Reading for pleasure continues to fall, but some defy the trend

The phrase “reading for fun” is increasingly an oxymoron in the United States. This may explain why the United States has an increasing number of morons.

A study released in August found that between 2003 and 2023, daily reading fell by roughly 3% every year. Over that time, the number of Americans who read for pleasure, not for work or study, declined by, gulp, 40%, according to the study by the University of Florida and University College London.

In other words, nearly half as many people read for pleasure in 2023 as in 2003. And, let’s be honest, it’s not like 2003 was some golden age. People were already getting dopey. When “Idiocracy” came out in 2006, it was over most people’s heads.

You, however, can feel superior! The study’s expansive definition of pleasure reading included newspapers, in print or online. “Reading” also encompassed magazines, e-books and audiobooks. (Take that, audiobook haters.)

But reading is down anyway. Which makes me down. Because I like to read.

A piece in the Atlantic the other day began like this: “If you read a book in 2025 — just one book — you belong to an endangered species. Like honeybees and red wolves, the population of American readers, Lector americanus, has been declining for decades.”

All told, I read 53 books last year. Had I known finishing one book would have sufficed to make me an outlier, I could have stopped a couple of weeks into January. But that’s not how I roll.

The Atlantic cited among other things a 2022 survey that found only 38% of Americans had read a book or short story in the previous 12 months.

It’s hard to set the bar lower than that. “OK, you haven’t read a book. How about a short story? Just a few pages. Anyone? Bueller?”

Meanwhile, the New Yorker wrote last month about so-called performative reading. It might be a TikTok thing. Apparently some people carry a weighty book around in public, not to read it but, says the magazine, “as a ploy to attract a romantic partner.”

Does that work, by the way? I’m not having any luck. Maybe my mistake is actually reading. Also, choosing books like “Don Quixote.”

(On Sunday I had Cameron Crowe’s memoir “The Uncool” with me at a coffeehouse. An age-appropriate woman was suddenly standing at my table, volunteering that she’d just finished the book and asking what I thought. Then she got back in line with her partner.)

Reaction to the New Yorker story, or at least the overly-online thinking behind it, was largely dismissive, in a good way. Among the comments on the magazine’s Instagram post about it: “Please don’t make reading cringe”; “Isn’t any reading better than being on our phones”; and “Does the internet have to ruin literally everything?”

Another favorite: “I’ll root for any reader, performative or not. And reading at a cafe is still my favorite activity.”

Same. I read wherever and whenever I can: a newspaper in my hand or on my tablet at a coffeehouse, a book at lunch or at dinner or on public transit, a book on my nightstand.

If traffic is crawling along on the freeway at idling speed due to an accident, I’ve even picked up a book while behind the wheel to sneak in a page or two.

Like a lot of people, I’m too quick to look at my phone to check email or social media or Slack. But reading has always been important to me. In 2026, with the world falling apart, it may be more important.

Reading requires concentration, nurtures empathy and offers perspective, qualities in short supply these days.

To lose yourself in a book is to lodge a quiet protest against distraction, blather, bluster, brain rot and the daily embarrassments from the White House, which has all but hoisted a pirate flag.

That’s them. Yo-ho-ho, it’s the reading life for me.

I read science fiction, mysteries, serious fiction, trash fiction, and nonfiction about Southern California, especially the Inland Empire, and about music.

In the works, incidentally, is a column of how the IE turned up in books I read last year, sometimes out of nowhere. Stay tuned.

Finishing 53 books was challenging for a plodding reader with a fulltime job. Another challenge: figuring out how many I’d read. On paper I’d read 52. My online tally had me at 49.

A close comparison revealed that I’d overlooked July’s books in my online count. Also, that I had listed one spring book twice. The numbers were still off by one. Another close comparison showed that I had neglected to log a book on my paper list. Sheesh.

I wouldn’t have had this problem had I stopped at one book. Well, why lie, maybe I would have. Organization is always an issue for me.

Going back to the study from last August about reading, a story about it in the Guardian included this bright spot: “More women than men also continue to read for fun.”

That’s positive, although men ought to read more. Aren’t we supposed to be competitive?

I know two super readers and both are women.

Janice Rutherford-Lim, the retired San Bernardino County supervisor, read 160 books. (One recommendation of hers: Helena Merriman’s history of the Berlin Wall, “Tunnel 29.”)

Meanwhile, my hometown friend Terri Shafer read 175 books, more than three times more than me. Gosh!

As reading goes, 2025 was not, to be honest, a very good year for me. My choices were idiosyncratic, made up of a lot of 20th century books, and, I concluded ruefully, too niche. So there’s little I might recommend to a general audience.

My two favorites were “The Best of C.L. Moore,” a 1975 collection of stories by a pioneering female science fiction writer of the 1930s and ’40s, and “Southern California: An Island on the Land,” the 1946 study by Carey McWilliams that I’ve already nattered on about. Neither is soon to become a Netflix series.

Also, I didn’t have any heavyweight classics on my bookshelves awaiting me — I’d read them, including my big read of 2024, “Middlemarch” — and as I was concentrating on clearing my backlog, I didn’t go out and get any more.

2026 will be better. Not that any of us need to justify our reading. That’s part of the pleasure of it. Read whatever you like.

You can even read these newspaper columns. Leading researchers say they count!

Science tells us that David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.