The US - A Nation of Readers? Looking around the airport on Monday, most everyone (me included) had their nose in a book while waiting to get on the plane. And, most of us read on the flight. Since I can't read during takeoff or landing, I scanned the people around me, and even those who weren't reading novels seemed to be reading something - magazines, newspapers, those Skymall catalogues.

Being as nosy as I am, I also was checking out the titles of the tomes around me - they weren't fluffy books generally. I saw fiction and non-fiction, but I didn't see a single Chick Lit book.

Why am I surprised? I continually hear news reports about the US losing our literary rate. And, in fact, I'm told that the only genre growing is Christian fiction. I found this essay from the Great Books Foundation, and have posted a small part of it:

Literary reading. Since that troublesome word "literary" might scare you, provoking flashbacks of ninth grade brain-bruise inflicted by a Dickens-addled teacher who lectured on Pip's journey from innocence to experience, let us be perfectly clear about what the research team at the NEA means by the phrase. As the report clarifies, what they have in mind is reading for fun and entertainment, not reading that's required for the test or the staff meeting. The category includes any novel, short story, poem, or play. Now the limitations of such a definition are obvious, and quite a few commentators on the study have pointed this out. For instance, if you pick up Joseph Epstein's latest clever bombast on the practice of snobbery, or Barbara Ehrenreich's dark exposé of corporate malfeasance, you don't score any "literary" points. But if you crack a sword-and-sorcery fantasy that features whinnying unicorns, you do.
The ongoing debate about what constitutes "literature" is worth having, and we have carried it on elsewhere in past issues of this magazine. But the main question the NEA raises is whether reading for pleasure will continue to be a major part of American life. If it is in decline (the core group of book readers has remained static at about 96 million people in the last twenty years, despite a sizeable jump in the overall population), does it matter, should we care, and what can be done?
Yes, yes, and several things.


It does matter, and we should care. Forget for a moment about whether it's "literary" or not. Less reading overall lowers our collective IQ. And for young readers who disdain or fear picking up something to read, this translates into an eventual crisis. A friend in Brooklyn tells the story of a congenial young man who joined the carpenter's shop and confessed after a day on the job that he could not read a tape measure. He had sat through years of schooling, but the sizzle and snap of text on a page had never touched his circuits. The young who learn to read, and to read competently, do so by means of stories that evoke their pleasure, that tickle their brains and curiosity. This is a principal reason that most textbooks should be burned, and it helps to explain the truth that throbs in Pink Floyd's classic "Another Brick in the Wall."
There are now more literate speakers and writers of English in the country of India than in the United States, and our percentage of functionally illiterate adults is staggeringly high. According to a National Adult Literacy survey conducted in 1998, a full 48 percent of the adult population was unable to function at minimal 12th-grade reading and computational standards necessary in the high-tech workplace. (When my daughter goes on the phone to upgrade the DSL system or kill a virus, she tends to ask if the technician on the other end of the line is in Bombay or Calcutta.) Edward and Elaine Gordon's impressive history, Literacy in America (2003), makes the stark pronouncement that because of illiteracy, "many Americans are doomed to join the ranks of a new techno-peasant underclass" And as virtually any reading specialist or elementary school teacher will tell you, the kids whose parents read Goodnight, Moon to them are not likely to be the ones hurting in tomorrow's economy.
Another reason that reading for pleasure matters is indicated in the NEA study itself: readers are simply more interesting and engaging people overall. They participate in the life of their community. They are more likely to contribute time and ideas to its well-being. The study showed that readers consistently go to more concerts and art exhibits and, yes, even to more sports events, than non-readers, though this latter fact might have something to do with correlation to disposable income. Of course, one of the unsurprising findings of the NEA study is that the well-off read a lot more than the poor.
Readers also tend to vote. The link between reading and democratic participation is clear, Gioia points out. Authoritarianism, as scholars of both the Reformation and of political tyranny will tell you, is always helped along by large doses of ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy, so getting books into the hands of the young, and helping them learn to love these books, has strategic importance. In other words, if you don't want Dr. Strangelove or Big Brother in the future, perhaps you should do a little more today to help the kids appreciate Hansel and Gretel or the story of the five Chinese brothers.

Now why is it hard for me to hear these articles and then to look around and see readers everywhere? Most of my friends are readers, my children and husband are readers (my youngest son less so than my oldest, but even he is aware that reading is how we get information, and does read before bed). Book Clubs are "in" - Oprah has one, so does the Today Show.

Is it the fact that I only interact with a certain segment? As the Great Books society says, is it because I'm an interesting person who votes? As are all my friends? I find that hard to believe, truth be told.

I'm looking forward to thoughts on this - is there a cognitive dissonance or is there a focus on the negative in the media? And, any statistics would be greatly appreciated; I couldn't find any on a quick Google.