How Much Are You Reading?
April 1, 2008 by Kelly Phillips Erb
Filed under Parenting
The 2007 edition of To Read or Not To Read provides a pretty interesting – and startling – look at the state of reading in the US. It incorporates some stats from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2004 report, Reading at Risk, as well as new information.
Here’s a glimpse at some of the disturbing results of the studies as they apply to younger readers:
1, Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.
2, Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers.
3, The percentage of 17-year-olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled over a 20-year period. Yet the amount they read for school or homework (15 or fewer pages daily for 62% of students) has stayed the same.
4, 15- to 24- year-olds spend only 7–10 minutes per day on voluntary reading — about 60 less time than the average American.
And my favorite pair of statistics:
While the number of books in a home is a “significant predictor” of academic achievement, average annual household spending on books dropped 14% when adjusted for inflation.
You can download all 98 pages of 2007 To Read or Not To Read here.
It’s pretty heady stuff. And it makes me wonder about my readers… if you don’t mind sharing! How many books are on your night stand – and how old are you? (age range is fine)
People are reading fewer books, but I’m pretty sure they are reading more on the internet.
I listen to many audio books. I don’t suppose that counts, though. Otherwise, I read one book every week or so. I read parenting magazines and Chatelaine as well. I am 37.
I am much more particular with my daughter who is 3. We read a minimum of 3 books each day. She also has subscriptions to Chirp and National Geographic for Little Kids.
I’m a 39yo stay-at-home mom who’s been reading since before I turned three. The “what’s on your nightstand” question is a bit misleading, but I’ll explain:
books, physical ones: An Esperanto Dictionary, an Esperanto grammar, Teach Yourself Welsh, a crochet book with history notes as well as patterns, a manual for self-paced study of C+++ (not mine, hubby’s current reading, but I browse it frequently) and my notebook (paper kind).
Every night my laptop follows me into the bedroom, where I use it to make notes on tomorrow’s schedule, school plans for the kids… and then I read ebooks. My ‘virtual’ reading stack on the nightstand takes up two gigs of my hard drive and spans everything from Isaac Newton to Einstein in sciences, AC Clarke to Jules Verne in scifi and from Tacitus to Murray Rothbard in history.
I have to LIMIT myself to an hour of study reading per day, (languages, philosophy, history) and an hour of fun reading per day. (Same as above plus fiction and even fan-fiction if the urge strikes.)
Hubby is reading the C+++ book, but stores it on my nightstand after an alarm clock… incident,*G*. On his electronic planner he has three ebooks, all related to computers and programming.
The kids, 13 and 15, read manga, fantasy, sci fi, and nonfiction books on odd phenomena. The oldest also reads cookbooks for fun, and the youngest is reading everything he can lay hands on about Atlantis at the moment. However, the books NEVER end up on the nightstand. They end up on the bathroom counter, under their seat in the car, water-glued to the kitchen counter because SOMEONE tried reading while he boiled eggs for a snack, but NOT on the nightstand! Electronically, the oldest reads about 1/3 of his course assignments via ebooks and MIT Open Courseware, and the youngest is an avid fan of computer cartoons and blogs.
As a family we still read aloud *and* buy audio books, but those end up in the car as well, so they don’t fit the criteria of “on the nightstand”. GRIN.