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Rating the Readers
by David Streitfeld Source: The Washington Post, 31 March 1991, pX15 FROM THE GOOD news/bad news file: Only 24 percent of those in a recent Gallup survey said they finished a book in the past week, down from 30 percent in 1975. On the other hand, people are reading more to their children -- 89 percent said they do it, as opposed to the 63 percent who said their parents did it to them. This is hopeful because reading to kids seems to pay off in the long run: Those whose parents read to them before age 3 read an average of 21 books last year, while those whose parents didn't read only 13. The poll summary makes much of the fact that, when asked their favorite living author, people replied with names like Hemingway, Tolkien, Twain and Shakespeare, all of whom had their last autographing sessions some time ago. This was obviously a case of mishearing the question. In spite of being told by their English teacher that Shakespeare was immortal, it's unlikely anyone really thinks so. It was more dispiriting to learn Gallup itself thought horror writer V.C. Andrews was still alive. When the question was reconfigured into a simple "Who is your favorite author," Stephen King dominated with 18 percent of the vote, followed by Danielle Steel with 9 percent, then Louis L'Amour, Sidney Sheldon, James Michener, the late V.C. Andrews, Dickens and Mark Twain. Twain also scored the highest recognition factor: 97 percent of the respondents had heard of him. The highest-scoring living author was, yes, Stephen King. My favorite datum: the 7 percent of people who confessed they spent "too much" of their time reading books for pleasure. Sounds like there's room for a support group here: People Who Read Too Much, or Adult Children of Voracious Readers.
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