A recent survey found that Americans’ pleasure reading has declined by 40 percent over the past 20 years.
But Amy Blair, an English professor at Marquette University, said although people might have less time for weighty fiction and good yarns, they’re still reading a lot.
“We’re so saturated with text when we’re looking on screens on social media, that people are reading the equivalent of a novel a day in words,” Blair told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “But it’s not sustained and continuous, and it’s not following one plot over a long period of time. There is something being lost.”
News with a little more humanity
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.
Blair has written two books about the way people have thought about reading, from two different perspectives. “Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States” explores the notion that people should read for self-improvement and to become successful. “Tasting and Testing Books: Good Housekeeping, Popular Modernism, and Middlebrow Reading” looks at the opposite attitude toward reading, that people should read what gives them pleasure.
If you’re struggling to make time for reading, Blair suggests a few strategies. One is to listen to books on tape, especially those with a good voice actor. Another is to read an old favorite.
“Something that you read back in the day — pull it out and reread it and see where you’re at,” she said. “Rereading books is a really interesting practice because sometimes you forget huge chunks of it, or sometimes you see things differently in different stages of your life.”
Blair offered “Wisconsin Today” a list of some of the books that have moved her over the years.
What’s a recent book that you loved?
“The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich: This book takes place over a year in the Twin Cities and includes the murder of George Floyd.
The book is set in the independent book store that Erdrich owns in Minneapolis: Birchbark Books. Erdrich makes herself a minor character in the book.
The novel explores how characters relate to identity. It is also a ghost story.
“There are a lot of things haunting people in the novel,” Blair said. “There’s the question of who is being haunted by what.”
What’s an old favorite that you recommend?
“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier: “For some reason, whenever it turns fall, I want to read ‘Rebecca,’” Blair said.
For a time, du Maurier was considered a pulp fiction novelist, according to Blair. But “Rebecca” is complex and inventive.
“It’s centered on two different types of femininity, maybe three,” Blair explained.
It also has an unreliable narrator who has “very little self confidence, but an incredible imagination,” Blair said.
What is a book that you read when you were young that turned you on to reading?
“The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster: Written by an architect, “The Phantom Tollbooth follows a boy named Milo who is transported to the Kingdom of Wisdom, where he finds its two princesses — Rhyme and Reason — have been banished. The book is filled with puns and word play.
“It’s totally enjoyable for a 7-year-old who doesn’t really get all of it,” Blair said. “But it’s also delightful for adults to read to their children.”
She said it “made me an interdisciplinary reader.”
What is a recent nonfiction book that you’ve enjoyed?
“The Empire of AI” by Karen Hao: The book traces mankind’s long quest for an artificial intelligence and why people want to create it. Blair called the book, “unbelievably impactful, nuanced and damning about this industry that has made itself inevitable.”
But Hao also includes some ways that AI has been a force for good, particularly in the way it has been used by Māori people in New Zealand.
“One of the reasons I love it is it has this hope at the end,” Blair said.
