As many close the book on reading, others open a new chapter

When I moved into my Philadelphia home 10 years ago, I bought a used wingback chair and put it on the top floor of my “trinity”; the heat of summer chased upward from the cooler floors below.

I sat in that chair and read Walt Whitman: A Life by Justin Kaplan. As I read, I turned my chair toward the east-facing window, toward Camden’s Mickle Street, where Whitman spent his final years. Despite being in ill health after a stroke, he would travel by ferry the short distance to bustling Philadelphia and speak to large audiences of admirers. He was already a literary celebrity by the time he lived there in the 1870s and 1880s.

Fast-forward to 2016, to me sitting in a too-warm house, new to Philadelphia, feeling a bit of magic in those quiet moments. My proximity to the ghost of Whitman in the warmth of my top floor made me nostalgic for a time before air-conditioning, when writers wrote in pencil on any scrap of paper they could find.

A few weeks ago, the Atlantic published an article by Rose Horowitch titled “The End of Reading Is Here,” which has generated considerable discussion, and there is no doubt there is a trend in this country away from reading that is concerning.

But I’d like to talk about the 20% of people she points to who are not only readers, but whose reading “accounted for more than 80% of all books read last year.” She quotes Leah Price of Rutgers University, who says that reading has become a niche hobby, like stamp collecting, and those who engage in it spend more time reading each day than they did two decades ago.

In the United States, 20% of the population — that’s one in five people — consider themselves readers, and most of these consider themselves deep readers. While it’s useful and important to look at the negative implications of the downward trend in reading, I suggest we also look at this situation in another way.

If fewer people are reading more deeply, more comprehensively, more robustly, more passionately, then there is optimism masked in this otherwise pessimistic data. And this is reflected in my own life, and the lives of people in the community I inhabit.

Walt Whitman was the 19th century’s version of an influencer. He enthusiastically promoted Leaves of Grass, his magnum opus he revised numerous times over the course of his life. He was shameless when it came to advertising his own work, and he was convinced of his own skill.

The future of reading may not look anything like the past.

While he was often criticized for this, in today’s social media world full of personalities happy to call themselves influencers, he would fit right in. TikTok’s BookTok and Instagram’s Bookstagram — lively and prolific subsections of these platforms — feature well-read figures who have gained significant followings to show what they are reading, talk about it with an interested audience, and tie their identities to literature and to the pure joy of reading.

One doesn’t have to be a social media star to influence others to read. Readers are influencers whether they try to be or not, and their influence can create communities or even microcommunities of readers. This is not mass reading culture — as Horowitch says, those days may be over — but it is something else. It is the emergence of an ecosystem in which reading is central, a chosen activity around which people identify.

The Rosenbach Museum and Library offers one example of this shift, where we have begun investing more seriously in reading courses. The Rosenbach holds one of the world’s great collections of the written word, from rare books to original manuscripts. Reading courses are taught by experts, usually university instructors, and extend over one hour or several months.

The data are compelling: In 2017, we offered between two and four courses a year on books such as Moby-Dick and Ulysses. Around 2018, we expanded the program dramatically, offering 17 courses, the largest number in our history. By 2025, we were offering 40 courses, nearly 70% of which sold out.

These aren’t large courses. We generally have between 15 and 45 people attending them, both on-site and online. The main idea, though, is that people discuss books with one another, and we give them the forum and a group leader to facilitate the conversation. Since then, we’ve also added ongoing book clubs and livestreamed literary talk shows about everything from Dracula to The Hobbit to works by Jane Austen.

As the Rosenbach has seen an uptick in interest in our reading courses, we have simultaneously watched humanities programs disappear from universities due to lack of enrollment. While that is disappointing, we also see evidence that there is a hunger for reading as an extracurricular pursuit. We hear from course participants that reading simply makes life more meaningful, and they enjoy reading and discussing books together, in a community. Maybe hunger for something that has become a bit more elusive isn’t such a bad thing.

One woman who takes our courses wrote, “The world is in a dark place right now and I find a place of refuge in Rosenbach courses.” This sentiment has been echoed by numerous other course participants, especially over the last five years.

People like this participant are the 20%, and they are the very ones we need to nourish. They are responsible for the interest in programs like the Rosenbach offers, the resurgence of bookstores across the country, and the popularity of BookTok and Bookstagram. They are forging communities that may not be wide, but they are very deep.

When Whitman traveled across the Delaware to Philadelphia to speak, hundreds of people — the stalwarts, the loyal fans — gathered to listen. That audience is our 20% today. They are the people who would have gotten dressed, trundled down the street to sit — or potentially stand — in a room with no air-conditioning, to listen to the aging poet.

The fact is that the future of reading may not look anything like the past. It may belong to smaller communities, devoted individuals, and institutions that bring people together around books. It may look like a group of friends who trundle down the street to read Whitman at a Rosenbach reading course.

If all that’s true, our task is not to lament the loss of a mass reading culture. Our task is to nourish the people who are still reading, and to create places where others can discover why they should.

Kelsey Scouten Bates is the John C. Haas Director of the Rosenbach.