Now now… don’t conflate horror with surprise, or even with disbelief. I know plenty of well-off and well-educated people (with better jobs than mine) who will blurt out to anyone who asks that they simply haven’t time to read, or don’t particularly enjoy it, or can’t remember the last time they read for pleasure. They’re not proud of this distinction, nor are they sufficiently ashamed of it to keep it to themselves; it’s just a vaguely regrettable fact of their lives like not having traveled to Europe yet or not getting what the big deal is about fine wines or enjoying dancing to Top 40 music (if there even is such a thing anymore) past one’s teenage years.
The fact that my bookcases are stuffed to overflowing in my house (as is my Kindle) doesn’t make me a better or smarter or more interesting person than someone whose bookcases contain three or four artfully-arranged (but never read) volumes, some interesting crockery, a bowling trophy, family photos, and a lot of empty space. It just means those people have different priorities, which I can accept even though I don’t understand how they can live happily without being surrounded by reading material. If nothing else, do they just gaze at the shower curtain while pooping?
I had run into enough non-readers in my life that I had begun to suspect it (reading) was falling out of fashion, like handwritten letters and radio dramas. So it’s with pleasant surprise that I greet the findings of this survey.
