In this job, there's a strange disconnect between appearance and reality.

On my little island of activity, I'm surrounded by books, tuned into every news item that revolves around books and authors. Some might watch the Today Show to check out Katie Couric's latest hairdo; I wait for the segment with John Grisham or Richard Clarke. Some might read Newsweek for the cover story on Iraq; I open the magazine and go straight to the book reviews.

Publicists phone to talk about books, friends ask about the latest hot titles, every night I choose from a stack of books that seems to grow out of the floor by my bed like some sort of mutant jungle weed.

No wonder books seem to be, to me, the center of the universe.

But every now and then, I'm faced with a startling reality: Not only aren't books the focus of everyone else's world, but most people crack open more fillings in one year than book covers. One only has to read the annual reports about book sales with their same dreary conclusions: sales are down, or at best, flat.

And now the National Endowment for the Arts has issued a report that's even more sobering. Fiction reading is declining so rapidly, writes NEA chairman Dana Gioia, that if the pace continues, "literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century."

The survey asked more than 17,000 people if they had read any novels, short stories, plays or poetry in their leisure time in the past 12 months. By "novels," the report didn't differentiate between Danielle Steel or James Joyce.

Even with such a loose definition of "literary reading," the activity dropped about 3 percent between 1982 and 1992 and 7 percent between 1992 and 2002. In 2002, less than half of the adult population (46.7 percent) reported reading any sort of literature. The decline was seen in all age groups, genders, ethnic groups and education levels.

At this point, you can almost envision a roomful of English teachers pointing their fingers and tsk tsk-ing - as if reading novels were the equivalent of eating brussels spouts: We should all do it for our own good, even if we have to hold our noses.

As sad as I am to read the report, I wouldn't go that far. Certain points call for closer scrutiny.

The slip away from fiction isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Publishers print far more nonfiction than fiction these days and even the venerable The New York Times Book Review, home of the literary elite, has been accused of downsizing its fiction coverage in recent years, while bulking up on nonfiction.

One can only guess at the reasons. Certainly, in the survey year (2002), our quest to understand the complexities of a post-9/11 world led us to seek books rooted in reality.

Indeed, the books at the very center of our public discourse continue to be those offering journalistic information, such as Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies and Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. In a troubled world, nonfiction is filling a void that the nightly soundbites on TV simply can't.

In addition, while these sorts of issue-oriented books have always formed the backbone of nonfiction, the category has been undergoing a revolution of style and content. The burgeoning number of memoirs and narratives couched in lush prose, telling stories every bit as complex and gripping as the best novel, has been a gift readers have embraced.

"Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting," the novelist Robertson Davies once said. It's a form that attempts to offer truths that can't be found in facts and figures but in the various colors of human interaction.

But anyone who's read Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes, for example, or Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina, will find more than a litany of facts; they'll find stirring narratives that have rendered art out of the stuff of life.

In short, we may not be reading as much fiction as we have in the past, but we've surely been reading nonfiction with all the trappings of fine literature. To discount the rich prose of Angela's Ashes, while dubbing as "literary" novels from writers like Jackie Collins is simply silly, and a flaw in any study purporting to measure our affinity for "literary" books.

Even so, some might say I've missed the point. The reading of books of all kinds, nonfiction included, is in steady decline. The NEA study notes that in 1992, 60.9 million Americans read any book. By 2002, the number had dropped to 56.6 million.

Gioia sees terrible peril in this fact: "print culture," he writes , "affords irreplaceable forms of focused attention and contemplation that make complex communications and insight possible."

Anyone who loves books would agree. Still, at the risk of sounding like a heretic, I'm not sure the sky is falling. There are many other forms of modern culture that demand our focused, engaged attention.

Gioia's comment doesn't take into account, for example, the increasing sophistication of visual media (I'd stack one episode of The Sopranos against a Bridget Jones's Diary any day) - or the huge growth of print culture on the Internet.

The NEA report acknowledges that Internet usage might be a key factor in the drop in book reading (surprisingly, it discounts the impact of television, noting that both readers and nonreaders watch similar amounts of TV.)

"Home Internet users have a similar profile to literary readers," the report notes, adding that these people are likely to be college-educated and between the ages of 25 and 44 - the very group whose book-reading rates suffered some of the most dramatic drops in the survey.

If Internet users are filling chat rooms with inane chatter, they are also privvy to some of the most thoughtful, nuanced writing available today, admittedly mostly nonfiction.

In sum: We'd probably do well to remember that, like it or not, times change. Just ask the storytellers who show up every year at one festival or another, spinning tales while reminding us that what was once a cherished form of entertainment is now about as popular as turkey legs and jousting contests.

Not that I'm happy about this latest report. It's always a shock to learn that so many others don't appreciate the things you are passionate about.

Let's just say that in my years on the job, I've learned to mitigate the bad news while celebrating the riches that surround me. On this little island I inhabit, it's all books, all the time. Many understand the appeal of that world.

To the ever-dwindling rest, I dream of sending out a message in a bottle. All it would say is: "Wish you were here."

Literary reading by age*

1982 1992 2002

18-24 59.8 53.3 42.8

25-34 62.1 54.6 47.7

35-44 59.7 58.9 46.6

45-54 54.9 56.9 51.6

55-64 52.8 52.9 48.9

65-74 47.2 50.8 45.3

75-up 40.9 40.4 36.7

* People were asked for a National Endowment for the Arts survey if they had done any literary reading (novels, short stories, plays, poetry) in the past 12 months. Read the study online at: www.nea.gov/pub/ ReadingAtRisk.pdf

Patti Thorn is the books editor. thornp@RockyMountainNews.com 303-892-5419.

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