Are We Too Busy to Read?

The following is excerpted off the newsletter provided by Levine Communications:

BOOK READING DOWN ACCORDING TO BEST SELLING AUTHOR: According to media expert and best selling author Michael Levine, busy lives and cultural clutter help explain why Americans are reading less and less these days - dropping books, in fact, at a rate that's tripled over the past 10 years. The latest evidence of America's bookish decline came in a comprehensive study unveiled last week by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In one sense, the findings weren't particularly jarring: Americans have been reading less for more than a decade. "The numbers are even more stark than expected" said Levine. Consider that, while America has gained 40 million adults in the past 20 years, only about 600,000 more people are reading literature (defined in the study as fiction, poetry, or drama). The habit is down across the board - in every racial, age, and ethnic category, across all income levels and regions - and the decline is worst among young adults. For the first time in history, less than half the adult population reads literature. Nearly two-thirds of men don't read it at all. Among Americans over 18, the rate of decline has nearly tripled in 10 years, accelerating from 5 to 14 percent.