Hi. My name is Brent and I'm a readaholic.

I've got a friend who writes books. He once said that he thought about writing smaller editions as part of a larger series because "people don't read much anymore."

The Wall Street Journal said the average person reads 3.5 books per year. That's average. So, some people are reading 6 while others aren't reading at all. And what about the voracious readers who read way more than that? If that's the case there's a bunch of non-readers out there...at least as far as books go, anyway.

But newspaper readership is down as well. Maybe that's because the on-line versions are free, though.

And maybe on-line reading is similar, too. Maybe folks are reading blogs and news and sports and such...using the Web like a personal daily magazine of sorts.

This morning's Dallas Morning News had a couple of editorials on reading (none on-line or I'd link them for you), and one by Lauren F. Winner (who, by the way, is a follower of Christ and has written some incredibly influential books recently) who said that reading drops off dramatically at age 8. She says that's because parents push so hard to get their children to read and then once they learn they don't make much of a deal about it. As far as her reasons why: Maybe she's right. Maybe she isn't. But she's got statistics to prove the drop-off. Now she's just trying to figure out the reasons.

I admit it: I'm one of those who skews the stats a bit. Much of my day is spent reading...starting with the Bible, the newspaper, making the blog rounds, a couple of professional journals. At work I read commentaries to prepare for lessons and such. I read at night before bed. I write, too. I read what others write. I like words and ideas. I like everything from Suess to Vonnegut to Tolstoy to The Weekly World News (who, by the way, in last week's edition ran the headline, "The Anti-Christ is Here, and Jesus is Coming To Stop Him! Exact date revealed!") and everything in-between. I traffic hourly in ideas.

What I'm after is trying to find out if this is true. I mean, sure, Oprah will fire off a book-club deal and folks read. Harry Potter comes out and gazillions read. Is it that there just isn't much quality stuff out there these days? Is society reading in other immeasurable forms, like Audio CD's or on-line newspapers? Are they using their library cards more (or loaning books to each other more), causing Barnes & Noble sales to drop? Are folks too busy to read? Is it computers or TV?

Have at it, readers. I've got to go read some blogs...