Hundreds of vendors, thousands of people, millions of words.
Last weekend, the Los Angeles Times’ Festival of Books drew massive crowds to USC’s University Park Campus. Crowds of book lovers, young and old, crowds of representatives from bookstores, libraries, and small businesses and crowds of people eager to attend L.A.’s “premier book festival.”
So, books are back, then?
Maybe not quite.
Last December, a YouGov poll showed that nearly half of Americans didn’t read any books in 2023. Reading just two books puts you above 51% of the American population. Reading rates amongst certain groups also significantly dropped, with a Gallup poll revealing that college graduates averaged six fewer books per year in 2021 compared to 2002 through 2016.
And it’s not just an issue in the U.S.
A 2023 report from the National Literacy Trust (NLT), an English charity focused on promoting literacy, found that only 2 in 5 children and people aged 8 to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their free time, based on more than 70,000 survey results. It’s the lowest level reported since the NLT began collecting surveys in 2005.
In Canada, a 2022 report from United for Literacy showed that 49% of adults scored “below the literacy levels expected of high school students.” And down in Australia, 44% of Australians have low or very low literacy rates according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
None of this comes as a surprise to Faith Snyder, a junior international relations and global business major.
Books were a crucial part of her childhood and development. Becoming president of USC’s Give-A-Book Club, an organization dedicated to collecting and donating books, was her way of passing on that experience. But over the years, whether due to rising book prices or other forms of media taking over, she’s noticed a shift.
“I think that there are still communities, especially in academics, and even on social media, like the rise of BookTok […] out there that keep reading alive,” Snyder said. “But the world as a whole has also started to turn away from reading.”
Kristin Peers, the manager at the Pico Union Branch Library, said she sees things differently.
“There’s some of us that might argue against libraries, and just physical books, in general being something that might be obscure in the future, but just from my experience, there’s more and more users every year,” Peers said.
Peers said initiatives like adding digital media (audio books, e-books, etc.) to libraries have expanded patron usage, but ultimately, physical books and libraries will always be desired and needed.
“[Books are] just gonna be more interactive […] there’s going to be more warmth. It just creates connections,” Peers said.
These connections are what USC’s Women in Management (WIM) organization hope to foster in its monthly virtual book club.
Stacy Patterson, previous president of WIM and current program manager for the Division of Media Arts + Practice, has been an avid participant since 2015 when the club first formed.
“When I’m reading a book, I’m taking in from my point of view, but I’m also challenged in that hour together to maybe see it a little differently,” Patterson said. “This notion of how quickly community gets built around the reading of a book — it still startles me in the most engaging and thankful, grateful, happy place.”
In her eyes, the ability that books have to open conversations is one of their everlasting benefits.
“The book club has always started with the presumption that there are people who like to read […] the written word [is] a medium, it’s here to stay,” Patterson said. “But are there also some generational issues here — like with newer technologies, are people as inclined to sit down and read a book?”
For Marvyn Kyi, a freshman accounting major, technology, especially social media, has actually reinvigorated reading in younger generations.
“At the book [festival] I saw a lot of young adults. The romance sections, where popular TikTok books are, were the most populated stands,” Kyi said. “So, I think it’s mainly social media bringing books back into society.”
BookTok, or the subsection of TikTok solely for readers to share and bond over books, has indeed increased reading rates, especially amongst Gen Z. Chief Executive of Barnes & Noble, James Daunt, credits social media trends like this as “hugely positive,” and surveys of TikTok users in the United States show that 62% of people said they read at least one book based on BookTok recommendations. But whether this new wave in reading is indeed simply a trend or is indicative of a larger shift back to physical books remains to be seen.
In junior lifespan health major Carissa Liu’s opinion, while reading in all forms is important, the draw that the physical media has is unparalleled. Based on her three years worth of experience with volunteering at the Festival of Books, she said the relevancy books have, especially for niche communities, is clear.
“I would say that the festival holds a lot of value because you really get to explore so many different ways you can read […] people are promoting audiobooks, their own podcasts, or other different mediums,” Liu said. “But [paper] books have always been with us […] they kind of have that undying legacy, in a way.”
Undying legacy or fading relevancy is the question for the larger public — but for those dedicated book lovers, the answer is clear: books are never going away, and they never even left.