Hello, and welcome to the very first post on raecantwrite! I'm Rae — and yes, the blog name is a little joke, because I'd much rather read than write. This blog is brought to you in collaboration with Bronston Canadian Academy, and I'm hoping to post weekly, so settle in. Before I start reviewing books here (and on Goodreads, Instagram, and TikTok — come say hi!), I wanted to open with the question that made me start this blog in the first place. It's the question I get every single time someone spots me reading a paperback in public, asked with a mixture of curiosity and pity: "Do people still do that?"
So let's just ask it out loud. Is reading a dying art? Are books quietly going the way of the fax machine while we all doomscroll ourselves into oblivion? Or is something more interesting happening?
The case for the funeral
Let's be honest with ourselves first, because a good book blog should never be a place for cozy denial. The worried headlines aren't entirely wrong. Surveys across several countries have tracked a long, slow slide in the number of people who read for pleasure, and the drop is steepest among teenagers, many of whom now read for fun rarely or never. Attention spans are shorter, and the average phone offers roughly ten thousand things that are easier than chapter one of a Victorian novel.
And it's not just kids. Adults report that they want to read more — the "I wish I read like I used to" confession is practically a genre of its own — but the book on the nightstand keeps losing to the glowing rectangle next to it. Reading requires something our world has made scarce: long, unbroken, single-focus time. In that sense, the pessimists have a point. The conditions for reading are under siege.
☞guilty!! my phone screen time report haunts meReading isn't competing with other books anymore. It's competing with everything.
Be honest: how's your reading compared to five years ago?
And yet... have you seen the internet lately?
Here's where the funeral gets awkward: the guest of honor keeps showing up alive. If reading were truly dying, you would not expect a corner of TikTok devoted to crying over fictional characters to rack up billions of views. You would not expect romantasy novels to sell like concert tickets, with midnight release parties and special editions with sprayed edges selling out in hours. You would not expect Goodreads reading challenges, buddy reads, book clubs on Discord, or entire friendships built on the question "okay but what did you think of the ending?"
Print book sales have remained remarkably sturdy in the age of streaming. Independent bookstores, once declared doomed, have been opening in growing numbers. Libraries report huge demand for digital lending. Audiobooks are booming — and yes, I will die on this hill: audiobooks are reading. Storytelling entered our species through the ear long before the page.
The great format debate: how do you do most of your reading?
Maybe "dying" is the wrong word
Here's the thesis I've landed on, and the reason this blog exists: reading isn't dying — it's molting. It is shedding one shape and growing another, the way it always has. Reading survived the shift from scroll to codex, from monastery to printing press, from hardcover to paperback to pixel. Every single one of those transitions came with someone insisting that real reading was over.
What's actually changed is reading's place in the culture. It's no longer the default entertainment — it's a chosen one. And things we choose deliberately, we tend to love more fiercely. That might explain why today's reading culture is so loud, so communal, so covered in annotation tabs and character art. Fewer people may read out of habit, but the people who read, read out of devotion.
An art doesn't die because fewer people practice it. It dies when nobody loves it anymore — and I have never seen books more loved than right now.
Is there work to do? Absolutely. The decline in young readers is real, and it matters — deep reading builds empathy, focus, and the delicious ability to live a thousand lives in one. Reading needs champions: parents who read aloud, teachers who hand kids the right book instead of the "important" one, and, yes, bloggers on the internet gushing about their latest five-star obsession until someone caves and buys it.
Consider this blog my application for the job.
So… is reading a dying art?
No — but it is a changing one. Reading has become quieter in some rooms and much, much louder in others. It has moved from obligation to identity, from solitary habit to shared fandom, from one format to many. The page is not on its deathbed; it's on its group chat.
And as long as one person finishes a book, clutches it to their chest, and immediately needs to tell someone about it — the art is alive. That is, more or less, the entire business model of this blog.
Your turn to rule: is reading a dying art?
Now it's your turn, bookish friends: Do you read more or less than you did five years ago? What pulled you back to books — or what pulled you away? And most importantly: what's the last book you couldn't shut up about?
Drop your answers in the comments, or find me on Goodreads, Instagram, and TikTok — I reply to everything, because talking about books is the whole point. ♡