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
Flynn, Strayed, and Likability
“That’s always been part of my goal — to show the dark side of women. Men write about bad men all the time, and they’re called antiheroes. … What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero’s journey. It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.” Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed talk with The New York Times about the adaptations for Gone Girl, Wild, and writing credible characters. Their conversation pairs well with our own Edan Lepucki‘s essay on likability in fiction.
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Finding “the fountainhead of the humanities”
Tracing the biological origins of aesthetics, Harvard Professor E.O. Wilson argues for a tighter bond between the humanities and the sciences and identifies the metaphor as the wedge that will keep them forever divided.
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We’re Dying to Know
About a year ago, Patricia Lockwood famously asked The Paris Review how they felt about their namesake. In response, the magazine assigned top people to the project, who came back with a straightforward answer.
The Dark Side of Google
In the near future, Google may use your surrounding sights and sounds to help advertisers target you. Over at Gizmodo, Mat Honan eloquently argues against just this type of thing, and states that “the case against Google is for the first time starting to outweigh the case for it.”
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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. :(