This is a commentary on the NEA-- National Endowment for the arts study, To Read or Not To Read, A Question of National Consequence,
http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf . This is an incredible study, it shows that American reading and writing skills are declining in every category. People are losing their interest in literature in general. If you want to think of it this way on the web, not a single keyword in the top ten lists of keywords includes books or literature. Movies and music, but not books.
We are in essence creating our own Fahrenheit 451 by turning away from the habit of reading. As people buy less books, they become less of a commodity and they lose their importance in our minds. This study says even if we are reading, 35% of the time we are distracted by something else, the computer, music, email, the telephone, or any of another plethora of available media. We live in a distractive instant gratification environment which reinforces itself.
Teens are not reading, they are watching television, listening to music, or using one of a million different devices to fill their time, the ipod, the iphone, the pager, the portable psp play station, or the portable computer. When they come into where I am working, they head in to sign up for the computers, mostly to do "graphical research", look for images, anime, cartoons, drawings, or music, very rarely for books. And if they are at the library, a lot of the time, they are not there to get books, they are there to get videos, talk to their friends, or get on the computer. Reading is an assigned habit focused on reading the classics which many of them find dull, complicated, and harrowing. I can see the statistic that half of Americans don't read for pleasure writ clear every day I come in to work.
It is mostly the older Americans who are coming to us to get reading materials for pleasure, the middle aged and the teenagers don't do it so much. And those who do come up to talk to us, often talk about the large amount of books they have in the home. The more books they have, the more prosperous they often are.
In the study, there is a lot of material on how those who have a lot of books in the home do well in school, move up into management, are more likely to be involved in civic activities, and are more likely to succeed in life. This does not just reflect in America, it reflects in our place in the world.
Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden all have higher reading scores. This may translate into being more competitive in the international marketplace because quite simply they are better able to use the tools given to them. In my opinion, if Americans don't address the central issue of education for competence in reading and wrting we will lose out in the end.
Our prisons are filling with illiterates. There are far more people in prison who are illiterate than on the outside. It must be manly to not read books.
On a most important note, employers consider reading and writing to be essential skills in the workplace. 93% of employers consider the ability to read and write critical. They seem to be looking for the ability to write with clarity and accuracy to be very important.
When people read less it impacts my profession badly. We are partially funded by circulation statistics, how much people use and read material. So, if you are in a library take that book out when you go home.
The more people that use our libraries, the more money we get. This creates a downward spiral with less funding for libraries as people read less. Will they go to a bookstore instead? Even the bookstores seem to be carrying less reading material and is diversifying into other products, audio books, videos, and software. The bookstore is becoming a media center.
This is a personal example. I used to go to Forbidden Planet in Manhattan to look at science fiction books. They had rows and rows of science fiction boks. Now, they have one book case full of science fiction books, have introduced video games, increased the amount of Manga, a foreign import, and expanded their action figures. People aren't reading the fantasy and science fiction books they were once known for so they had to change considerably.
Even in places where there is a successful bookstore, they are not focusing on literature necessarily, they are focusing on tie-ins, a further sign of distraction. You go see Harry Potter, buy the book by J.K. Rowling, visit the web site, and maybe even listend to the sound track. Media is now a complete package where you have to listen, concentrate, and read. A bookstore is a business, at least that is the way we normally think of it. However, this is changing. A lot of bookstores are folding.
Many of the surviving bookstores are becoming nonprofits and inviting in other forms of entertainment. Nkiru books in Brooklyn, New York for example, an African American bookstore changed into Nkiru cultural center. Housing Works, one of the most successful used bookstores in Manhattan uses its proceeds to help homeless people with AIDS-- Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. It takes donations and sells them. It is a really high quality bookstore. I have seen other bookstores starting to change their status to nonprofit.
So what is happening with those young adults who are not reading, how are they making it through the school system. They can now listen to their assignment, plenty of them come in requesting the complete audiobook of Lord of the Flies, or if they really can't be bothered and can't understand Hamlet, they rent the video instead of reading the book. Reading is a difficult skill for a lot of people.
Less than a third of American teenagers are reading daily. This is problematic. I like to think that as an adult people will at least read the morning paper each day, or listen to someone reading it to them.
We need to do something. I think part of that something comes from the world wide web. People are turning to the internet to do a lot of their writing and reading. The study mentions newspapers losing ground to the internet. The study states the internet is less formal, less edited, and less linear than newspapers. In a way, I approve of this. My grammar is far from perfect, and I do have quite a bit to say. If blogs weren not available, I would not be able to say it to you.
Also people are turning to places where they can talk about themselves like myspace.com, there are over 98 million myspace.com pages a huge amount of writing and reading if you think of it. Also facebook.com has over 17 million pages. The internet is a giant collaborative open book. It gives people an opportunity to express themselves that simply wasn't there before, like I am expressing myself now.
I think the internet is quietly generating a new generation of readers. We can see it in the explosion of interest in urban fiction which comes from the street from people who you normally don't think of as readers and writers. It is violent, full of sex, drugs, and darkness in many ways, but it creates new readers. With the availabiliity of the internet and computers, it opened whole new opportunities for people who would not normally be reading. I can see the hunger for many people who want to read Zane, Noir, Omar Tyree, Chunichi, and other urban fiction writers.
There is a real renaissance in African American writing and reading. This site
http://www.aalbc.com/, has grown tremendously since one of my colleagues saw it at Book Expo America in 2005.
People want reading, they just want it to be relevant to their experience. I think a lot of publishers are out of touch and are not producing material that jibes with every day American experiences. I will probably take the time to read "A Free Life" by Ha Jin, because it looks like it reverbates with the American experience. America is becoming a more diverse society. Publishers are just beginning to wake up to change. We are starting to see change with more international writers becoming available in American like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Isabel Allende, and Jonathan Carroll who has an amazing personal website
http://www.jonathancarroll.com/ .
Also we are seeing a real explosion of poetry. Poetry in print from small presses has just exploded in availability because it is so easy to print books. It is also a form of free expression which takes well to the web. I was at a workshop, Poetry In the Branches, and the presenter said that were five times as many poetry books being printed as there were ten years ago.
We can now print exactly what people want when they want it. Maybe, bookstores and libraries need to be a little more flexible in how they get books to people. With companies like
http://www.lightningsource.com/ , it is possible to print books just in time and on demand. We are not far from a future where books become instant as well. Instabook
http://www.instabook.net/web/content.php?content.5 . This will change things considerably. It will lead to a different place and job for books and reading in the world.
Maybe we can reverse this trend. I am not quite sure how, but it needs to be done to keep Americans educated, employed, and free.
This is my daily rant. How did this start? I went to my library and found my library card was expired and I needed to go back the next day to renew it so I could take out some books. I found an article about To Read or Not To Read and decided I should look at the study and comment on it instead of going in to the library and getting a book to read. Sometimes, a little bit of the busman's holiday can be bit overwhelming. After all, this study has a chance to have a real impact on me.
I took a walk to my local library again today, but found it was closed. I guess, I should have called beforehand. Tomorrow is Turkey Day, so it will be closed. The walk was very nice though. It gave me a chance to stretch my legs. I always liked walking better than driving.
I went back again to my library at around three o'clock, it was open. I got a new library card, paid a few dollars in fines, and went and sat down at the free computers for an hour. It is kind of funny sitting there acting like a library patron. I also picked up four books to look at: The Alton Gift by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross, The Atomic Bazaar, The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche, a graphic novel called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and The Bonehunters A Tale of the Malanzan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I have not started reading any of them yet. I might start tonight. Signing off and wishing you well for now.
