Taking up the slack

I was reading a group of blogs today called "The Blogfathers" most of which are pretty humorous...one of them was discussing books in America. I find these numbers pretty disturbing...

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

42% of college graduates never read another book.

80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

compiled from here

80% didn't buy or read a book last year??? How do they survive? There were probably 50 or more books purchased in this household alone last year. Albiet that most of them were used, but still they were books, and pretty much all of them were read. I have a few series that I'm trying to finish "collecting" before I read them, mostly because I know the series (having read them before) that if you miss one or two in a row, you lose some of the subtleties that the author writes about. It's not like if you miss something you're totally screwed and don't know whats going on, just missing little things that I like to catch up on. (So that's why her hair is so short! It got burned off in the last book while chasing a shark infested bomb)

Of course if we were to take that poll, we would probably have to invite the person to our house just so they would believe we like books as much as we do :)