Reading is Fun-damental
Is reading going the way of the do-do bird? Are we becoming a culture enthralled only with gadgets and gizmos, iPods and YouTube? I often hear alarming factoids that indicate that books and reading are on a severe decline. According to the following undated statistics from the Jenkins Group, you’d think the dark ages were returning and that every precaution should be taken to preserve our tomes.
- 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
- 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
- 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
- 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
On the other hand, you can’t help but notice that bookstores, once small and cozy have been transformed into two and three story palaces, installed in every half-way decent mall. Or what about Oprah’s Book Club and the incredible success of Harry Potter? Something just doesn’t cotton here!
Thankfully I’m in a position to do a bit of research and launched a poll across a network of 100+ sites and blogs. The question: Do you read books for pleasure? A whopping 82% said yes, which is both promising and comforting.
However, as with any research or statistic there are caveats and ways to interpret the numbers. The biggest one here is that the online population is skewed toward those with higher education and income. So, it’s not cut and dry, just like a great poem.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
One factor that is often overlooked when talking about books vs. electronic media is that most electronic media is text. Most people go to blogs and most websites to *read*. I’m not surprised that they also read books. Now if you asked people on YouTube, I suspect a lot fewer of them read books.
August 20th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
[…] The Dwindling Numbers of the Literati As difficult as it is for me to grasp, the number of U.S. adults who read books is at an attrocious level. According to figures dug up by the Used Books Blog: […]
August 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Thank you for posting this.
The figures are shocking, and while there are signs that reading is a favorite past-time (mentioned in your post), I’d hazard to guess that you and I live in a world that cannot comprehend the absence of literature and reading from our every day lives. So we may be struck by signs we expect to see, like the development of bookstores as places to browse and meet, and we don’t pick up on those signs that point to a decline in reading, such as cultural and language impediments to reading (my wife is from Guatemala, and very few of her relatives have even a small number of books in their houses).
I was raised in an environment where education and books were at the very center of daily life. The culture of the book must never be lost.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:36 am
[…] is sore! You can find the entire article here and here. I might post a longer story about this […]
May 27th, 2008 at 10:19 am
[…] is sore! You can find the entire article here and here. I might post a longer story about this issue… No Comments so far Leave a comment […]