3.1 Books
In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a report that said reading—or, more aptly put, not reading—represented “a national crisis.” NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said this development threatened to “impoverish both cultural and civic life.” According to the report, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, less than half the population engaged in any literary reading in 2002, a record low since the survey’s beginnings in 1982 (National Endowment for the Arts, 2004).
The report, which asked respondents whether they had read any literary fiction (novels, short stories, plays, or poetry) over the past year showed especially stark numbers among the youngest adults. Those aged 18–24 saw a rate of decline 55 percent greater than the total adult population. (The survey did not count books read for school or work the survey, which attempted to examine Americans’ leisure reading habits.) According to the NEA, the overall 10 percent drop in literary readers represented a loss of 20 million potential readers, most of them young. Based on this, the report asks, “Are we losing a generation of readers (National Endowment for the Arts, 2004)?”
Despite these facts, the publishing industry has released more books than ever before. In 2003, just one year after the NEA issued its gloomy warning about the state of reading, 175,000 new titles were published in the United States—a 19 percent jump from the year before (Bowker, 2004). The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted some volatility upon the market, however print book sales surged during the period, and the growth in e-book and audiobooks sales have led to projections that the U.S. book publishing industry would generate around $44.3 billion in revenue in 2024 (IBISWorld, 2024). Meanwhile, as the NEA report notes, 24 percent of Americans’ recreational spending went to electronics, while books accounted for only 5.6 percent in 2002. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the households that watched television more read less. The report warned that “at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century (National Endowment for the Arts).”
As a response to the alarming statistics, in 2006 the NEA launched its Big Read program, essentially a city-wide book club in which they encouraged community members to read the same book at the same time. The NEA provided publicity, funding for kickoff parties, and readers’ guides. The residents of Tampa, Florida, read The Joy Luck Club and were accorded a visit by author Amy Tan, and the residents of Washington, DC, chose Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying with hopes that it would spur conversations about race, justice, and violence. The Big Read’s DC program director said that he hoped the book got young people talking, noting that the book raises all sorts of relevant questions, such as “Do we offer second chances for people after making mistakes, especially youth in DC? What about youth in the justice system? So many people who have been through the juvenile justice system will testify a book set them free,” he claimed (Brown, 2010).
When the NEA released its 2008 numbers, the findings surprised many people. The statistics showed that the decline in reading had reversed, the first such increase in 26 years. Once again, young adults represented the most significant change; the group experienced a 21 percent increase from 2002 (Rich, 2009). The NEA credited the “millions of parents, teachers, librarians, and civic leaders [who] took action… [to ensure that] reading became a higher priority in families, schools, and communities (Rich, 2009).” Another factor may have contributed to the increase; the 2008 study marked the first to include online reading materials. To understand what books mean in the present world of e-readers and digital libraries, it helps to examine how they functioned in the past and to consider how they might change in the future.
