The number is for sure lower, especially for an entire book. Survey takers act like everyone is completely honest about everything all the time. I would imagine 1/5 of people who were approached lied. It’s embarrassing to say no to a lot of people!
There’s a couple of surprising results there. One is that the inverse correlation between reading and age that several people have mentioned. The other was that black people apparently read more than white folks. The black experience in America is sadly still one of reduced opportunity, and the other data shows the expected positive correlation between reading and both education and income, so I would have expected black people to read less on average for that reason alone.
Hopefully that’s a positive sign for something.
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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.
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Most of the ebooks I read are free, public domain works where there is no reason to buy a physical copy. I already have about 1,500 paper books, my new purchases are about half paper half electronic.
@Daedalus: There are a lot of good fantasy and sci fi books, even series, out there as well. The good ones tend to border on philosophy. Like any fiction, they can explore all the major themes of life, only in their case, with some of the constraints removed.
Wow - you really really don’t like the Pew Research Center, do you?
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Well certainly, we can trust your gut feeling and best guess more than we can trust actual research!
Statistics, how do those work?
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You just described Hollywood!
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Soooo… Oprah?
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All elitist attitudes. “OMG, Americans read at least one book a year? Must be lying, reading a couple of pages and giving up, or reading the Bible.”
While the Bible or a Glenn Beck “nonfiction” book counts, so does Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, or a Dan Brown novel. At least they’re reading instead of just drooling at the TV…
EDIT: Though I do have to say that I agree with the rest. If someone isn’t reading because they’re, say, out trying to bowl a 300, restoring an old Buick, or they’re just out enjoying a nice walk on a sunny day, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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I read. Book of the moment: ‘Pure’ about the demolition of the Parisian cemetery of Les Innocents during the final years before the French Revolution…and all the interesting people that made their lives around it…
I’m not done…so please don’t spoil it…but it’s a tale well told.
I think what kind of life I would lead without the calming and edifying salve of the well written word: a sordid miasma of cartoons, pornography and…popular entertainment. So…thank you authors. Please keep writing good books…(and props to all the dead people who have written worthy tomes…it’s appreciated.)
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So when I said:
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.
…I was being elitist? When just about all those non-readers I’ve met are (socioeconomically at least) more “elite” than I am?
Whatever you say, man.
Nah, I’m not taking issue with what you said other than the first sentence. I read through the comments and had the same reaction as Petronius; people seemed to be awful condescending, as in, whoa, hey, Americans read? Especially oldtaku, who took the time to remind everyone that the Bible counts as a book; though, if you want to be pedantic about it, it counts as several, since it’s a compilation of 66 religious books.
And yep, I get that people just don’t have time to read, and those of us who do tend to pick, well, it’s not always cerebral, given that Glenn Beck is on the NYT Bestseller list. When I was switching hats between newspaper production and IT, my reading consisted of grabbing a book (or toward the end, a Kindle) and reading until I dropped the book (or, unfortunately, the Kindle.) I somehow got through the first five books of A Song of Ice and Fire this way; can’t really say that I retained a whole lot of it, but I remember enough to feel sorry for people who watch the TV show and get attached to certain characters. I have a lengthy list of classics on my Kindle 3 that I might get to…someday.
Nobody reads the bible. Not the whole thing in one go, anyway.
I tried once, as a kid. Probably mentioned it here before, but all I remember is some guy marrying two sisters and knocking them and their servants up repeatedly.
Taught me all I need to know about life. Great book, the bible.
Edit: not sure why this is coming up as a reply to gwailo_jo, not shane_simmons. Ah, what the hell.
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I’m not overly surprised to see these numbers, given the rising popularity of books like Twlight and the Hunger Games among adults - they’re all VERY easy reads. And hey, even though they’re not high literature, at least people are reading. I generally read lots of trashy sci-fi any way, so who am I to judge? Though, I am currently reading last year’s Pulitzer prize for fiction, The Orphan Master’s Son. It’s a fun read.
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The literature of ideas, I THINK YOU MEAN…
I agree, there is nothing wrong with easy reads… Sometimes, it can’t all by Discipline and Punish or Dhalgren or Atrocity Exhibition, right? Sometimes, it’s just purely for pleasure.
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