Fewer Americans are reading after the pandemic than before it drove people inside and over to their bookshelves. The National Endowment for the Arts reported that 48.5% of adults read at least one book for pleasure in the 12 months prior to July 2022. The same survey in 2017 reported that 52.7% of adults had read a book in the preceding 12 months.

The organization's "Arts Participation Patterns in 2022: Highlights from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts" survey broke out declines by age groups as well: among 55-to-64-year-olds, who clocked a 53.6% reading response in 2017, dropped off sharply, to 43.6% in new survey. Among readers age 18 to 34, reading rates remained the same. The NEA has done the survey about every five years, through the U.S. Census Bureau, which administers the questionnaire.

More pronounced was the decline in fiction reading, which dropped to 38% in 2022, down from 42% in 2017. The survey's executive summary called this "another great disappointment." Reading novels or short stories, and of books in general, has declined sharply over the last five- and 10-year periods, the report said.

"It is sobering to reflect that our stretches of isolation and self-quarantining were unaccompanied by a boom in reading novels or short stories," the report said. E-books and audiobooks did get a boost, though: "Digital or virtual consumption of art, on the other hand, can be said to have prospered."

The survey showed that 18.5% of respondents listened to audiobooks exclusively, while 51.9% said they both read books and listened to them. The two-format total was slightly lower than the 55% response in 2017.