In every dystopian novel: the government bans books.
In reality: we gave up reading voluntarily.
Discussion
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@Daojoan do you enjoy blaming teens for the myriad reasons that it's harder for them to pick up a book and/or easier for them to find so much more reading material than just traditional books?
@Daojoan This is one of those Brave New World vs. 1984 things. Which is actually worse?
@Daojoan I have moved to 60-70% audiobooks but nevertheless, at any given time I have ~3 books underway. And my grandkids are both voracious readers. I may not often like what they read 😂 but they love books.
@Daojoan there's a limited amount of time, and hypertext always offered another way to use text and illustration?
I'd slope the whole graph by the population increase, perhaps?
Interesting though, and I don't like the change.
Poor kids had nothing but copycat garbage of endlessly grim teenager-saves-everything-without-help-from-adults dystopian series after Harry Potter set the template.
Every new story HAS to become a universe now, and must be movie-ready.
Those that don't read, draw guidance from a dry well of knowledge.
@Daojoan We've been doing the Huxleyian dystopia for a couple decades but that wasn't fast enough for some people so they're pushing the Orwell/Bradbury scenario on top of that.
@Daojoan Fascists can’t read and Americans and inherently fascists. Only stands to reason.
@Daojoan I was far from a perfect parent but one thing we unequivocally did right was we raised a reader.
@Daojoan The actual saddest chart.
@Daojoan I'd like to see the other answers. What about "sometimes"?
These are just the two extremes.
"In reality: we gave up reading voluntarily."
Speak for yourself
I read *every* night in bed, without fail
Honestly, such glib disaster-cliches are close to a mute and block
My Personal Note on your profile: "Increasingly boring and self-focused"
Make of that what you will
Ive always found that misleading.
Ive read a few dead trees recently, but more and more long form (books, novels, stories, papers) are on a computer.
When they ask these reading questions, do they clarify that the medium does not matter, or are they "it must be a dead tree or its not really reading"?
@Daojoan What happened in 2006?? Why then?
@Daojoan What do they do? Doomscroll? Watch videos?
@Daojoan The teens back in 1985 who read every day are now in their 40s and 50s. I wonder whether they kept reading at that rate.
In other words, it may take another couple decades for the full effect of national non-reading to smack the country full in the face.
@Daojoan It's so weird that HP is credited with an explosion in teenage reading in the US when, if plotted on a longer graph, it looks like a momentary stemming of the tide at best.
It would be nice to know what the other 50%~ish non-extreme answers are doing though.
Orwell vs. Huxley.
@Daojoan That excludes how libraries were underfunded and downgraded by local and state funding. The decline in the graph has bigger issues at its heart
@Daojoan I’m a world full of things that make me angry or depressed (or both) this is near the top of the list 😢
The graph speaks miles. Shows Huxley was right: that we'd walk into sweet bliss of oblivion out of our own volition, rather than pushed into it by force like Orwell envisioned.
The graph is also quite clear on who will be the leaders and owners of the next generation.
@Daojoan Does this include traditional literature only, or also fanfiction, weblogs, wikipedia, online howtos, etc?
@Daojoan Does this include traditional literature only, or also fanfiction, weblogs, wikipedia, online howtos, etc?
@Daojoan
Second hand books at Arrowe Park hospital, flying off the shelf. 🌞
