People Still Read

In case you believe the current wisdom, which states that people no longer buy and read books, an article by Karen R. Long in the Cleveland Plain Dealer says it ain't so. According to Long, people in the USA paid $35.69 billion for 3.1 billion books last year. This hefty sum amounted to an all-time record, not bad for a year when many prophets were saying the book was dead.

Although the article acknowledges that not all the books on the shelf would win the approval of your average high-school English teacher, there's still room this fall for new books by fine writers such as Studs Terkel, Philip Roth, and Richard Russo.