Everyone* is reading fewer books than they used to, and even worse, reading skills are declining. Most people in the US do not read books at all, and the UK is not far off either. How can we reverse this trend? Is it reversible? Is the decline in reading of books, fiction, and long-form text in general actually even a bad thing, or will something else replace it?
I made a post on my blog called The Long Decline of Reading, which received a lot of interesting replies - I'd be keen on talking about the marginalisation of book and fiction-reading with more people here! - Adrian
Comments (2)
Kevin O'Neill said
at 10:44 am on Jan 12, 2009
This is a subject I find infuriating and fascinating. It doesn't seem to me desirable to *force* people to read that don't want to; this often seems to be the implicit message from those that lament the decline of reading. A fuller discussion of this would be great - is appealing to niche the way forward, or are there ways to promote more reading that would not just be wasting our time?
I think this crosses over with Lucy's interest in social reading - book groups are something I'd like to talk about, too.
Alan Trotter said
at 1:16 pm on Jan 15, 2009
I imagine you're probably already aware of this, but as its nice to see the occasional glimmer of hope: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/books/12reading.html
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