Reading On The Rise (Says the NEA)

The American National Endowment for the Arts has released a report on "Reading On The Rise." You may remember last year's report "To Read or Not to Read." This year's report, like those of previous years, is largely based on a survey of a wide range of Americans. Last year's report and the 2004 report "Reading at Risk" were full of despairing news about substantial declines in reading. But this year's report is being presented as the opposite: "a decisive and unambiguous increase" in "literary reading" across the board, with the most dramatic rise (more than 20%) among Hispanic Americans. The reports also says that The 18-to-24-year-old shifted from a 20% decline in reading, in the 2002 survey, to a 21% increase in 2008. The report attributes both increases to community-based reading and awareness programs, particularly their own, which, given the outreach abilities of the NEA strikes me as a bit unlikely to have had that much effect. You can read the whole report here.

The dramatic changes strike me as odd. I'm very glad if there are such increases, but I'm frankly a little baffled. The report doesn't really provide enough information about the survey itself, or the respondents. The report does indicate that most of the survey questions are repeated from year to year, with new questions being added as needed. I'm also puzzled by what, exactly, is meant by "literary reading," a term that is used throughout the report, but as far as I can tell, never defined. It's a tricky term too, because what is literature? The canon? Fiction and poetry and drama, but not comics? Based on later comments in the report about genre fiction, I think "literary reading" means poetry, fiction, and drama, but I'm not positive.

According to the report, 47% of the adults said they read fiction, in the form of a novel or short story, in 2008. A new question added to this year's survey asks those readers who read novels or short stories which of the following genres they favor: mystery, thriller, romance, science fiction, or other. Mystery was overwhelmingly the top choice with 53% of those who answered the question indicating that they read mysteries, 40.8% was "other," 32.6 read thrillers, romance at 28.5, and science fiction at 25.4. Now, I realize people are responding with "yes" to multiple categories, but usually romance is listed as the single most popular genre. This is such a given that bookstores have noticeably larger amounts of shelf-space for romance novels. So that's an interesting departure, particularly given that the report reiterates that more women engage in literary reading than men, though the literary reading rate increased for both from the previous year. Women increased from 55.1% to 58%. Men increased from 37.6% 41.9%.

This too caught my eye: the report descries the overall reading rate for poetry and drama as continuing the decline of previous years, and notes a sharp drop in the percentage of women who read poetry, from 16% in 2002 to 9.8% in 2008. I am curious about that, and wish I knew why. I realize that it's part of the overall decline in voluntary reading by adults, but the change in poetry reading by women stands out.What caused the change?

The report also notes that

The percentage of American adults who report reading any book not required for work or school during the previous year is still declining. It fell from 56.6 percent in 2002 to 54.3 percent in 2008.

Which to my admittedly naive understanding of statistics is confusing, and suggests that mandatory reading (work and school) has increased, but not voluntary reading. That strikes me less than ideal. People are reading what they have to, but fewer are choosing to read in their leisure. Which is less than good news, despite the enthusiasm the report has for the current environment.

I'm also puzzled by the odd contradictory attitude towards online reading. Increasingly large numbers of people under 25 or so read online a very great deal. Beginning with the two previous surveys, questions were included that specifically addressed online reading. In the "executive summary" at the front of the report, Dana Gioia, the Chair of the NEA says this:

A decline in both reading and reading ability was clearly documented in the first generation of teenagers and young adults raised in a society full of videogames, cell phones, iPods, laptops, and other electronic devices.

In key point 11 of the report it notes that

Most online readers also report reading books.
84 percent of adults who read literature (fiction, poetry, or drama) online or downloaded from the Internet also read books, whether print or online.

I'm a little discomfitted by the inclusion of iPods and laptops in a dismissive context. I'm not only writing this on my laptop, I do a great deal of reading on it as well. Many others people too are now reading books on their phones and iPods. You're engaging in online reading right now, even if it's not fiction. But the reference to books seems to mean the printed book, as a separate thing from a digital book.

The number of books for download to handheld reading devices like Amazon's Kindle in increasing rapidly; new books are typically simultaneously released as e-books. Increasingly, people are turning to online sources to read both local and international news. Online fiction, poetry, essays, newsgroups, blogs, and bulletin boards certainly account for a certain percentage of time the average American spends leisure-reading, as well. Are online readers and digital books not being counted as they should be?

Ultimately, the findings of this years report seem puzzling and a bit contradictory. Certainly I want more people to be choosing to read, across our cultures and communities. There are so very many more ways for a consumer to access the written word, now, though. It's not entirely clear to me that the NEA report takes into account the growing flexibility in available format for the sorts of reading we all choose to do, every day.