>Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.>The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.>The books that people do read are simpler than they used to be. New York Times best sellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago. Longer sentences aren’t inherently better. But their former ubiquity suggests an age when Americans had the inclination and ability to read serious works of literature. In 1958, the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was the best-selling novel of the year, according to Publishers Weekly. Pasternak writes in long, complex sentences: “On that warm gray morning in the mountains, Zhivago felt sorry for the Tsar, was disturbed at the thought that such diffident reserve and shyness could be the essential characteristics of an oppressor, that a man so weak could imprison, hang, or pardon.”>Last year’s top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series.https://archive.ph/hPgMM
>illiterate society>still has lists of top selling novelsi guess words are really meaningless
>>538601149The end of pretentious bullshit.The so called classics suck and I tired of pretending other wise.
>>538601149White americans read just fine. We're simply browner as a total population now and brown people perform exactly as the state of their home countries displays.
>>538601149nigger culture
>>538601149>pictionary drawing guessedtime to flip to new page
>>538601149It's so much worse than people think, considering that women are the vast majority of readers and they almost exclusively read porn.
>>538601149"Americans"Guess the soil is out of magic
>>538601149DAMN. the shills are out in full force on this thread. Expose these fucking scum
>>538601512thermonuclear truth bomb and /thread
>>538601149Books are simply boring. Why read 500 pages if I can watch TV or read Reddit/4chan/Wikipedia?
>>538601149I went to high school in the 90's and we could barely read then. Can't imagine how much worse it's gottten.
>>538601250look at the top selling books on amazon. its all erotica for women.
>>538602200>redditwhy would you do that to yourself>wikipediathe best articles are just summarized from books on the subject, so reading gives you a more in-depth option>TV, 4chanyou run out of shows and threads relevant to your interests and have to fill the remaining hours
>>538602261its still, by definition, readingjust because its not made for (you) nor appeals to (you) doesn't make it any less so
>>538601149Reading is communism
Im glad you shitskins get to inherit a world fit for your disgusting sub human livesWhite people get to do the ultimate white flight and your all gonna suffer for the rest of eternity on earth in an eternal bronze age
>>538601149All by design. Universal literacy led to the proliferation of the internet and ultimately the destruction of the masses' faith in state propaganda.
>>538601149Doctor Zhivago is exhaustingly heavy-handed and JewishHm I wonder who wrote this article>Rose HorowitchOh wow
>>538601149I read half of Armageddon 2419 a year ago. I am your god. Bow to me.
>>538601149maybe because modern books suck too, just like every other western entertainment out there. Some random scifi book from the 80s/90s mogs the fuck out of the current slop major publishers shit out.
>>538601149>majority nonwhite country nowGEE I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED. IF ONLY THERE WAS A BREAK DOWN OF LITERACY RATES BY RACE
>>538601149Let me guess, because it's The Atlantic, it's a long article that nevertheless completely omits the real reasons "Americans" can't read.
>>538601149Modern books are garbage
>A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.)>listened to an audiobookYou know shit is bad when background noise is considered reading
>>538601149N single I double G E R's
>>538604333Why are people so impressionable that they can't read something without it brainwashing them?
>>538601149>kikes>niggers>ebonics>rap>spellcheck >texting >smartphones In that order
>>538604333>COMMUNISTS WILL TEACH ME TO READ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOright wingers are truly retarded
>>538604573A lot of people don't realize you're not supposed to agree with or internalize everything you read. Even this post.
>>538604333Niggers in Africa are illiterate and they took to Communism like Jews to babyflesh
>>538601149What are you reading /pol/? What's next? You do read, right?I just finished the Mars trilogy. I'm reading one of Richard Feynman's biographies now.Next is either Skunkworks, which is about the making of the B52 bomber, a book about the history of ambient music I can't recall, or the series 1632, which is an alternative history/scifi story about an American town being sent back in time.
>OP memeflag 1 pbtid>Rose Horowitch
>>538601149What does that say? I can't read it...or whatever I just wrote...what did I say?
>>538601149>Americans can't read anymore. What the fuck happened?60% white or less
