Library Blog: News of Reading's Death Greatly Exaggerated
I'm posting this right now to our library blog. We have to fight news with news:
When asked about whether he was nervous about Amazon's new ebook reader, Kindle, Steve Jobs replied: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” he told John
Markoff of The Times, “the fact is that people don’t read anymore.
Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last
year.”
It's enough to make a librarian weep. But wait! Here comes a wonderful article from the New York Times offering alternative statistics:
Last year, a survey for the Associated Press found that a much smaller
number — 27 percent — had not read a book lately, which means nearly
three-in-four have read a book.... The more compelling statistic was rarely mentioned in news accounts of the A.P. story: the survey found that another 27 percent of Americans had read 15 or more books a year. That report documents a national celebration.