Reading for Pleasure

When I was little, I loved reading. The first "real book" I read was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's to the Brits) Stone. After devouring the whole series over the course of two months, I was hooked.

I'm not exactly sure why I loved them so much. At first I wanted to read them because my older sister Hanna was reading them and I thought she was the coolest thing since Olympic Swimming Barbie. But then I finished the series (up to Order of the Phoenix, of course, because Half Blood Prince hadn't been released yet). I ended up with another fantasy book, and then another. Next thing I knew, I was on to young adult fiction. 

Then high-school started. Suddenly I had to read books I had to, not because I wanted to. I stopped reading for pleasure because the act of reading itself was sometimes tedious (None of my American Studies books, of course. Junot Díaz 4 lyfe!). 

I'm not the only one who stopped. According to this article from The Atlantic, about 50% of Americans ages 18-24 haven't read a single book for pleasure in the past year. The total number of Americans who don't read has tripled since 1978.

So why this drastic decrease in reading for pleasure? Maybe for the same reason that I stopped. When you're required to read for school, reading ceases to be an enjoyable hobby and turns into a job. Sure, some of the books you read in school are fantastic, but having to slow down to annotate stops you from becoming fully immersed in the text.

One of the biggest reasons for the decrease in reading is that everything is so goddamn distracting now. You're just sitting there, reading some Vonnegut, when your phone starts vibrating in your pocket, and oh, someone liked my Facebook status! The poor Vonnegut book is forgotten, dog eared in the same spot for all eternity. So it goes.

Why do you think that fewer high-school students read for fun? How many books have you read for pleasure this year?