# American Aliteracy **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 11, 2008, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986 "2008-03-11T17:04:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/21 "2008-03-12T00:34:14Z")
I run a bookstore and it seems to me that most people are aliterate. They’ll only buy a book if it relates to an interest other than reading ie a sports book, musician’s biography, film tie-in etc. Very few people come in to browse the general books and pick a few to read by browsing. I’m sure this varies from area to area. I’ve visited American college towns that had lots of general bookstores that were presumably doing good trade. I was in Italy in 2006 with my cousin who was getting married and his family and friends. I sat on the square in the village reading a book one day and nearly every one of them commented on the book. “Oh, you’re reading a book are you?”, “Do you read alot of books?”, “How come you’re reading a book?” They were aliterate unless it related directly to the trip etc. They couldn’t fathom why I would read a novel. Generally speaking the bulk of readers here in Ireland seem to purchase chick-lit if they’re female and true crime books if they’re male. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/22 "2008-03-12T01:15:55Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] Why does only reading books seem to count for these things, and not reading magazines, newspapers, or internet sites? It strikes me as sort of like trying to gauge interest in music by asking how many people listen to CDs. [/QUOTE] My take? It’s because books lend themselves to a level of detail it’s hard to get in other formats. There are certainly exceptions - I can get book-length law review articles for free on the Internet, for example, and that could be described as “reading articles online”. But that _is_ the exception, and not the rule. For example - right now, I’m reading Anthony Everitt’s [biography of Augustus Caesar](http://www.amazon.com/Augustus-Life-Romes-First-Emperor/dp/0812970586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205283934&sr=8-1). I recommend it - it’s a good read. It’s also nearly 400 pages long. It explains military tactics, sketches the Roman Republic’s constitution, goes into Roman sexual mores - and also, of course, provides a detailed narrative of Octavian/Augustus’ life. It’s impressive, comprehensive stuff, and compulsively readable. Now, I’m going to do something a bit unfair - but what the hey. Compare that book to the [wikipedia article on Augustus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus). There’s nothing wrong with it - at least, not that I can identify as an amateur giving it a quick look. And at 28 printed pages, it’s certainly more than a trivial blurb - this is a respectable chunk of knowledge, and someone who didn’t know anything about the era would come away much better informed for having read it. However, the level of detail and depth just isn’t the same as in Everitt’s book on the subject - or any decent book on Roman history, for that matter. Books provide an opportunity for detailed, sustained exploration of a topic that websites usually don’t. There’s nothing magical about a pile of dead tree matter pressed behind two covers - but when people worry about the fact that people aren’t reading books any more, they’re worried about the fact people aren’t reading things with book-like levels of depth and detail and nuance. They’re worried that the quality of the things people _are_ reading is declining. IMHO, of course. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/23 "2008-03-12T01:52:31Z")
> [@](#): > > 1987 - NJ - Rutgers University Ahhhh! – I grew up cycling distance from Rutgers. That’s scary. On the other hand, I’ve read books on the Rutgers campus and not gotten that response. Different time and place, no doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/24 "2008-03-12T02:03:57Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] The latest issue of Playboy\* cites an alarming statistic – 40% of Americans aged 24 to 44 don’t read even one book a year for pleasure. For 18-24 year olds the figure is more like 50%. Tha, as the article says, means books of any kinds – novels, literature, bodice-rippers, even the Bible. It claims most young Americans can’t even name the Evangelists. [/QUOTE] You see a lot of this in the library wolrd. Some librarians are horrified that movies and music count for so much of the circulation nowadays (30% at my library, more in other places). But that number is misleading because movies are only allowed out for a week while books get three. But a lot of people bemoan how movies and music are “taking over the library and nobody reads anymore!” But then you’ll have other librarians complaining about the general fiction, hoping people read more literary fiction. Then still others will complain that non-fiction (real non-fiction, not “how-to” books), gets pushed aside for almost everything else. And that’s just the tip of the complaining. The fact is, the people that read, read a lot. And the people that read don’t necessarily read another better than a cheesy bodice-ripper. And the people that watch movies, plenty of them stick to only “important films” and don’t even touch our extensive collection of Z-grade horror and action titles. Basically, all surveys like this are pretty useless and worrying about how many people read books as some kind of survey of knowledge is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/25 "2008-03-12T02:34:27Z")
I read a lot. A lot more than I used to, in fact. However, I read books much less than I used to. Why? I now have a laptop, and I can get online virtually all the time. I read a lot more, but I can’t really point to a stack of stuff that I’ve read. And for the record, I think a lot of stuff on the Dope is better written than many nonfiction books – especially political stuff. I’ll get a hell of a lot more out of a discussion of the primary system as a thread in GD than I will reading a newspaper article on it. ---
**Author:** ![MissGypsy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@MissGypsy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissGypsy)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/26 "2008-03-12T03:36:23Z")
I don’t read books as much as I used to, because I don’t have the time. I can read a magazine or newspaper over lunch, while the babies are napping, but I just don’t have an hour or two to devote to a novel or a non-fiction work. (Although, I am slogging through a book about economics, 5-10 pages a day. Boring as hell, but I might learn something. At least it puts me to sleep at night.) I’m finding it difficult to find fiction that interests me, and is well-written. I’ve outgrown my romance novel days, and most other genre fiction doesn’t interest me. I have half a dozen books that I’ve bought that were just so poorly written that I abandoned them. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/27 "2008-03-12T06:09:03Z")
The February edition of _Harper’s Magazine_ has an article by Ursula K. Le Guin called “Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading.” She makes clear that these recent polls about the shrinking American readership don’t worry her too much. She also argues that the world of reading would be better off if the large capitalist enterprises that bought up all the small publishing houses and tried to squeeze every last dollar from them would let them go back to caring more about content than about maximizing profit. I think you have to be a subscriber to read the whole article online, but here are a few relevant sections. On reading: > [@](#): > > But I also want to question the assumption—whether gloomy or faintly gloating—that books are on the way out. I think they’re here to stay. It’s just that not all that many people ever did read them. Why should we think everybody ought to now? > > \ > > I see a high point of reading in the United States from around 1850 to about 1950—call it the century of the book—the high point from which the doomsayers see us declining. As the public school came to be considered fundamental to democracy, and as libraries went public and flourished, reading was assumed to be something we shared in common. Teaching from first grade up centered on “English,” not only because immigrants wanted their children fluent in it but because literature—fiction, scientific works, history, poetry—was a major form of social currency. > > To look at schoolbooks from 1890 or 1910 can be scary; the level of literacy and general cultural knowledge expected of a ten-year-old is rather awesome. Such texts, and lists of the novels kids were expected to read in high school up to the 1960s, lead one to believe that Americans really wanted and expected their children not only to be able to read but to do it, and not to fall asleep doing it. > > \ > > Even during what I have called the “century of the book,” when it was taken for granted that many people read and enjoyed fiction and poetry, how many people in fact had or could make much time for reading once they were out of school? During those years most Americans worked hard and worked long hours. Weren’t there always many who never read a book at all, and never very many who read a lot of books? We don’t know how many, because we didn’t have polls to worry us about it. > > \ > > Lamenting over percentage counts induces a moralizing tone: It is bad that we don’t read; we should read more; we must read more. Concentrating on the drowsy fellow in Dallas, perhaps we forget our own people, the hedonists who read because they want to. Were such people ever in the majority? And about corporate publishing: > [@](#): > > Within the corporate whales are many luckless Jonahs who were swallowed alive with their old publishing house—editors and such anachronisms—people who read wide awake. Some of them are so alert they can scent out promising new writers. Some of them have their eyes so wide open they can even proofread. But it doesn’t do them much good. For years now, most editors have had to waste most of their time on an unlevel playing field, fighting Sales and Accounting. > > \ > > To me, then, one of the most despicable things about corporate publishers and chain booksellers is their assumption that books are inherently worthless. If a title that was supposed to sell a lot doesn’t “perform” within a few weeks, it gets its covers torn off—it is trashed. The corporate mentality recognizes no success that is not immediate. This week’s blockbuster must eclipse last week’s, as if there weren’t room for more than one book at a time. Hence the crass stupidity of most publishers (and, again, chain booksellers) in handling backlists. > > \ > > So why don’t the corporations drop the literary publishing houses, or at least the literary departments of the publishers they bought, with amused contempt, as unprofitable? Why don’t they let them go back to muddling along making just enough, in a good year, to pay binders and editors, modest advances and crummy royalties, while plowing most profits back into taking chances on new writers? > > \ > > What’s in this dismal scene for you, Mr. Corporate Executive? Why don’t you just get out of it, dump the ungrateful little pikers, and get on with the real business of business, ruling the world? > > Is it because you think if you own publishing you can control what’s printed, what’s written, what’s read? Well, lotsa luck, sir. It’s a common delusion of tyrants. Writers and readers, even as they suffer from it, regard it with amused contempt. ---
**Author:** ![Southern\_Yankee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/southern_yankee/32/2800_2.png) [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/28 "2008-03-12T11:25:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **CalMeacham** > > Ahhhh! – I grew up cycling distance from Rutgers. That’s scary. > > On the other hand, I’ve read books on the Rutgers campus and not gotten that response. Different time and place, no doubt. Oh, I’m not suggesting no one else at Rutgers read books for pleasure, just the small group of guys in the living room that day. Maybe it’s an irrelevant sample size, or maybe the fact that it was a fraternity house had something to do with it. I was just surprised because up until then I thought everyone read books all the time. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/29 "2008-03-12T11:45:57Z")
**mhendo** , that looks like an interesting article, but it looks diffuse – the half about the Decline of Reading seems out of place with that Quixotic request for megapublishers to get out of the literary business and leave it to the Dedicated Few. I like le Guin’s fiction – I’ve read some of her SF stuff. But I’m not sure I agree with her characterizxation of “the century of the book” and her picture of the umpteen-hour-a-day worker arriving home too exhausted to crack open book even if he wanted. That, along with her starting date of 1850, seems to me to present a false picture of the era. She seems to be saying that people were just putting up a false front. Thety wanted to read this stuff, but they really couldn’t. But read Jacob Riis about how the immigrants could and did read. Look at the sales of subscription books (books that were “pre-sold”, because it was the only way they could afford to print them, having guaranteed customers in advance). Mark Twain’s books were published this way, and you have to want to actually read the book to purchase it that way. Twain’s biographies are filled with examples of people coming up to him and telling him how many times they read his books. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/30 "2008-03-12T13:38:22Z")
Well, i think Le Guin’s article overstates its case a bit in places, but i also think that my excerpt probably doesn’t do it proper justice (i was trying to be careful about getting the board into copyright trouble). She does, in places, concede that people wanted to read, and that they did read. But she also spends time talking about reading as an activity that served certain social and cultural functions, functions which have today been largely taken over by the many other forms of media and entertainment available to the American people. I don’t think the article is perfect, and i think it was written as something of a polemic, but it holds together somewhat better than you would guess from my grab-bag of selected paragraphs. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/31 "2008-03-12T14:09:29Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Excellent] when people worry about the fact that people aren’t reading books any more, they’re worried about the fact people aren’t reading things with book-like levels of depth and detail and nuance. They’re worried that the quality of the things people _are_ reading is declining. [/QUOTE] True, but not all books do have more depth, detail, and nuance than online articles. Harlequin romance novels generally don’t feature those things, and aren’t particularly educational, but they are counted as books here. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/32 "2008-03-12T14:10:39Z")
Its not just an American thing,many of the people I know in the U.K. have never read a book for pleasure in their lives and if you ventured to introduce the subject in conversation they’d think that your showing off. I once had a young woman who as far as I knew didn’t know from Adam walk up to me in the street and say “You think that your better then us because you read books”,typical piece of British working class(of whom I’m a member)inverted snobbery. In the area in which I was brought up if you read voluntarily you had to be gay at the very least. Thank god for the Dope I’d go mad otherwise,MAD I tell you MADDDDDDDDDDDDD… ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/33 "2008-03-12T14:47:29Z")
Did the article mentioned in the OP have any data on how many books people read every year for reasons other than pleasure? I suspect the data are misleading. As has been pointed out, there are in-depth articles and even entire “books” that are available online in non-book format. And many “real” books have little or no value. For example, compare someone who listens to “The Logic of Life” in a digital audio format to someone who reads a dead-tree version of “Dianetics” for fun. Only one has “read a book for pleasure”, but I guarantee that it’s the _other_ one who is likely to have bettered himself. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/34 "2008-03-12T15:09:35Z")
[QUOTE=BlackKnight] For example, compare someone who listens to “The Logic of Life” in a digital audio format to someone who reads a dead-tree version of “Dianetics” for fun. Only one has “read a book for pleasure”, but I guarantee that it’s the _other_ one who is likely to have bettered himself. [/QUOTE] That is another problem with these statistics. Some count audiobooks as a book “read” while others count them as “listening to CDs”. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/35 "2008-03-12T15:11:39Z")
At least one of those polls measured, for example, _only literary fiction_. No nonfiction. No biography. No popular science, no magazines, nothing read from a screen, no audio books. Which is clearly incredibly stupid. My boyfriend doesn’t get to much fiction, but he reads Harper’s every month, and National Geographic, and nonfiction both for work and for hobbies and such. He also reads a lot of stuff online for pleasure. This kind of poll would not consider him a reader. What even that statistic _doesn’t_ say is that 60% of Americans do read for pleasure! That’s a lot, you know. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/36 "2008-03-12T15:18:26Z")
> [@](#): > > Thank god for the Dope I’d go mad otherwise,MAD I tell you MADDDDDDDDDDDDD… “Oh, you can’t help it. Everyone here’s mad, you know. I’m mad, you’re mad…” “How do you know I’m mad?” asked Alice. “You must be,” answered the Cheshire Cat, “Or you wouldn’t have come.” ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/37 "2008-03-13T19:52:41Z")
I found the cite for this: [http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf](http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf) (.pdf) It’s from an NEA research report titled “To Read or not to Read - A Question of National Consequence” \*Last November, a controversial National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) report revealed that all Americans, and especially teens and 20-somethings, read on their own much less than in the past. For example, 60 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in 1982 said they read literature like novels outside school, but in 2002 only 43 percent did. \* ---
**Author:** ![Aangelica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Aangelica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aangelica)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/38 "2008-03-13T20:46:35Z")
Every time I see one of these statistics, I always have to do some wondering about the methodology they used to collect the data. What are they counting as reading? What counts as a book? Is a National Geographic a book? It’s nearly as long (or longer, sometimes) and contains more factual information than many a category romance novel that’s almost certainly counted as a “book” for purposes of the survey. Are they counting e-books or books-on-tape as “reading” a book? Does work-related non-fiction reading count? What about if it’s work-related but also _hobby_-related? Did they, Og forbid, phrase the question as “Do you read literature for fun?” I read hundreds of books a year for pleasure (generally between 250 and 350 a year, actually) and I probably would answer a question like that “No”. To be truthful, I’d probably answer “do you read literature” in the negative. I read books - fiction books mostly - but I don’t think of it as literature. Also, I’m not too terribly surprised that people aged 18 - 24 aren’t reading for fun. After all, a fair chunk of them are currently engaged in _professional_ reading in the form of college. When I was in college, my urge to read recreationally was rather diminished - and I am and always have been a voracious reader-for-pleasure. Now, college students seeking a diversion from their coursework have a goodly many more options available to them for entertainment than college students in 1982 did. Video games alone have come a long way since 1982. Hell, they’ve come a long way since I graduated from college in 1997. If the question was a flat-out “Do you read for pleasure?”, then that’s one thing. But I seriously doubt it was. Even a question that basic is going to leave behind people who don’t read for pleasure, but rather get their access to literature in a non-traditional fashion - listen to books-on-tape, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/39 "2008-03-13T23:43:53Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] The latest issue of Playboy\* cites an alarming statistic – 40% of Americans aged 24 to 44 don’t read even one book a year for pleasure. For 18-24 year olds the figure is more like 50%. [/QUOTE] Given the amount of reading that I do, I probably tip the scales back to the midpoint for all of them. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2008, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986/40 "2008-03-14T00:41:04Z")
A few decades ago I was a voracious reader. My book collection was growing by leaps and bounds, and I read every one of 'em. But now, I’m so involved in so many other things that I no longer have the time to read for pleasure. But I’m smart and creative and educated and informed, way more than someone who reads a trashy novel every week. And no, I didn’t know who the Evangelists were. I thought they might be some rock group. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-aliteracy/440986.md?page=3)