From a Wall Street Journal column by Jason Gay headlined “Stop Reading This Lousy Column and Read a Book Instead”:

A bit of distressing news: Americans are reading fewer books. That’s the report from the gang at Gallup, who surveyed U.S. adults and learned that we’re all individually reading “roughly two or three fewer books per year” than we did in 2001-16….

Overall, the average number of books read per adult per year is down to 12.6, a drop from 15.2 in 2016, Gallup says. Every category of reader is reading less: men, women, college graduates, non-college graduates, old people and young people, as well as middle-aged morons with alleged humor columns in fine financial newspapers.