Reading as a Countercultural Act

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m currently reading Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer. It’s a retelling of the first book in the Twilight Saga from Edward Cullen’s (the main character’s love interest) perspective. 

It is by no means a literary masterpiece, but I’ve been eager to read it for months, since I first joined the wait list for the book at my local library. While I’ve read the story before and the writing leaves much to be desired, I’m having a great time. It reminds me of being thirteen years old again reading Twilight for the first time. 

When I was in middle and high school, I was a voracious reader. I still am, but I took a break during college and barely read anything other than my assigned textbooks for the entire four years I was in college. I had never taken a break from reading like that before, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started reading again soon after I got married. 

Now, I read at least one book a week. If I don’t fall asleep reading, I’m guaranteed not to have a good night’s rest. My husband reads too, though he prefers political thrillers over romance novels, and we often stay up well past our bed time, each with a book in hand. 

Last week, I reposted an X (Twitter) screenshot of a post from Brian Tolentino M.Ed (@TolentinoTeach). He posted the following: 

“Students need to read books. Entire books. 

Our society is distracted, unfocused, and in a hurry.

A curriculum that rushes through content perpetuates the anxiety of our time.

Reading a book (slowly and leisurely) is a countercultural act.”

One of my friends (who is also a big reader) commented on my post and said, “What a sad statement that reading a book is a countercultural act.”

The Current State of Reading in the U.S. 

It’s a sad statement but a true one. Only 48.5 percent of adults read a book in the past year, according to the 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. This number is nearly six percentage points lower than ten years prior. And the number of adults who read a novel or short story in the past year was a meager 37.6 percent. 

It’s not just adults who aren’t reading books, though. When I was in high school, I remember reading for pleasure a lot—I was a big fan of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I partook in a lunchtime book club with one of my English teachers and took AP Literature just because I wanted to read more books.

But now, high school students aren’t reading books. Some of the advanced courses and college prep schools may prescribe entire books, but students don’t read nearly as many as they did just a decade ago when I was a senior in high school. 

The Atlantic recently published an article entitled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The article explores an issue that many college professors are facing nowadays, which is that students, even those who are enrolled in elite colleges like Harvard, can’t keep up with reading a book every week or two. 

Instead of reading books and discussing the themes, characters, and literary devices, high school students are reading short excerpts that are likely to appear on standardized tests. When they get to college and are expected to read full-length novels, they can’t do it. And even if they can get the reading done, they aren’t able to discuss it.

Reading as a Lifestyle Trend

If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you probably didn’t know that reading is losing popularity in the United States. One of the last remaining big box booksellers, Barnes & Noble, recently announced it would be opening 60 new stores across the county in 2025. And print book sales are on the rise. According to Publisher’s Weekly, print book sales rose by 6.5 percent in 2024.

This year also marked a new record in book sales. The third series in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrian series Onyx Storm, broke the world record for the fastest-selling adult novel since the metric first started being tracked 20 years ago. It sold 2.5 million copies in the first week.

The release of Onyx Storm was a really big deal. Barnes and Noble bookstores across the country held midnight release parties with Empyrian-themed trivia, costume contests, and more. My local bookstore had one of these parties too. While Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold more copies in its first day than Onyx Storm did in its first week, I don’t remember the launch being such a big deal. 

So if book sales are up, why is the percentage of adults reading books going down? 

I have a theory. 

People like buying books, but they don’t necessarily read them. And with the popular TikTok community known as “BookTok,” marketing books is easier than ever. BookTok has been great for book sales, both for all kinds of authors—new, established, traditionally published, and self published. 

Many writers are working with BookTok influencers to advertise their books and make sales. The fantasy romance (romantasy) genre skyrocketed in popularity due to BookTok videos, and there are hundreds (probably thousands) of influencers who make bookish content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. 

But buying books is different from reading them. On social media, you’ll see influencers with extensive home libraries overflowing with hundreds of volumes, many of them special editions. Are they actually reading their books or just buying them for home decor? 

Some of these influencers boast that they read several hundred books per year. I think the craziest number I saw was over 400 books in a single year. That’s more than a book a day.

If you are making your living from posting bookish content on the internet, it makes sense that you would have more time to read than the average person. However, I’ve heard from BookTok skeptics that most of these influencers are skimming rather than reading. 

Which brings me back to the original post that started all of this: “Reading a book (slowly and leisurely) is a countercultural act.”

Reading as a Countercultural Act

We have gotten to a point in our culture where the number of books we read is something to brag about. Maybe it always has been, but to me, it seems like another display of the unchecked consumerism that infects every aspect of American culture. 

I read fast. I actually took a class when I was in elementary school to learn how to speed read. And I’ve fallen into the trap of wanting to boost my reading metrics. I still track all the books I read in the Goodreads app, and I set a goal for myself this year of 48 books.

But I’ve learned that when I blast through books and don’t really take the time to enjoy them, it feels more like a chore than a hobby. So here's what I’m going to do to create a healthy reading culture in my life.

1. Only read books that I actually want to read — Sorry bestie, I don’t really want to read Onyx Storm. I know. I know. It’s the best selling book of the past 20 years, but I didn’t really like the first two books in the series, and it has nearly 250,000 words… That’s a lot of time, even for someone who can read over 500 words per minute.

2. Stop putting arbitrary expectations on myself — I set a reading goal of 48 books this year because last year's was 36. I figured 48 would be one extra book a month. There’s really no reason I chose this number other than that, so I’m not going to worry if I don’t meet this goal by the end of the year. I just want to read. Period. 

3. Put down books I don’t enjoy — I’ve pushed through one too many books I didn’t like for one reason or another. It was popular, I paid for it, I was almost done with it, etc. I’ve started putting books down if I don’t enjoy them or if there’s something in them that triggers my anxiety. There’s no reason to put myself through that if I don’t have to.

4. Slow down — Some books can’t be read quickly. I read Little Women with my book club in January, and it took me a while to get through it. The novel was written before modern storytelling rules were really a thing, so it’s pretty dry in some places. That doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining or important. I took nearly the entire month to read the book, but I feel like I have a better grasp of that book than the others we’ve read that I binged on a weekend. Whether it’s a quick read or a slogger, I’m going to slow down. 

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, congratulations—you’re a reader. Now go grab a book and join me in the countercultural act of reading slowly and leisurely.