagon, mostly in the en passant comments made by the more literate bloggers and commenters.
Being a rather linear kind of guy (it’s no accident I’m a Physicist) I have trouble reading between the lines in scenes where characters say one thing but act in a manner completely inconsistent with their words. Unreliable narrators are a fucking knife in the back to people like me, though now that I’ve learned a bit more about how to read fiction I think I’ll do better next time I encounter one.
I strongly suspect that a lot of people have difficulty with literature because it really does require real insight to squeeze all the juices out.
I really hate the idea of “you’re stupid if you don’t read books.” Not accusing anyone of saying that here, but I still … hate it. I was one of those kids who, early on, was testing too high on reading tests and was forced to read “at my level.” That meant that in middle school, for example, I was being told I HAD to read the handful of boring, 500 page books written 200 years ago that my school had to offer. In high school it got worse (though one teacher did let me read Shogun, and counted it as my required book for both semesters). The selection of “college level” books was bigger, but still a bunch of stuff I’d never read on my own. (One of my friends discovered that the secret was to bomb the reading test so the teachers wouldn’t make you read anything long and dull.)
Very rarely do I easily get “into” a book. There has to be something particularly fascinating about it if it’s fiction. Mostly I can read non-fiction about … gory, dangerous, terrible things. Poisonous animals are always good. Infectious diseases? Yay! That’s been true since I was a tot, believe it or not.
But reading itself hurts me. I can’t concentrate for very long most of the time, and the head-down-eyes-focused posture of reading puts me in a lot of physical pain and discomfort. Reading on transportation makes me ill, and reading in a room has, on a few occasions, given me a sensation like I can’t breathe. My brain just does not like to stay focused on a page.
But I read a lot on the computer. I read news, and a half dozen blogs, and whatever else I come across. But unlike a book, the computer affords me the opportunity to distract myself with something else for a moment, so I’ll read Pandagon for 5 minutes, check my email, read a bit more, look at the news, etc. Unless it’s a troll-filled debate. Somehow I can read 100+ comments if there are assholes in them …
OT: Mcain just won, and the Freepers are seriously suicidal, he’ be a much harder GE canidate than Mittens but its almost worth it for the humor.
So, I read “Salt: A history” and I’m currently working on “The Selfish Gene” and they don’t count, but the month I wasted by getting sucked into Terry Pratchett? That month would count in this survey?
huh. It’s like english majors forget non-fiction even exists.
First, some background: 53 years old and I am now up to 1.50 readers in order to see print anywhere but direct sunlight.
Second, apparently I’m dead. according to the NEA, since humans only go up to 44 then stop.
Third, I am a “booksholic.” But as I said at the beginning, I’m over 50 and I have to say that blindness very much sucks. Especially the creeping blindness of age. I used to say, “It’s not a day without a book.” and meant it. I could read (for pleasure… Kant was a different matter!) about 100 pages/hour and I had a theory about reading. Imagine you had to watch your favorite movie… one frame at a time! Would you get more of the detail? Well, yes. Would you finish it Would you enjoy it as much? Well, NO! Reading speed is vital to reading for pleasure. if you can read fast enough, the words disappear, as the frames in a film disappear, and the story emerges.
As I age and my eyes get worse and worse, my reading speed gets slower and slower and I now see the “frames.” It has definitely changed my reading. I read fewer books, and way less fiction. I have moved over to reading a lot more history, reading it slower and picking up a lot more of the detail. It balances out, less story but more detail. I miss my old way of reading, but I have rationalized it as more meaningful reading.[1]]
Fourth, I’m amazed that the majority of people surveyed DO read! I’d always assumed that the number of people who read on any regular basis was way under 50%. I’d have guessed somewhere near 20-25%. I am actually encouraged that “57% of adults” (under 44) say they read. I very much agree with sara, without a metric the stats are meaningless, but…
Fifth, I don’t necessarily see as much decline. the 59% of people 18-24 who read in 1992 are still reading at 25-34 in 2002, without change. Yes, as people age their reading declines, but see my explanation above. Were I less committed (or committable
I, too, might just have stopped as my eyes got worse. Also, people simply have more time for reading when young. As you get older, fixing the house, caring for kids, etc. etc. occupy more and more time. The decrease in young readers is not good, but I’d like to see similar surveys over many time periods (40s-80s before I called for the sky to fall.
[1] Rationalizations are more important than sex. Have you ever gotten though a week without a rationalization? I rest my case
I love to read. I freakin’ love it. I read blogs, I read non-fiction, I read fiction (to a lesser extent), I read academic papers within my scope of my research, I read academic papers on completely different unrelated topics just for the hell of it, I read bills up for passage, I read newspapers and magazines when I find them lying around, I read online comics and the occasional graphic novel. The vast majority of my leisure time and a good chunk of my leisure money are spent on reading. But if all that survey counts are novels and poetry, I’ve only read five books last year. I recognize that I’m probably an outlier in that most of my reading is non-fiction, but I’m still not sure how much weight I would give this study, just b/c it makes me, an avid reader, look like a light reader. The methodology misses a lot of factors that could help indicate how else people might be spending their time.
Lauren, I see your point, but I don’t know. Just as I think TV and video games are beneficial for the specifics, I think you get different stuff out of reading different kinds of things. I will get off reading novels for awhile, and then I will read them again and be reminded that novels can accomplish something other books just can’t.
But it’s a disingenuous survey all the same. I’ll make a note of that.
I’m a bookworm from waaaaay back, still am, novels, non-fiction, the internet, the back of a cereal box - you name it, and I’ve worked in a fair few bookshops too. My son had the same early interest in books, and I really try to encourage him, but the problem is, he’s 8 and reading has to compete with so damn much - video games, dvd’s, extra-curricular activities, computer time - when I was a kid I just read or played outdoors, those were my choices, he’s got so much that reading is something we have to “make time for”. And this is a good reader who enjoys books, so those for whom reading is a chore just aren’t getting it done the way they used to.
I agree with those here who say that reading for information shouldn’t be “looked down on”. As long as what you are reading is reasonably intelligent with ideas and good vocabulary, that’s fine. Not everyone connects with novels.
I also think that it is no coincidence that the age group that is most likely to be doing a lot of reading for school is also the group that is doing the least amount of pleasure reading. As a graduate student who loves to read I am not very likely to pick up non school related books while school is in session simply because I already spend several hours a week reading material. What little free time I have is dedicated to things that are far quicker and easier like TV and blogs. Now during breaks I go through 2-3 books a week. But I think for a lot of people in school reading is reading and they would much rather spend free time doing something they cannot do for school. That being said it is sad because reading for fun is a totally different experience that reading for school.
I’ve always loved to read, but I wonder how much reading I’d get done now if I didn’t have a long subway ride to and from work every day.
I was having a conversation recently about how if libraries were a new thing, people would think they were a great idea. But as it is, I think a lot of people forget about them.
I’m not surprised that so few people read for pleasure, but I do wonder if that survey included audiobooks. I personally don’t like them, but a lot of people I know prefer audiobooks because it’s easier to mulitask when listening to them, you don’t have to carry a heavy book in your bag, etc.
Well, to cheer up the bookish, there was an article in the NYT Business section last week in response to Steve Jobs comment, who reads books, when asked about Amazon.
“Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, has nothing to fear from the Kindle. No one would regard it as competition for the iPod. It displays text in four exciting shades of gray, and does that one thing very well. It can do a few other things: for instance, it has a headphone jack and can play MP3 files, but it is not well suited for navigating a large collection of music tracks.
Yet, when Mr. Jobs was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”
To Mr. Jobs, this statistic dooms everyone in the book business to inevitable failure.
Only the business is not as ghostly as he suggests. In 2008, book publishing will bring in about $15 billion in revenue in the United States, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association.
One can only wonder why, by the Study Group’s estimate, 408 million books will be bought this year if no one reads anymore?
A survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press found that 27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year. Not as bad as Mr. Jobs’s figure, but dismaying to be sure. Happily, however, the same share — 27 percent — read 15 or more books.
In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.”
The influence of books is really incredible, when you think about it. I’d guess a good third to half of movies are made from books. I could easily see a similar relationship springing up between graphic novels and video games. I’m pretty confident books will long outlive me, as will singing songs, painting pictures, skipping rope, jogging, playing catch, and other various human activities.
Indy? I don’t think I like your ‘tone’ wrt to Terry Pratchett, God of Modern Satire.
(c;
Hrm … I can’t say that I read the same way I used to when I was a kid. Back then, I devoured novel after novel in record time — an hour or two for a longish one, and then it was on to the next.
Nowdays, I can’t be arsed to bother with fiction. I just do not want some allegory filtered through someone else’s mind. And fiction IS allegory, in almost all instances. Mostly not good — the ways in which most writers fail to world-build in a coherent and consistent fashion is jarring and grating to me. The ONLY fiction book I’ve read in a while is “Kindred,” and that was because, knowing Butler’s skill with depicting consistent, coherent human interaction, I was prepared to do it without rolling my eyes. And I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t resent spending the time that I could have spent on something else.
But in general, it’s nonfiction for me anymore. And such books simply take a lot longer to read than the McBooks I used to read as a youngster. You can’t race through “A History of Wales” in the bathtub and get done before the water gets cold. You especially can’t do it when it’s written in Welsh, and anymore, I am beginning to prefer books that aren’t written in English — partly for the POV shift it requires and partly because the process of reading has grown dull for me and I need to make it challenging in another way in order to keep it enjoyable.
As I get older, I find myself reading less fiction, but more books. As a teenager, my non-academic reading was almost entirely fiction, and now in my 30s, I’d put my fiction at about 25%, averaged over the past couple of years. I don’t really think it’s fair to claim that people who haven’t read a novel in the last year “aren’t reading books” for all the reasons that have already been covered.
Seriously, that would mean that someone who reads trashy dime-store novels counted in the survey, but someone who read “When China Ruled the Seas” didn’t.
Honestly, I might be betraying my east coast intellectual upbringing here, but I really don’t think the country has a problem with encouraging reading. There might be too few people who like reading, and many who aren’t good at it, but our culture seems to have firmly established love of reading books as a proxy for intellectual and personal virtue.
I am a young one, and I must chime in from my former and provincial k-12 school that reading for pleasure was simply not up there back in the 90’s. Some of the kids read Goosebumps, or others similar, but really nothing beyond that. I feel that this cannot be positive. Reading is something that you either love, or at least are in the habit of doing. And in my school, it was neither.
It was actually considered pathetic to read. I am at college now, so things are a little different, but the drift is still there. Reading just isn’t teh sexi for my generation
I feel this is similar to eating fruits and vegetables. There are various reasons for why this might be so, you might not like vegetables, you might have not been taught they are healthy for you, or you may not be able to afford any vegetables. However, within the confines of our biology, everyone must still eat them to survive. Similarly, within the confines of a functioning democracy I feel that there must literacy in order to develop as free-thinkers/plain old thinkers.
End possibly incoherent rant :/
OVER HALF of all young adults, many in some of the busy years of their lives, read literature for fun! Yay! School has not killed their joy in reading! They want to be cultured!
What am I supposed to be wringing my hands over, again?
I know when I was in college i had to read an average of 400 pages per week, often 600, for classes. I didn’t have time to do much free reading, and if I did I was so sick of reading that i played video games or watched t.v.
Then again, I’ve read probably 30 books since graduation last May, and loving every minute of it.
I don’t know how much reading requirements have changed in the past 10 years, but I bet that accounts for some of it.
OTOH, I can’t see how anyone could describe a month of reading Pratchett books wasted.
Roger, good point. Roxanne raised the same question in IM to me—why are there so many bookstores if people aren’t reading? Well, they clearly are reading. People who read end up reading a lot. I probably read 50 books a year, easily. Easily. I try to review most books I read here because it generates good will with authors, makes publishers interested in sending me books, and edifies the audience, but I read them faster than I can write about them and I skip a few reviews. I was a born bookworm—I used to pretend to be constipated when I was a kid so people would leave me alone in the bathroom so I could read.
Now, I realize I read more than most readers, but readers read a lot. Its very addictive. What concerns me then is that we might become a nation of haves and have nots on this issue. If half the population reads a lot and half reads very little, what kind of animosity will arise in the rift? Are we already experiencing it? My heavy reading habits alienate me from a lot of people in a way that nothing else does—I can find common ground with even the most stalwart culture warrior when it comes to music, believe it or not.
Reading just isn’t teh sexi for my generation
I feel this is similar to eating fruits and vegetables.
Anyone who is thinking this is missing out. I’ve seen a lot of men turned on by a variety of things, but one constant is the notion that a woman engrossed in a book is Teh Sexy. My boyfriend even has a picture on his desk of me looking up from a book. I’ve got on no make-up and am wearing flannel pajamas and am on the wrong side of a weight fluctuation, but it’s still a sexy picture. There is something about spying someone sucked into a concentrated state of the sort you only get when reading, working, or playing a game that is deeply erotic.
I devoured two novels a day when I was younger. It’s tapered off as school has become more demanding, so that now, as a grad student, I’m lucky to make it through one “fun” novel a semester. Does this mean I don’t read? Hardly, it’s just that I spend my time reading textbooks and journal articles (and blogs, god help me). I love novels, but I think one would be remiss to say that we don’t read, or even that we don’t read for pleasure because we don’t read novels.
The first thing I notice is that the group that is now 25-34 reads the same amount as they did when they were 18-24, but the group that is now 35-44 reads slightly less than they did when they were 25-34. And yet it’s only young Americans that are reading less? Wev.
And I second what Lauren said. It’s especially stupid to limit “literature” that way when two of the biggest trends in publishing/libraries in the past decade have been an increase in non-fiction written in narrative form (The Perfect Storm, Stiff, Among SchoolChildren, etc.) and graphic novels.
I am currently working on a graduate degree in library and information science, due to graduate this May. Last year, I took a class called Literacy, Reading, and Readers, and one of the most important things I took away from it was that reading habits should not be judged by book reading alone, because it dismisses so many other forms of reading that people engage in every day. It would be more accurate to title this post “Americans don’t read books”, IMO. And I’m not even sure that’s accurate, since as Samantha Vimes pointed out, over half of young adults are reading books for fun. That’s far more than the cynic in me would have expected.
I am certain people are reading something, and that the Internet is facilitating a lot of it. Need I point out that one of the things some of us are reading is you, Amanda? =)
Also, you don’t need storage space or money if you have a library neaby (sorry, gotta reprazent for my peeps, yaknow). I don’t think the state of libraries is as poor as you state upthread; a recent survey by the Institute of Museum and Library Services showed that more than half of Americans visited a library in the past year, and that, much to everyone’s surprise, the biggest users were people aged 18-30 — “Generation Y”. Libraries are suffering from lack of funding, yes, but they are still vital, if not thriving.
The reading habits of people who go to grad school are, for better or for worse, irrelevant in the national averages. Grad school is the dictionary definition of a rare privilege.
Excellent point, mari. I hope, for selfish reasons, people buy my upcoming book anyway. It reads like a blog, except more consistent with Teh Funny.
Alright, I’m a nerd, and when I read primarily in analogue form (words printed with ink on paper) I read all day if someone didn’t stop me. Now I read all day, but I read online - I read blogs and news sites and googlebooks and Internet Fiction, and I just got a secondhand Zune so that I can convert text files into jpg ebooks and read the same stuff on the go. To be honest, I’m not really wringing my hands that literacy is going to die out.
But it’s a disingenuous survey all the same.
It’s not so much a survey as the NEA sounding alarm bells about Why The NEA Needs More Money. Always easier to argue for more funding in a crisis and all that.
The survey might have a point if they were able to actually survey people’s attitudes; for example, if they demonstrated that “literary reading” has declined because literacy rates dropped, because people can’t afford books, or something else that was a problem. All they’ve really shown is that the Web was invented and now people read all that newfangled electronic stuff instead of curling up The Last of the Mohicans like they’re supposed to.
While I agree that it’s sad that fewer people read, especially amongst the younger generation, I disagree with your last paragraph, hinting that maybe it’s because people no longer have the time, can’t afford to buy books etc.
The early labour unions in Europe was packed with members (working-class) who worked 12 hour days for 6-7 days a week. The working class people around the turn of the century didn’t have any money to buy books and certainly very little space to store them. They had very little time off work and yet they were avid readers (libraries, newspapers) and participants in political public debates and lectures. If these people could find the time to read, then surely Americans can too.
I think the argument that libraries are too far away is an urban one. Here in Seattle there’s 27 branches of Seattle Public Library; for a city with a population of a little more than half a million that density ought to be enough.
They had very little time off work and yet they were avid readers (libraries, newspapers) and participants in political public debates and lectures
Well, Ole, according the NEA’s definitions, those people arne’t “readers” either, unless they read books–and specifically, “literary” books. Reading newspapers doesn’t count. Participating in political public debates isn’t reading.
I’ve rediscovered fiction after a few years of reading mostly non-fiction. I kind of got into a rut for a while where I read too many fiction books that I didn’t really like and it started to feel like a waste of time.
I find the comments that people read fiction faster than non-fiction very odd. When I read non-fiction I just blaze through looking for information. When I read fiction I read slowly and pay attention to individual word choice. When I was younger prose style barely registered with me, I was all about spiffy plots and characters. Now I prefer things that have strong distinctive styles that operate on more conceptual levels.
I just finished the complete collection of Cordwainer Smith short stories. Many of the stories have stock characters and are virtually plot-free. But the writing has a unique voice and the concepts are so imaginitive and strange that the entire thing feels foreign, the product of a mind that just works differently.
To me reading fiction expands the mind in ways non-fiction does not. Guess it depends on the fiction though.
I have to smile at the comment that most fiction is allegory. Was just discussing that notion in the thread on Toni Morrison. Suffice it to say I disagree.
Anyone who is thinking this is missing out. I’ve seen a lot of men turned on by a variety of things, but one constant is the notion that a woman engrossed in a book is Teh Sexy. My boyfriend even has a picture on his desk of me looking up from a book. I’ve got on no make-up and am wearing flannel pajamas and am on the wrong side of a weight fluctuation, but it’s still a sexy picture. There is something about spying someone sucked into a concentrated state of the sort you only get when reading, working, or playing a game that is deeply erotic.
God Almighty, I wish more women got this. Fortunately, I know several who do - let’[s see, of the three women I have an interest in, one works in a bookstore, one is a policy analyst, and the third is a team leader in a library. There seems to be a commonality there…
Me, I’ve found a job where I read for a living(*). Plus I’m usually in the middle of both a non-fiction and a novel at any particular time for my own benefit (currently reading “Working with Monsters” about workplace psychopaths, and rereading Stross’s “The Atrocity Archive”).
But I’m a freak. And I don’t have a TV.
(*) This is not as much fun as it sounds, since you don’t always chose *what* you have to read for a living. I friggin’ hate art wanking…
Not including non-fiction is a damned stupid limitation which comes damned close to negating the survey. I’m a voracious reader but I read very little fiction and that imbalance between the two has widened over the years. Thus, according to this survey I would reflect a sad decline in reading (cue violins). Sorry, but such proposition is a load of tosh.
I know there are a lot statisticians out there, so I pose this question. If every person in the designated age groups read one less book of fiction and two more books of non-fiction a year that would show up as a net decline in the amount of reading, by the survey’s definitions, no? And what of marijane’s point about books versus other media? A person who has cut back their reading of Yet Another Latest Bit of Dreary Fictional Wankery but has skyrocketed their reading of blogs, online media and the like would also show up as a person who is reading less, correct? Or have I completely missed something?
Indy - i ALSO have a problem with your scorn of the God-like Pratchett.
he seriously rocks, and is pretty much the only fantasy i read on a regular basis.
i, of course, have been informed by my shrink that i don’t just read - i am, according to him, LITERALLY addicted to reading.
to which i quip - “and you’d think it would be cheaper than crack. but its not”
Sci-fi is where i live, half the time. and for once, it seems that my choice of reading is actually considered reading - normally i am told it doesn’t count, no matter how much i learn about, say, missle ballistics or gravitational theory or quantium physics…
did i just write the most rambly post ever about books?
my be the alternate history i am reading atm. LOVE eric flint, too
Libraries are woefully inadequate in the U.S. If a book is popular, someone else will have checked it out before you get to it. And though you don’t spend money, you have to spend time to get to the library and dig up the book, while bookstores are everywhere (and online). I used to check books out of the library all the time when I worked right across the street from one. Not so much anymore.
Go back to the library, Amanda! If your library is online (and most are), they have a feature where you can place a book on hold, even if it’s checked out. Then they’ll send you a friendly email or phone call when it’s ready, and you can pick it up at your leisure. I’ve started doing this even with books that I know aren’t going to be checked out, just because I’m too lazy to go search for it on the shelf myself.
I’m lucky. My library lets us reserve books online, and emails us when they’re in. And my wife works for B & N so the books I buy, I get a nice discount. I end up reading about 75 books a year and find it’s a great way to learn about places and people I don’t have much contact with. Ex. How better to learn about the black experience than reading Walter Mosley - you get a great read and an education to boot. I find that’s true of much reading, even lighter reading. I think that’s what you miss watchihng tv or playing games (generally, there are exceptions).
Many (yes, not all) people who say they don’t have time, would if they just turned off the tv. Those people are choosing not to read, choosing to do something else. That’s ok with me, I don’t think I’m superior for reading, I just enjoy something different than them. I do think they are losing out, and I think society is generally dumber as a result.
A guy calling himself “Libertarian” says some nice things about libraries?
I don’t remember libraries being one of the strategic things - along with National Defense and police protection for private property - that government should provide (to the exclusion of everything else).
“Libertarian”? Sounds more like Communism to me…
I certainly appreciate the opposition to moral panics. It seems that ‘moralists’ can seldom panic about something that is a real problem, but usually save their terror for petty issues.
That said, if people really are reading less, that does look like a bad thing for society. Books, since they are seldom changed, are kept for centuries, and are self-contained, tend to help a people to remember things, and aid people in concentrating on the big historical picture. The internets can do that too, but mostly they don’t. The Web often encourages scattered thinking. Television basically trains skepticism out of people and encourages them to be passive. So I think that if book use is going down, that is probably a bad thing, on balance.
Mike
You’re right. If it was up to me, my town would not have a library. But it’s there, I’m paying for it, I might as well use it. Gotta live in the real world, not the one I’d prefer. If they’d like to refund my municipal taxes back to me, I’d be happy to buy all my books.
A guy calling himself “Libertarian” says some nice things about libraries?
There are a lot of privately funded libraries out there. Most libertarians I know support private charitable work - it’s having the government decide who’s worthy that they don’t like (that and being forced to pay for it via taxes). I disagree, and think public libraries are an excellent use of tax dollars, but I just wanted to point out that libertarianism isn’t synonymous with hating poor people.
So, according the the NEA, I haven’t read a single book since 2003. That is the last time I read something that was fiction. The NEA report is full of nonsense.
The last item I read that is NOT a blog, newspaper or CD sleeve was Danica: Corssing the Line in the summer of 2006.
Of course, the censorship on both sides of the political spectrum is what caused me to quit reading books and magazines.
I’m with Lauren and Mythago — total bullshit. I was chatting wiht the author of “After Elizabeth” (nonfiction) the other day, and I told her I had read Diarmuid MacCullough’s Reformation (nonfiction). She was amazed that any non-specialist got through that 700+ page doorstop. Having finished After Elizabeth and a few others, I worked my way through “Lion and the Unicorn,” a (nonfiction) dual bio of Disraeli and Gladstone, and then some dreadful history of submarine warfare (nonfiction) that I only finished because it wasn’t very long, and then Trento’s CIA: A Secret History (nonfiction), and Charlie Wilson’s War (narrative in the extreme, but nonfiction all the same), and now I’m 200 pages into Max Boot’s War Made New (nonfiction).
I mean to get around to some Irvine Welsh one of these days, but there is so much nonfiction I want to read.
There is no real justification for privileging fiction over nonfiction, and not much for the opposite position. That choice is, as Mythago said, transparently a self-serving decision to manufacture a crisis.
The “kids these days” argument is as old as civilization.
Jovan - I don’t understand. You respond to censorship by not reading? Isn’t that like responding to propaganda by joining the Army?
Yuri, I will not join the Army to respond to propaganda. Even if I wanted to join the Army, I would be ineligible due to my mental illness.
Our time here on Earth is limited, you can never do it all. And I think it is damn rude to tell people how they should spend their time.
I live in Norway, and we have great public libraries here, but I haven’t read fiction for years. I have decided that the only things I care about is computer science and mathematics, and that is what I want to spend all my time on. I used to read a lot of sci-fi, but at the end of the day I’m too tired for that. So the books have been replaced by movies.
I would like to start reading for pleasure again, but it would be a tradeoff. And I am not willing to sacrifice any of my current activities.
It also saves us librarians time too, bc it means we can look for your book before we open instead of trying to do it at the same time that every kid in the city is asking us for science books bc their project is due in a week.
When requesting books, it’s best to try to do so with a library that is part of some system (City, county, cooperative) because the system will be more likely to find one that is one the shelf and ready to check out. You should always be able to tell the computer/librarian which library you want to pick it up at; all library systems should have procedures in place for transferring the books for you.
If you can’t find it at all - verbally request it from your librarian. (in person, by phone, or email) If it’s something they should have but don’t, they should have a procedure in place for requesting it be added to the collection. This may not help you every time, but it will help you library every time.
That said, I would agree that libraries are not the best place to go get current bestsellers if you must read them now. It’s just not a good use of libraries limited resources to spend a lot of money on something that will no longer be very useful in 6 months. All those Harry Potter 7s my library bought are now just sitting on the shelf. We will never again have that many copies check out all at once. And with HP, at least it did make a little more sense than normal because it was such a PR thing.
(This is one time when digital books would be really useful. The libraries could work out a deal with the publishers where they pay per checkout. Then we could have all the copies of HP we need, when we need them, and only when we need them.)
Well, Ole, according the NEA’s definitions, those people arne’t “readers” either, unless they read books–and specifically, “literary” books. Reading newspapers doesn’t count. Participating in political public debates isn’t reading.
Mythago, my point is that Amanda’s argument that reading is for those with time is flawed, IMHO. I used the example with the working-class around the turn of the century because with work weeks of 72+ hours they worked twice as many hours per week as most Europeans today. Yet they still had time to read and do lots of other stuff. And they read books too, not just newspapers.
Besides, at the turn of the century almost every union and political party in Europe had its own newspaper where, among other things, poems and short stories were frequently printed - for the benefit of the author (lots of exposure) and reader (cheap!).
Apologies to those who may have mentioned this already, but: libraries are fantastic. I have fantasized about working in one for several years, just to be surrounded by the DDS, books, and the sounds of knowledge seeping out of musty pages all day long. And, yes, they are free and many of them do have an online catalogue which is readily available to renew or request media, which is a huge bonus to those of us to have internet access.
However - and this is a big however - if one lives in my town (St. Louis county/ city) and lives in an area that is generally regarded in layman’s terms as “dangerous,” “sketchy,” or any other synonyms that are euphemisms for “black people exist there” (St. Louis is incredibly segregated), libraries are a rare find. Public transport in this city is in a disparaging state and the public schools are essentially designed to weed out undesireables - to avert them from scholarly aspirations or anything that might elevate their levels of cognization, conciousness, and an overall sense of awareness. Then there is the problem of factors that encourage behaviors that result in having children at too young an age and the process of the underclass begins all over again; I believe strongly that I am not the only one who has noticed this (obviously; I probably don’t even need to go on this diatribe) or that it is specific to this region.
This has less to do with a lack of reading and is more a supportive argument of the conspiracy theory previously mentioned that the public is not supposed to think, much less read.
As a disclaimer: I read quite a bit but mostly non-fiction. Currently reading Clinton Heylin’s new book (and it rocks!).
[threadjack]
If libraries were invented today, copyright owners would be furious.
What’s the difference between a file-sharing network and a public library?
[/threadjack]
What’s the difference between a file-sharing network and a public library?
You mean apart from the fact that very very few people have a scriptorium sitting on their desktop?
ok well im sure i fall into the not reading category. I read about 30 books for school, but they don’t count.
harumph.
I grew up in a house with no books except for the phone book.
Now my office is nearing critical mass and may implode at any moment. I hate to throw them away.
Some I will treasure for ever.
I have the original Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings that I got off a friend of mine in high school after his fundie minister father blew a gasket about it when he found it in his room. I don’t remember how I got it but I devoured it and loved every morsel.
I’ve got several first editions and a signed HHGTTG!
Books are so cool. I feel like Capt. Pickard on the Enterprise. Although I do have techno lust over that new Sony ‘e-book’ (even though I know that Sony treats their customers worse than dirt with bugs, root kits and obnoxious software).
Oh, that Google ‘e-book’? Nah. Google is the work of the devil… Can’t stand Google.
‘Get money for nothing, and your chicks for free’?
A guy calling himself “Libertarian” says some nice things about libraries?
Sure he does. They let him learn about “the black experience” so he can be all cultured and enlightened, and they let him feel superior (though he doesn’t, of course) to the “dumb” people who are “losing out” by not reading. And if he had a choice, he’d get rid of libraries and make it even harder for the “dumb” to get access to books, so he could continue to not feel superior to them.
Thanks for pointing out that reading can be a middle-class privilege. I’ve been an avid reader all my life. I read all I could get from the library and books from rummage sales until about 8th grade. By tenth grade I had my first job to basically start helping my Mom and Dad by supporting myself, (I was the oldest in a big family.) I bought all my clothes, but also started paying for things like my own (extremely necessary) eyewear, and some of my own medical care by 16. I also spent any spare I had buying ‘presents’ for my younger siblings– i.e. helping out with clothing and feeding us.
I was a top student in high school and college and by college had three jobs to stay in a state school. Throughout that seven years of HS/college, I almost never read a book outside of school. When I graduated college, I spent years reading for pleasure again.
What I’m saying is that during all the time I was in school I would have had to answer ‘no, I don’t read anything outside of school assignments,’ but I was actually CONSTANTLY reading and making enormous advances in my own literacy. So I think that cutting out assigned reading at work or school is to distort the reality of ‘who is reading’ for an alarmist statement that only actually reflects who has time to read voluntarily.
Many people who would love to be spending time reading are working themselves to death most of the time, especially if they are poor. Plenty of middle-class people don’t have the time either.
I appreciate all your points about reading not being superior to other entertainment/media.
Right now I’m reading a blog, which means I’m not reading a book. But I’m still reading something interesting and thoughtful. Without question, blogs have caused me to read less books.