Americans Read Fewer Books

DesScorp writes "The National Endowment for the Arts has released a study that shows a decline in the reading of fiction, poetry, and short stories. The study began in 1982, but shows a particularly steep decline from 1992-2002, the first decade of the Age of the Internet. They never seem to draw the conclusion that the Net may have accelerated our turn from this kind of reading, but the timing seems suspicious to me. I know I don't read for pleasure as much as I did years ago because of the time spent on the Net (and in technical books). NPR has a good audio link here for you non-readers; the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a nice article as well." You could also - assuming you read - see the study itself.

Comments

Re:As a bookstore owner

[Mind Booster Noori]

I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market.

Maybe if you had some Management textbooks you could read about how to face the crisis... Like diversifing your products.

I don't sell sick stuff like Stephen King

Stephen King wasn't sick, he was an artist... If you can't understand that you're most certainly in the wrong business.

I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian sections that I know of

So you don't sell Sci-Fi but you sell relegious propaganda? I like to see libraries with a good theology section, but if you only sell Christian stuff and ignore all the other religions, you can't call your library a family store, you should call it fascism propaganda store.

On Slashdot, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of reading material in just minutes.

Really? WOW! I read /. since 1997 and never ever saw that option! How do you do it?

If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society.

Do you sell polithical books?

Well... Thanks for the funny reading! :-)

Re:why books

[Zareste]

We read books because we're told to do so. No reason. The publishing industry needs to keep up the 'you're stoopid if you don't read marks on paper' propaganda as long as they can now that people are realizing how useless it can be compared to the internet.

It's just another business scarecrow.

Any suprise that Bush was (s)elected?

[ellisDtrails]

One day someone will outline the correlation between American's intelligence and critical thinking and the rise of unthinking fundamentalist moron government.

Re:why books

[Zareste]

Everyone else at least gets a +2 for pointing out the painfully obvious. Must've gotten a deadbeat moderator. Too bad this system passes out mod points to any random moron.