Posted on August 21, 2025 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
A few posts that have to do with the act of reading or trends around it have popped up of late — both serious and silly.
All of these piqued our interest, and we hope at least one of them does the same for you.
-
Denmark's tax rate on books is the highest in the world — 25 percent — but the government will move to abolish that fee entirely in hopes it will inspire more people to read (The Guardian).
-
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Florida and University College London found that from 2003 to 2023, the number of Americans who read daily for pleasure has dropped by 40 percent — about 3 percent each year (The Guardian).
-
A common subgenre in reading-panic coverage is whether men, in particular, are giving up on literature; it may or may not reassure you to know that in Australia at least, the gender gap appears to be a function of how surveys on reading habits are phrased — not so much about an actual, troubling disparity (The Guardian).
-
One solution, hopefully, is to understand how wordless picture books turn kids into readers; Rachel Brittain hopes that this knowledge, plus her five book recommendations, will empower adults to get nurturing these future bookworms (Book Riot).
-
On the lighter side: A book critic examines the attitude of various authors and books, throughout history, toward exercise, to determine what it might be recommending — and provides his own commentary on its wisdom or lack thereof (The New York Times).
-
A subscriber-only article teases that writers of all sorts are often considering leaving in typos and making a few stylistic and word-choice changes in order to "prove" that they're human and not artificial intelligence (Slate).
Categories: Today in Books