Monday, November 19, 2007

The Squeeze

This article, from Yahoo news, seems like bad news all around.

Here's the opening....

NEW YORK - The latest National Endowment for the Arts report draws on a variety of sources, public and private, and essentially reaches one conclusion: Americans are reading less.

The 99-page study, "To Read or Not to Read," is being released Monday as a follow-up to a 2004 NEA survey, "Reading at Risk," that found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year (bold mine).

5 comments:

Book Calendar said...

Hello,
I read the report this morning on reading. It is very distressing to me, because I have a really big interest in the subject. My bread and butter like so many people's is in books. I am a librarian. It is even worse for teenagers.

Bobby Mangahas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bobby Mangahas said...

I read that study too. I think that's pretty depressing that less and less people are reading. But look at what we writers have to compete with: The internet, cell phones, all kinds of video game systems, television and movies.
However, I'm still optimistic enough that there will still be enough people reading. Of course, it would be good to encourage more of the younger generation to pick up books as well.
And Harry Potter did really help that trend. Hopefully, there will be more books that continue to do this.

sue said...

I'm sure I make up for several of them.

Real History Lisa said...

Want to be depressed further?

Pick up any 'mainstream' magazine from the 1950s and just see what is covered, and how it is written. The magazines were much more intelligent, the articles more in depth, the language more sophisticated. I was shocked, and so disappointed in having to live in a "dumbed down" version of America.