A number of the last [...]]]> For the last month or so, in fact, for much of the year, I’ve been in kind of a reading frenzy. I must be averaging around three a week. But over the last week or so it kind of burned itself out — and got replaced with a new one.

A number of the last several books I read were somewhat of a struggle to complete. It wasn’t the book. It was more I was losing focus, regardless of whether it was fiction or nonfiction. It is now to the point where I’ve picked up about a dozen books over the last four days or so and am lucky if I get 10 pages or more in before putting it down. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I went more than a day without having a book I was currently reading.

Saturday morning I decided to try to turn the torpor to “good” use. I’ve been thinking of culling the bookshelves for a while. I figured my current apathy toward all genres might make me a bit more objective. I think that turned into a fever of its own. By the time the weekend was over, 74 books were off the shelves and in boxes. My kids are coming home this week so they’ll get first shot at hand-me-downs but then the books are either off to the used book store or being donated.

During the process I found books that still had store receipts in them. I was somewhat embarrassed to discover that a handful of receipts were 10 or more years old — and it didn’t look like I had opened them since putting them on the shelf. Maybe they will find a good home where they will get the attention they deserve.

Henry Ward Beecher, “Summer Reading”

The survey is billed as the first comprehensive examination of American reading habits since [...]]]> Maybe they’re asking the wrong people or perhaps I’m just highly abnormal. I’m thinking it’s the latter but a new reading habits survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows I’m a real outlier when it comes to reading.

The survey is billed as the first comprehensive examination of American reading habits since e-books came into prominence and is was based on telephone interviews from November 2011 to January 2012 using “a nationally representative sample” of people ages 16 and older living in the United States. It shows the “average” American read 17 books over the last 12 months while owners of e-book readers read an average of 24. For the categories into which I fall the averages are 15 for males, 18 for those age 50-64, 11 for white, non-Hispanics and 19 for college graduates.

So how many books do I read a year? Last year it was 147. The average over the last three years is 128 a year. The survey showed 5% of those 18 and older read more than 50 books. (Interestingly, a 1978 Gallup Poll showed 13% of the adults surveyed read more than 50 books.) So, it appears my addiction falls into the extreme category.

Although looking at reading habits overall, the survey also honed in on the use of electronic devices and differences between those who own them and those who don’t. There’s a number of other interesting tidbits in the survey. Here’s just a few:

• 80% of Americans age 16 and older say they read at least occasionally for pleasure. Some 36% read for pleasure every day or almost every day. Those numbers are 89 percent and 49 percent for owners of e-book readers.
• 44% of adults who read books were reading a book on a typical or average day. But 18% of Americans said they had not read a book in the past year.
• Ownership of tablet computers grew from 5% in November 2010 to 19% in mid-January this year. Ownership of e-book readers like Nooks or Kindles follows a similar track, growing from 6% to 19% over the same period. But 85% of those who don’t own an e-reader are considering buying one eventually and another 8% are planning on doing so in the next six months.
• 62% of those owning e-readers had Kindles, while 22 percent had Nooks. It didn’t indicate how many people are abnormal enough to have both like I do.
• 29% of adult book readers read an e-book in the past 12 months, amounting to 21% of all adults.
• 14% had borrowed the book from the library. Of the 16- and 17-year-olds in the survey, 37% got their most recent book from the library, as did 20% of those age 65 or older.

This report, titled “The rise of e-reading,” is part of the first phase of research being funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Subsequent reports will look at how librarians and library users perceive the situation with digital content and how people in different kinds of communities (urban, suburban, and rural) compare in their reading habits.

George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Admittedly, the [...]]]> There seemed to be a lot of doom and gloom last week in the coverage of a new survey on reading in American schools. But it seems like a number of people, including at least one individual who contributed a piece for the publication, may need to look beyond the bare numbers.

Admittedly, the results seemed appalling on the surface. Fifth graders were reading books with an overall reading level of 5.1 (first month of the fifth grade school year), with 5.0 for boys, and 5.2 for girls. But those in grades 9 though 12 are reading at roughly the same level; 5.3 overall, 5.4 for boys and 5.1 for girls. But this isn’t an assessment of literacy or comprehension. Rather, this study looks at what kids were actually reading during the 2010-2011 school year, both as assigned reading and and what they chose to read.

To put those numbers in perspective, Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest — longtime residents of numerous adult bestseller lists — each have a ranking of 6.2. Both The Great Gatsby and George Orwell’s Animal Farm have a rating of 7.3. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar came in at 8.6 and 10.8, respectively. Now I would prefer Larsson or Orwell over Shakespeare any day. But that doesn’t mean I have only a sixth or seventh grade reading level.

As these adult bestsellers indicate, books that have broad appeal, including such popular YA series as The Hunger Games or Twilight, aren’t written to the same level as a high school or college textbook. In fact, if you look at the top 25 books librarians recommend for grades 9-12 in the study, the average grade level is 5.2.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues raised by the study.

First, should students be challenged more? Sure, I may not choose to read Shakespeare today but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be read as part of the process of learning about literature. The academic setting is the only place many of us encountered such works.

Second, do we emphasize reading enough as students grow older? First graders read 31.1 million books last school year, 66 percent of which were read independently, while second graders read 58.6 million books, 81 percent of which were read independently. But those numbers drop each year thereafter. Thus, grades 9-12 combined read a total of 2.3 million books last school year — an average of less than 575,000 per grade — and nearly one-third fewer pages than sixth graders read (119.4 billion versus 337.2 billion).

Given the statistics, the study asked what should kids be reading? There are a variety of suggestios. The ones that struck me as most logical, particularly to address the amount of reading, have a common theme. Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series: “Whatever captures their interest, in whatever format.” Librarian Terri Kirk: “The basic tenet of getting all students to read is to let them choose what they are interested in.”

I’m not a fan of the Twilight series and have not read all the Harry Potter books (the latter of which appalls my children). And I don’t really care where those books rank in terms of reading level. What’s important is that they get kids and young adults to read. Encouraging kids to read makes it more likely post-secondary bound students will have the ability to read at the appropriate levels, regardless of what they may choose to read on their own. And those who never set foot in a classroom after high school may just read because they like to. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

By the way, based on a variety of tests, this post has an average grade level of 6.8 and only a 5.8 under the widely recognized Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, according to Readability-Score.com. Clearly, I am not college material.

George Orwell, “Good Bad Books”