According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 75% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read at least one print book in the past year. The same can be said for only 64% of Americans aged 30 and older.
Adults These Days
Two Brilliant Kids
This is an interview in which five-year-old Desmond and eight-year-old Everett ask some hard-hitting questions of M. Quint regarding her new book The Defiant, and in which Jonathan Lethem makes a brief cameo to helpfully facilitate the discussion–do you need any more reason to read this piece? Here’s a quick hit from C. Max Magee, creator of The Millions, on giving the classics to kids.
Bubbles and Zeroes
There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled about the traumas lurking in the comment section. It’s almost a rite of passage to get abused for something you write. But there’s another kind of trauma -- what happens when you get no comments at all? At The Rumpus, Rachel Newcombe writes about a new kind of emptiness.
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“Republics of Imagination”
Our love of The Atlantic's By Heart series continues with Azar Nafisi's contribution to the series: an essay on reading James Baldwin, the importance of literature to democracy, and how ultimately "we need literature to remind us how like each other we are, despite our differences." Pair with Justin Campbell's Millions essay on race, fatherhood and reading Baldwin.
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Pynchon Angst
Sam Anderson hates Thomas Pynchon.
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Cheers to You, Madame Bovary
It's Banned Books Week -- time to celebrate your right to read Women in Love, Ulysses, and other notables from the ALA's list of banned or challenged books. Though, according to the Wall Street Journal, this is a whole lotta hoo-ha over nothing.
I wish I could say this made me feel optimistic about the future of book-reading for younger generations, but the study doesn’t seem to exclude books read for school, and a great majority of Americans 16-29 would likely have been required to read multiple books for school assignments. I wonder how many young adults read books of their own volition/for fun regularly, electronically or in print. In my experience with my peers (I’m 24), very few. :(