Posted on 08/21/2007 2:24:45 PM PDT by Nachum
There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing you are not alone.
One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.
The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.
"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.
That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion.
When the Gallup poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started a similar but not directly comparable question the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.
In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.
Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn't read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.
At the same time, book enthusiasts abound. Many in the survey reported reading dozens of books and said they couldn't do without them.
"I go into another world when I read," said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. "I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up."
Among those who said they had read books, the median figure with half reading more, half fewer was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger.
Pollyann Baird, 84, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colo., says J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is her favorite. But she has forced herself to not read the latest and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," because she has yet to file her income taxes this year due to an illness and worries that once she started the book, "I know I'd have to finish it."
People from the South read a bit more than those from other regions, mostly religious books and romance novels. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.
There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.
The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre including politics, poetry and classical literature were named by fewer than five percent of readers.
More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer nonfiction.
"Fiction just doesn't interest me," said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Ala. "If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie."
Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.
The publishing business totaled $35.7 billion in global sales last year, 3 percent more than the previous year, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association. About 3.1 billion books were sold, an increase of less than 1 percent.
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from August 6 to 8 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Again, have it your own way. The argument could go on forever. However, if you believe there is a huge number of folks buying books outside of the major markets, then you’re badly mistaken.
Don’t be too hard on the boy...Eagle Scout means a lot, and if the stuff he’s filling his time with (the time that you or I would spend reading) is outdoor stuff, that’s just as good.
That's what libraries are for, mon ami.
You may have a point there.
I've been known to buy them. I'm a big Superman and Justice League fan.
But generally I read nonfiction, mostly history.
Where are the pictures?
This tread needs more pictures.
Luxury not only in the sense they are expensive, but also in the sense that the reader has the time to devote to a book.
My first book was Tom Sawyer. The second was Huckleberry Finn. After that, it was Tomoe Gozen...
...and every Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian books in the series - - I just could not stop...
I think I have the entire The Corps series by WEB Griffin in paperback looking for a new home.
If you ever find yourself in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, take a side trip to Archer City (120 miles or so northwest). Larry McMurtry opened several used book stores there. The only time I’ve “dropped by”, I ran into him at the Dairy Queen while eating breakfast and again in one of the stores.
I see from a story on the internet that someone says he has become less available to fans, so that might not happen any more. Before I went, I swore that I wouldn't bother him if I ran into him, but it was hard not to say something.
It was an interesting day trip.
It’s the only time I wasn’t disappointed that a movie radically changed the story line of a book ... it actually kinda “fit” with the rest of a series that tended to disagree with itself.
In the end, I WAS somewhat disappointed to find out Adams was so opposed to religion.
Don't get me wrong ... I think he's a very superior young man in every way, and a great example to our sons. I just don't think a non-reader would work as a match for Anoreth!
(And anyway, she wants to be a general!)
We got a set of 40 or so old sf paperbacks at a yard sale last fall. Burroughs’ Tarzan and space fiction, Conan, a couple other series. Daughter came home and asked for money to buy “a few,” but my husband gave her a 20, and she came home with the whole box. Claimed it was a misunderstanding ...
Great vocabulary in those old books - the authors assumed the readers knew some words!
I read that in college, too. Might be worth another try, someday :-).
I stayed up too late reading Michael Burleigh’s “Sacred Causes,” a work of 20th century history. I could spend the rest of my life following up the footnotes, if there weren’t so many other books I also want to read ...
Thanks for the tip. There’s nothing better on a rainy day than a good space opera and a bar of chocolate. I need a new series to tide me over til Bujold goes back to her Vorkosigan novels. Not that I didn’t enjoy the heck out of Chalion, but you can only read so much fantasy begore the longing for a little technology kicks in :)
That pretty much explains the 25% bedrock Democratic support.
His book “The Road” is on the Oprah’s Book Club List so that means more of the general public will read that book and then usually that leads them to check out his other books. So he’s going to do just fine now that Oprah has said it’s a good read.
There’s another real issue that is problematic and that is reading uses a different part of the brain than watching tv or a movie. The written word stimulates linear reasoning on the left side of the brain, images are processed on the right side of the brain- the feeling side.
Here in Cleveland, the very same people who “administer” our public school system are the same people who will disparage “acting white” at every opportunity.
Our work is complete; a stupid, illiterate population with no sense of its own history and absolutely no capacity for rational thought.
We can just keep ‘em stupid with sex, Internet pornography and TV.
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