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Arts and Entertainment > Books, Magazines, and Newspapers > Trends in Reading and Publishing

Trends in Book and Literary Reading

The percentage of adult Americans reading literature has dropped dramatically over the past 20 years. “Literature” includes novels, short stories, plays, and poetry but not works of nonfiction.

	U.S. adult population			Rate of decline 1992–2002
	1982	1992	2002	Rate of decline 1992–2002
Number of literary readers (in millions)	96	100	96
Percentage reading literature	56.9%	54.0%	46.7%	–14%
Percentage reading any book	n.a.	60.9	56.6	–7

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, June 2004.

Trends in Reading and Publishing

Family Reading, 1993–2001

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Csicsila, Joseph T. Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literary Anthologies.(Book Review) (Studies in American Fiction)

ReCalling Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production.(Book review) (American Review of Canadian Studies)

Reading Goethe: A Critical Introduction to the Literary Work.(Book Review) (The Modern Language Review)

A new paradigm for literary studies, or: the teething troubles of cognitive poetics.(Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction, Cognitive Poetics in Practice, Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis)(Book Review) (Style)

Authors Inc.: Literary Celebrity in the Modern United States, 1880-1980.(Book Review) (The Hemingway Review)

Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies.(Book Review) (Black Issues in Higher Education)

More is more.(Editorial)(fewer people reading books and books becoming longer) (The Horn Book Magazine)

Exploring Irishness and nationalism in the North.(The Ulster Literary Theatre and the Northern Revival)(Book review) (Irish Literary Supplement)

Shuyu Kong. Consuming Literature: Best Sellers and the Commercialization of Literary Production in Contemporary China.(Book review) (China Review International)

Beyond the talking groundhogs: trends in science trade books.(Report) (Journal of Elementary Science Education)

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