"I've seen the same thing. Apparently 33% of people haven't read a book since high school and 42% haven't read a book since college. It's shocking statistics."

I'm inclined to agree. Do you happen to have a source though?

It's not quite that dire.

https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/public-life/boo...

If 53% of all adults read at least one book in the last twelve months (as in 2017), it's still possible that the 33%/42% numbers could also be accurate ... but it's extremely unlikely. It would require an almost complete separation between habitual readers and non-readers, with practically nobody in between who has read books some years but not others. You only have to do that once in your entire life to shift from one column to the other. I rather suspect that the scary numbers are for relatively young adults, which is a non-representative sample of the whole, and that they're being misremembered or misrepresented as pertaining to the entire adult population.

P.S. The 53% number is still enough to make me very sad. It's bad. I'm just saying it's probably not that bad.

I can say that I do not fall in that 53%. However, my wife does.

Some specific numbers (2018):

Who doesn’t read books in America? | The Pew Research Center

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/21/who-doesnt-...

And the NEA offers some insights on the downward trend in reading (2007):

To Read or Not to Read | The National Endowment for the Arts

https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/ToRead.pdf

Thanks!

How do you keep books from completely consuming your free time? For me, whenever I get into a good book I don't want to put it down. I'll read a few hours after my normal bedtime. I'll skip everything I wanted to do over a weekend just to finish a book or book series. Even to the point of reading while in traffic (that I fixed by getting unabridged audio book versions, and switching to that while in traffic and back to paper book when I get home).

Then the other issue I have is that since I know a book will consume me, I have a hard time deciding on the next book to read as I don't want to invest a chunk of time getting part way through it, just to find out that a given book is junk.

Also I have a number of really good books that are on my abandoned book pile. These are ones that I started reading, go half way through then got back into "life" mode. Then after not reading it for a couple months I have a hard time picking up where I left off (already lost parts of the plot), but I can't start from the beginning either because I already read that part. I have to wait till I mostly forget the parts I read in order to start them again.

In your situation, it's going to at first being all about discipline and sticking to a schedule. It helps if you have others in your life that you are beholden to, i.e. there are personal commitments that you must sacrifice for. Which, incidentally, makes you a better, more outwardly focused individual.

Half of Americans cannot read beyond an 8th grade level.