/lit/ - Literature

The NEA comissioned a report on how little Americans are reading a while back.

http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/arts/19nea.html?_r=0
>Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s book club aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.

There's some gaps with its research and how hesitant they are to recognize digital and computer reading as valid reading and all that jazz but just from skimming it through there's some interesting stuff in it. Literary readers are better civic engagers and volunteer and they guess it might be because readers are better empathizers, which I wholeheartedly dismiss given how many of you are complete bitches. It quotes Postman so that's the general tone of it.