The Future of Reading

The National Endowment for the Arts Says We’re Reading More

Everyone’s seen this story: for the first time in  twenty-five years, the decline in reading in America appears to have been reversed.  According to the NEA’s statistics, reading is on the rise.  (If, by some crazy chance, you haven’t heard about this yet, you can read the NY Times’ coverage of it here.)  Since many people have spent a lot of time lately moaning about how our national computer addiction is going to destroy reading as we know it, this news comes as a welcome surprise to those of us who love books.

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, novelist Ann Patchett (Bel Canto) discusses the new statistics at great length and makes a plea for us all to continue the trend by reading, encouraging others to read, and by support ing our local libraries.  Patchett says she wasn’t surprised to hear that people are reading more: after all, this younger generation has grown up on Harry Potter and, as she puts it,  ”They came of age attending midnight release parties at their local bookstores and then faking mysterious illnesses the next day for the absolute necessity of staying in bed to read. “

This is certainly true for my kids and I know it’s true for Kim’s and many other friends’ children.  Making acquiring a book into an exciting event is a new and wonderful chapter of publishing history, and we’ll cherish our memories of those midnight book parties forever.

But I’m not entirely convinced that the act of reading books as we know it will survive another generation.  I’m confident reading will.  I’m just not sure about bound books with paper pages.  My kids are as comfortable reading on the screen as they are reading the printed page.  That’s not true of most people my age and older.  And I believe that means that something may well change.

Two prodigious readers I know–Kim and my sister–both tried and rejected the Amazon Kindle.   It just doesn’t feel enough like reading a book–it doesn’t offer the same experience. TO THEM.  My kids haven’t tried the Kindle yet.  But my teenage son has a habit of losing real books–they just seem to disappear from his life–and he’s thrilled he can now find most of the books he needs online through Google Books.  He’ll do a search for the pages he needs when he’s writing an English paper–just the way I now look up words online instead of using a dictionary.   Scanning a page of text on the screen is as natural to him as watching episodic TV online–which he also does.

With no more knowledge about anything than anyone else (and possibly less than most), I see a future where all printed matter is read on a screen.  That doesn’t eliminate books as a concept by any means–just books as a stack of bound paper.  It won’t happen soon–my generation definitely isn’t ready for it and my kids are growing up reading books.  But their kids?  I think they’ll be reading online.

Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t matter.  Not to me, anyway (if you disagree, feel free to write in).  A book is a collection of words, and so long as people are reading those words, I don’t care if they’re staring at them on a screen or on a piece of paper.  They convey the same ideas either way.  I don’t want to see bookstores go away–I mean, it’s pretty obvious I love me my bookstores–but I didn’t want to see record stores go away either and, much as we may miss them, they’re gone.

But the good news remains: people are reading more.  Reading remains an inexpensive, mind-expanding, entertaining journey.   That will never change.  And we now have a president who’s unashamedly literate and literary, who writes articulately and speaks eloquently and publicly talks about his love for literature and poetry.  (Read Michiko Kakutani’s piece in the New York Times for more on Obama as a reader.)  In this, as in all things, he gives me hope for a greater future, one in which everyone in this country grows up reading for pleasure, knowledge, and inspiration.

My last novel was published in an electronic version as well as a print one.  Maybe it’s the beginning of the end.  Or maybe it’s just the beginning of a new phase. 

And maybe I’m wrong: nostalgia might kick in and books may be appreciated all the more because they’re an alternative to screen time and seem old-fashioned, evoking a past, more gentle era.

But if I’m right?  Look on the bright side: so many fictional visions of the future include nightmarish scenes of book burnings.  With electronic books . . . no burning.   It may be impossible to eradicate any written text, so long as people have computers. 

There, now, isn’t that a consoling thought?