Crisis in Reading

David Kipen, former San Francisco Chronicle book editor and critic, hopes the current campaigns to save newspaper book reviews will restore reading to the heart of American life. He claims, from his current lofty position of the NEA's director of literature:

Still, as important as the crisis in American book reviewing is, the underlying crisis in reading is practically sawing the country in half. Forget red states and blue states. The implications of a republic where half reads and the other doesn't -- not can't, just doesn't -- are simply horrifying.

Read Kipen's whole essay at Salon.com in Last exit to book land (may require subscription).While we know people here read, who are the people who don't read (besides adolescents with their ears plugged to I-Pods)? One of the rites of adulthood in the 60s was getting a subscription to the newspaper. At a certain point in the 80s, I read three papers daily. Now I go to Starbucks and scarf down a Hazelnut decaf with the freebie papers lying around. What's happened to us? Yes, I buy the Sunday paper only for the TV guide insert. Papers just don't seem relevant anymore.

But not reading books? Is it the short attention span everyone blames on TV and the Internet? Are we not human adults, capable of controlling our own bodies, changing habits to improve our lives? Just as we can learn to calm ourselves, we can also increase our patience with reading material and again find the joy and satisfaction books can bring. That's the campaign we need!