Book News
Cracking the books — as ordered.
“Reading on the rise,” declares a new government study, which reports a surprising and welcome increase in the number of adults who recently read a novel, short story, play or other work of literature. But the study also suggests that not every person who reads necessarily wants to.
According to “Reading on the Rise,” issued by the National Endowment for the Arts, just over half of the people 18 or older surveyed read some kind of literature in 2008, up from 46.7 percent in 2002, when the number had dropped by 7 percentage points over the previous decade.
According to the survey, which reflects both online works and paper texts, reading rates increased for whites, blacks and Hispanics, for men and for women, for all levels of education and across virtually all ages. Reading among 18- to 24-year-olds jumped from 42.9 percent in 2002 to 51.7 percent last year.
For much of the decade, the NEA warned of a crisis in literacy and implemented programs to encourage reading. The results of those programs, the NEA says, demonstrate “our faith in positive social and cultural change was not misplaced. But it doesn’t mention a countertrend: a drop in reading among people not obligated to read. Adults who read books of any kind — fiction or nonfiction, online or on paper — that were not assigned by a teacher or employer dropped from 56.6 percent of adults in 2002 to 54.3 percent last year.
NEA chairman Dana Gioia believes the report is essentially positive — if only because good news about reading is so rare — but says that “we’re still in a culture in which all kinds of reading are under pressure” from other forms of leisure and entertainment. The Associated Press
First Lines
The Sky Below, by Stacey D’Erasmo
You’ve seen me. I’m the guy opposite you on the subway or the bus, I’ve passed you on the street a million times, I’ve stood behind you or in front of you in line. I look familiar, though you can’t quite place me — I look like a lot of people you know, or used to know. Average height, average weight, wavy red hair cut close, khakis, intelligent expression, but something — there’s something about me. Slyness, maybe, or sadness; hard to say which. An indeterminacy just beneath my ordinariness. Lines at my eyes: forty, forty-two? Graying temples. I carry a surprisingly nice briefcase, leather, initialed G.F.C. When I put on my glasses and open the briefcase on the subway, you see that there are lists of names inside, highlighted in different colors. Who are those people?
Longest-running best sellers of 2008
Fiction
1. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (30 weeks)
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (26)
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (17)
4. The Appeal, by John Grisham (15)
5. Love the One You’re With, by Emily Giffin (15)
Nonfiction
1. The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (47 weeks)
2. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch (36)
3. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (23)
3 (tie). You: Staying Young,by Michael F. Roizen (23)
4. Become a Better You, by Joel Osteen, (17)
4. (tie) Stori Telling, by Tori Spelling (17) Publishers Weekly
