Yes, People Still Read Books

A complaint (statement? accusation?) I hear from people who come into the Canterbury is that people don’t read anymore or that people don’t buy books anymore. Beyond the irony of making such a claim in a bookstore (and the double-irony that most of those people then proceed to leave the store without having purchased a book), it is also a statement that I don’t think has much merit.

During the court hearings for determining if Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster would create an unacceptable level of market concentration, executives from Random House tried to give evidence that the purchase was necessary to combat decreasing levels of readership, presenting some well-picked, arresting statistics to support their claim.

Well, Lincoln Michel wrote an article (https://countercraft.substack.com/p/yes-people-do-buy-books) examining the statistics they presented, and with some further statistics as his counter argument, gave a convincing riposte that people are purchasing just as many books as they always have, going back decades. And granted, perhaps I only find Michel’s argument convincing because it’s the one I want to believe to be true. But if that’s the case, why do some who walk into my store want to believe the opposite?

BECAUSE THEY’RE EVIL!!! Just kidding, that’s obviously not the case. Perhaps they feel left behind by the rate of change in the world and assume no value they hold dear has remained unaffected.

Reading from printed materials better than reading from screens, bookstore declares

The Guardian recently ran an article (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen) covering a research study examining qualitative differences in brain-patterns in a group of ~60 middle-schoolers reading a text either on paper or on a screen. For entirely self-interested reasons, we thought this subject worth posting about.

However, the Guardian article extrapolates much further from the experiment than the researchers themselves do; the full-preprint research paper can be read here:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.30.553693v1.full

Specifically, I think the second paragraph of their conclusion is worth reading:

"For reasons related to study delimitations and limitations we think it too early to generate a set of recommendations for adaptation in the classroom. However, we do think that these study outcomes warrant adding our voices to those of Delgado et al. [2] in suggesting that we should not yet throw away printed books, since we were able to observe in our participant sample an advantage for depth of processing when reading from print. Applications for digital reading should not be dismissed, either: the observation of a potential print advantage does not negate the value of rapid access to information that could be supported by digital reading. It may be that classroom practices should strategically match reading strategies and mediums to task, such that printed media are employed when deeper processing is required while digital access to text is utilized for other needs."

Holiday Time Closures and Openings!

Just a notice that we’ll be closed Sunday, Dec. 24th and Monday Dec. 25th for it being a Sunday and Christmas Day, respectively. We will, however, be open Saturday, Dec. 23rd, and Tuesday Dec. 26th through the rest of the week for our regular hours.

We will be closed Dec. 31st because, it is, again, a Sunday, as well as Monday, Jan. 1st because of New Years Day, but then should be open for our regular hours and days the rest of that week.

I hope you all get to enjoy some time off!