At a recent family gathering, a close relative told me he couldn’t remember the last time he read a book. 

“What about listening to audiobooks?” I asked. 

“Nope,” he said nonchalantly. He wasn’t offering a confession tinged with embarrassment or shame, nor was he boasting. He was simply shrugging off books as if they were a food he didn’t like or a place he was content to never visit. 

My relative is not alone. A majority of Americans, more than 62%, reported that they hadn’t read one novel or short story in the past year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts’ most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. This was the largest number of Americans to eschew literature in three decades of the comprehensive study. 

Other studies report similar disquieting results, including a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, which indicates that Americans have traded reading books for social media and gaming, and one by the University of Florida and University College London, which shows only 16% of Americans are reading daily for pleasure, a 40% decline over 20 years.

The plummet in reading has been so consistent that Sunil Iyengar, who directs research and analysis at the NEA, said: “Without concerted actions [...] to stem the declines in reading, there is little point in running historical surveys on the topic.” 

When a researcher is on the verge of giving up a study because its data is becoming statistically insignificant,........

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