] Oprah's Book Club may help sell millions of books to
] Americans, and slam poetry may have engendered a youthful
] new breed of wordsmith, but the nation is still caught in
] a tide of indifference when it comes to literature. That
] is the sobering profile of a new survey to be released
] today by the National Endowment for the Arts, which
] describes a precipitous downward trend in book
] consumption by Americans and a particular decline in the
] reading of fiction, poetry and drama.

!!

Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds