According to a July 2004 article in the “News Room” of the National Endowment for the Arts, Fewer Than Half of American Adults Now Read Literature. The article cites statistics from Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. This 60-page report was created using data collected from a sample of 17,000 adults by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 2002, at the request of the National Endowment for the Arts. Much of the blame for the documented decrease in the quantity of our literary reading over the past 20 years is placed on television and lower levels of education. The report defines literary reading as novels or short stories, plays, and poetry, and it makes no distinction as to the quality of the literary works.
Three points in the Reading At Risk report worry me most, as a writer hoping to sell my work: (more…)
