The Decline of the Novel

It's worse than you think

Do you want to read a bestseller? That sounds like fun, no?

Here are the hottest titles right now (according to Amazon):

Do those look tempting?

I was a bit surprised by this. I’d heard that people had stopped having children—but the bestselling books are all for toddlers.

Something doesn’t add up here. Where are all the books for grown-ups?

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Here’s the complete top ten from Amazon’s ranking of bestselling books:

1. Be Brave Little One by Marianne Richmond (picture book, 40 pages)

2. How to Catch a Dinosaur by Adam Wallace (picture book, 40 pages)

3. Spooky Pookie by Sandra Boynton (picture book, 18 pages)

4. How to Catch an Elf by Adam Wallace (picture book, 32 pages)

5. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (adult non-fiction, 256 pages)

6. Eight Little Planets by Chris Ferrie (picture book, 18 pages)

7. I Love You Like No Otter by Rose Rossner (picture book, 24 pages)

8. Melania by Melania Trump (adult non-fiction, 256 pages)

9. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon (young adult fiction, 256 pages)

10. Spooky Cutie by Coko Wyo (coloring book, 88 pages)

No adult fiction shows up on the list. There’s nothing resembling a grown-up novel until we get to number twenty in Amazon’s ranking, Onyx Storm—a fantasy romance by Rebecca Yarros.

As I continue to scroll down the list, I see more of the same. Tiny books for tiny tots take up most of the top 50. I finally find something resembling serious adult fiction at number 42, where Sally Rooney’s new novel Intermezzo resides.

Just stop and mull this over—not a single serious novel made it into the top 40. Zero! Bupkes! This is the literary culture we’ve created for ourselves—and it’s tinier than the toddlers who now set the tone for the book business.

Student on phone in a library (D-Kleine/Getty Images)

Of course, book reading of all sorts is in decline—fewer than half of US adults read a book in the last year, according to the NEA. But fiction readership has been hurt most of all, falling 17% over the course of a decade.

The result is that 62% of those surveyed read no fiction whatsoever—neither novels nor short stories.

“I’ve become self-conscious about reading in public—something I’ve done all my life, but never before with such unease.”

I’ve personally encountered a growing hostility to book-readers in recent years. If you mention a contemporary novel in conversation, you will hear dismissive comments in response—such as:

You read novels? Who has time for that?

That seems innocent enough, but the facial expressions that accompany these remarks are unsettling. I can’t help remembering Pol Pot who, when he took over in Cambodia, killed everybody who read books.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting the pervasive vibe of brat culture. But the result is that, over time, I’ve become self-conscious about reading in public—something I’ve done all my life, but never before with such unease.

From the stares and passing comments, I can tell that this is considered odd behavior, and inspires distrust in some circles.

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The same day I did this survey of bestsellers, The Atlantic published a scorching indictment entitled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.”

The author talked to 33 professors about the reading skills of college students today—and their verdict is gloomy.

• A Berkeley professor admits that she has cut required reading in half—and no longer expects students to read entire books, just extracts.

• A Georgetown professor complains that students lose focus now when reading a sonnet—a 14-line poem!

• A University of Virginia professor says that students are now “shutting down” when faced with new ideas.

• A Columbia professors sums up the crisis: “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how.”