January 13, 2009

The NY Times peports on an NEA study that "the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen" to 50.2%. This is being reported as good news.

I was really hoping that the other 49.8% are exclusively non-fiction readers, but Steven Fama's aliteracy (people who can but choose not to read) worries in the comments the other day are confirmed by the article: "At the same time the survey found that the proportion of adults who said they had read any kind of a book, fiction or nonfiction, that was not required for work or school actually declined slightly since 2002, to 54.3 percent from 56.6 percent."