The Ferrett (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theferrett) wrote,@ 2006-07-08 12:07:00 |
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Kinda Sad, But Not Surprising
From this article at Para Publishing, which sounds about right to me:
58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
42% of college graduates never read another book.
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57% of new books are not read to completion.
The only really surprising part is the percentage of books that aren't read to completion - I thought it was lower. Lemme check a bookshelf at random... thirty-one books, and I haven't finished read eight of them, but that's a little skewed because three of them are books I took from my Grandmother's house when she went into the nursing home on the off-hand chance that I might get around to reading "The Making of the African Queen" and "My (Volkswagon) Bug" some day. So for me, the percentage is more like 26%. Still, that's fairly high.
Alas. I love books. And I do know, objectively at least, that not everyone does. I wonder whether the currently text-based nature of the Internet is causing our literacy rate to rise or fall, and whether the non-reading folk are getting more content from blogs and new sites? Oh well.
From this article at Para Publishing, which sounds about right to me:
58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
42% of college graduates never read another book.
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57% of new books are not read to completion.
The only really surprising part is the percentage of books that aren't read to completion - I thought it was lower. Lemme check a bookshelf at random... thirty-one books, and I haven't finished read eight of them, but that's a little skewed because three of them are books I took from my Grandmother's house when she went into the nursing home on the off-hand chance that I might get around to reading "The Making of the African Queen" and "My (Volkswagon) Bug" some day. So for me, the percentage is more like 26%. Still, that's fairly high.
Alas. I love books. And I do know, objectively at least, that not everyone does. I wonder whether the currently text-based nature of the Internet is causing our literacy rate to rise or fall, and whether the non-reading folk are getting more content from blogs and new sites? Oh well.
