Do you ever wish you could pick up a newspaper and read some good news?
Well, it’s a good thing you picked up this newspaper, because here is some good news.
The deaths of books and bookstores have been greatly exaggerated.
Using U.S. Census Bureau figures, Publishers Weekly reports that in 2015 bookstore sales rose by 2.5 percent from $ 10.89 billion to $11.17 billion. This is the first such increase since 2007.
And Nielsen BookScan, which collects data on 85 percent of book sales, reports 571 million paper books were sold in 2015, up from 559 million paper books in 2014.
Real actual books. And book STORES. Despite all our electronic diversions, despite all the prophecies of doom, books and bookstores still are with us and likely to stay for some time at least.
And what is better than reading a book? I’m holding a book now, though not when I am actually typing. I’m not that coordinated.
Go ahead, pick up a book. Feel it. Smell it. Leaf through it. Admire the cover art and photos, maps and illustrations. Feel its heft. It has weight and substance. It is made of paper, which once was a tree, a living thing. Books are alive, physically. And the stories and facts and fantasies and speculations in books are alive, too.
Books are how we communicate across the years and centuries. Books shouldn’t die, can’t die. Books are necessary to us.
Paper books have competition these days in ebooks. Although The Association of American Publishers reports that in the first three quarters of 2015, ebook sales were down 11.1 percent from 2014.
Ebooks aren’t going away. And who wants them to? Reading is a good thing no matter the format or place.
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And as for reading places, the American Library Association states that 208,904,000 Americans hold library cards, the most since the group started keeping track in 1990.
Surely, some of these millions are taking home and reading actual books.
I looked it up. The Internet lists 156 bookstores in Cook County.
Go to them.
Buy a book, buy several books.
Because what is better than reading?
And what makes reading more pleasurable than a real, actual, hold-in-your-hand book?
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.