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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 8122956" data-attributes="member: 6776259">You couldn't be more wrong. Reading, in terms of the number of people who read and the number of books they read, peaked in the mid-20th century. Reading fiction has been in decline for decades.The Pew Research Center <a href="http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2014/PIP_E-reading_011614.pdf" target="_blank">reported</a> last week that nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single book in the past year. As in, they hadn't cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audiobook while in the car. The number of non-book-readers has <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/16582/about-half-americans-reading-book.aspx" target="_blank">nearly tripled since 1978</a>. In 1978, Gallup found that 42 percent of adults had read 11 books or more in the past year (13 percent said they'd read more than 50!).  Today, Pew finds that just 28 percent hit the 11 mark.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/[/URL]The Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent <a href="https://www.bls.gov/tus/" target="_blank">American Time Use Survey</a> found a decline in leisure reading—a record low 19% of Americans age 15 and older reported that they read for pleasure[URL unfurl="true"]https://goodereader.com/blog/bookselling/reading-books-is-on-the-decline[/URL]There might only be 20 speculative fiction novels written a year from the 40s-70s that are still widely read today. But there were hundreds a year being published, even if much of it was pulpy by our standards. Stuff like the Lensman series, Doc Savage, and Perry Rhodan had hundreds of titles, with global numbers published in the millions.Ever heard of Lionel Fanthorpe? He wrote 180 science fiction books in the 50s and 60s.  How about Walter Gibson? He wrote 282 Shadow novels in the 30s and 40s. Andre Norton wrote 250 novels, most of them before 1980. Poul Anderson wrote over 100 books. Jack Vance and Michael Moorcock each wrote over 70, most of them before 1980. Isaac Asimov alone wrote or edited more than 500 books.[URL unfurl="true"]https://io9.gizmodo.com/11-most-prolific-science-fiction-and-fantasy-authors-of-1443957263[/URL]Have you attended any writing workshops or read any writing guidebooks? Because I've done loads of both. And they all point out that styles of writing are always changing, and one of those changes is that fiction today is more concerned with the interior lives of characters than in the past, while being less concerned with presenting detailed depictions of fictional settings. In general, people used to read to be transported to other worlds in their imagination. But TV, movies, and videogames gradually took on that immersive role. Now people read to be transported into the heads of other people. Writers today are advised not to imitate the descriptive style of writers from 30 years ago, as it's unappealing to modern readers.Do you honestly think you couldn't tell just by reading a few pages (or even paragraphs) of a novel written in 1970 and one written today which was contemporary?</blockquote>

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