Fewer Americans find pleasure in reading books

Nearly half of Americans read no books last year. Columnist David Allen bucked the trend with 63.

As an inveterate reader and book hound, I spent a good portion of 2023 with my nose buried in a book. (Or, now and then, my ears buried in an audiobook.)

I read 63 books: fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, mystery, poetry, history and probably a genre or two more. A caveat: Two friends tore through 180 books or more. My 63 may not be all that impressive.

Or maybe it is. A dismaying Economist/YouGov poll last month found that 5% of the people surveyed read only one book in 2023 and 46% read none.

“So, if you read more than two books in 2023, congratulations! You’re in the top half of U.S. adults,” Andrew Van Dam wrote in an analysis for the Washington Post.

Rarely has the bar for success been set so low.

Based on Van Dam’s number-crunching, I’m in the top 1% of U.S. readers by virtue (or vice) of reading more than 50 books last year. Nice to finally be a one-percenter.

Suddenly my plodding pace of reading — about 20 pages per day — doesn’t seem so bad.

Besides myself, the 1% includes Janice Rutherford. She was a big reader even while she was serving as a San Bernardino County supervisor. After retiring in late 2022, she did not slacken her blistering pace.

In 2023, as she shared on Facebook on New Year’s Eve, she read 212 books.

“I had a great reading year!” she wrote. “I explored some genres I don’t usually spend time with (young adult, sci-fi), enjoyed many more audiobooks than I ever have (which tells you how much less time I spent on phone calls, just one of the benefits of post-elected life), and I powered through some very long books, including ‘Don Quixote.’”

Oooh, someone else finished “Don Quixote.”

As you may recall, I read the Miguel de Cervantes masterpiece in late 2022, loved it and wrote about it here. In response, a few of you told me you’d started it, then broke off communication. One friend powered through it, said it was OK and vowed never to think about it again.

The former politico was more enthusiastic.

Says Rutherford: “I’m very glad I took up David Allen‘s challenge to read that one; even at over 400 years old it had laugh-out-loud and touching moments, demonstrating the eternal nature of the human soul.”

Also, it’s got Don Quixote and Sancho Panza accidentally vomiting in each other’s faces (Chapter 18). That will never stop being funny.

Meanwhile, writer and educator Mike Sonksen, known around L.A. as Mike the Poet, wrote on the news site LA Taco about reading 111 books last year, most of them involving Southern California. That’s almost double my pace, as well as a thousand times more focused.

I’m currently reading and enjoying Sonksen’s book “Letters to My City,” by the way. That’ll be among my 2024 total.

My main feats in 2023 were finishing two heavyweight classics: “The Divine Comedy,” by Dante Alighieri, and “The Iliad,” by Simpson. I mean, by Homer. Sorry. Both provided the recommended amount of fiber to my literary diet.

More to the point of this column, let me tell you about three nonfiction books that, somewhat unexpectedly, contained Inland Empire references.

“Read Me, Los Angeles: Exploring L.A.’s Book Culture” by Katie Orphan, from 2020, is a delightful survey of Southern California writers and books, past and present.

A section titled “Must-Read L.A. Nonfiction” recommends the 2006 collection “Inlandia,” which has been featured in my column. Writes Orphan: “L.A.’s all-too-neglected Inland Empire is the focus of this sweeping and impressive anthology…”

Sadly, that’s the only recommendation from the IE. Even in a book that admits we’re all too neglected, we’re neglected. But “Read Me” is otherwise commendable. I jotted down authors and titles from its many book lists for future exploration.

2022’s “Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels” by Paul Pringle, an L.A. Times reporter, recounts how USC covered up drug and sex scandals by the respected dean of its medical school, Carmen Puliafito.

On page 64, Puliafito, a Pasadena resident, first meets a young prostitute at a place where he won’t be known: “a hotel in Rancho Cucamonga.” I didn’t see that coming.

Nor did I expect that Puliafito and the former prostitute, for whom he became a sugar daddy, would sometimes consort with a low-life couple who “lived way out in Riverside, more than 50 miles away.” But they did.

“The idea of the Harvard-educated dean driving that far to hook up with two small-time criminals,” Pringle observes, “would have seemed unbelievable not long before.”

Call me a booster if you must, but our small-time criminals are worth the drive.

Lastly, 2019’s “Foucault in California” by Simeon Wade tells the crazy story of a 1975 visit by French philosopher Michel Foucault to see Wade, then a Claremont Graduate School professor.

Wade and Foucault drive to Death Valley to drop acid, then return to Claremont, where Foucault gives a poorly received lecture at the Claremont Colleges.

Foucault’s talk, in Wade’s account, was in an unnamed hall “holding hundreds of eager faces. He was irritable and insisted in speaking in French … The interpreter had a difficult time of it. The crowd grew restive, so I abruptly adjourned the session,” wrote Wade, who died in 2017.

Curious, I tried to pin down exactly when and where this talk took place, Wade’s book being on the free-form side. The campus press evidently didn’t cover the talk, but the Claremont Courier was there.

“Avery Hall, Pitzer College, was crowded for the event,” the Courier wrote of the May 19, 1975 talk. “Students and faculty had high expectations — which were dashed at the very beginning.”

Foucault spent the first 30 minutes answering two questions in French. Frustrating listeners, the translator merely summarized his responses. The next questions he seemed unable to answer, at one point “burying his bald head in his hands and assuming a near-fetal position,” the Courier wrote.

“Several people left before the end,” the item concludes, “and there was no effort to extend the one hour for which M. Foucault was paid $300.”

Well, c’est la vie.

David Allen writes dimanche, mercredi and vendredi. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.