In America, books are becoming less mainstream. Its true! Based on some empirical data, I concluded this about two years ago, and have been corroborating this ever since. For instance, when is there ever any advertising around books? The closest TV and other mainstream media advertising comes to are probably the encyclopedia sets pushed half-heartedly to a very small sub-section of men near Father's Day. And for women, its mostly Oprah's Book Club - which has emerged as a powerful influencer of choices and the bestseller list. And at other times? I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with someone in the US about a book, out of context of education, art, technology or even business.
A survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, describes a downward trend in book consumption by Americans and a specific decline in the reading of fiction, poetry and drama. It's titled "Reading at Risk," and is based on data from "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts," conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002. Among its findings are that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas.
The survey found that men (37.6 percent) were doing less literary reading than women (55.1 percent); that Hispanics (26.5 percent) were doing less than African-Americans (37.1 percent) and whites (51.4 percent); but that all categories were declining. The steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. In 1982, 59.8 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds read literature; by 2002 that figure had dropped to 42.8 percent. In the 25-to-34 age group, the percentage of literary readers dropped to 47.7 from 62.1 over the same period.
This constitutes a serious problem. In a world where there's a quantum leap in the amount of information around us through the web, we seem to become more and more accustomed to bite-sized chunks, instead of meal-sized portions. Will this progress eventually to a point where reading a book is as specialized a pastime, as much of a gift or a talent as writing one? I remember someone from college - he was a Physics major (no, he wasn't an engineer, he was really Something Else!), and he claimed to have never ever read a storybook in his life. And this was because he had a strong aversion to viewing pages with only words on them, instead of equations or numbers. I felt sad about that, in a manner only equaled by the envy I felt while watching him plow through simultaneous differential equations. And he confessed similar envy when seeing my bookshelf, loaded with books I owned, books I'd been given, books I'd borrowed from the library. Except that he also confessed fear - fear that one day it would catch up with him and he'd have to sit and read a whole bunch of books all at one go. Fear! Are we progressing in the same direction? Think about it, its not a trivial concern.
Read a book today!
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4 comments:
"For instance, when is there ever any advertising around books?"
You clearly have not been reading the right sort of magazines. I know you live on West Coast but ever heard of the New Yorker? Plenty of new books (and other culture) feature therein..
Don't know where you live, mate, but look at Shelfari and you will see plenty who spend their money and time and love on books and not much else.
Would you really say the New Yorker is mainstream media, though?
Take a look at this (the Big Three mentioned here are Time, Newsweek and US News):
Outside the Big Three: Younger, Richer, More Female
Move beyond the traditional three news magazines, however, and one can see more differences.
The New Yorker and The Atlantic have the oldest readerships of any of the news magazines examined - 45.4 years and 50.0 years respectively. But they also had the readers with the highest incomes, by a large margin. Readers of The New Yorker have a median income of $78,538, about $12,000 higher than the next nearest news publication, Newsweek. The Atlantic readers' incomes were higher still, an average of $82,983. That pushes The Atlantic nearly up into the range of readers of business magazines. In terms of gender, The Atlantic's readership tends to be more male than female - 774,000 versus 615,000 in 2003. The opposite is true of the New Yorker, which has a few more women readers - 2.1 million females compared to 1.9 million males.9
I am sure some equivalent of The London Review exists in the US. Anyway the point about advertising itself is debatable.
How many people do you know who buy 'advertised' books? I know you spend much time at airports, but come on! Books are discovered through browsing in my experience, which requires time.
In my experience, reading has nothing to do with income. At the risk of extreme self-referencing, I would say I have read the most number of books when I am not in a corporate yoke. Most professionals, who have large incomes, read more work-related stuff than fiction and classics, but I do not see anything wrong with it. The trouble is that most professionals are so pressed for time that reading is probably the first thing they sacrifice, unless the tradition was ingrained in them as children in which case they might carry it forward in their own families too. So that time thing rears its head again.
Income aside, not reading creates a poverty of mind, which is not felt until it is very late in life.
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