COVER STORY

Throwing the Books at You

City Paper's Summer 2010 Book Quarterly

by Carolyn Huckabay

Published: Jun 16, 2010

You like to read. Not just newspapers and blogs and tweets and status updates, but books.

A 2009 National Endowment for the Arts study put it in no uncertain terms: For the first time in a quarter-century, adults - particularly those ages 18 to 24 - are reading more literature than they used to. It's a huge leap from the NEA's last survey eight years ago, which found that 16.6 million fewer Americans took to cracking open those great American novels and breezy beach books. That's a big deal.

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For a paper like ours, one still writing about books on a regular basis, this is encouraging news. We'd like to see that trend grow. That's why we're giving away a copy of every single book reviewed - hell, even briefly mentioned - in this summer edition of City Paper 's Book Quarterly. And options abound: We've got Bret Easton Ellis' long-anticipated Imperial Bedrooms; Samantha Bee's hysterical I Know I Am, But What Are You? ; and Anthony Bourdain's scathing Medium Raw. We've got a dozen novels waiting for your down-the-shore tote. We've got a book about video games; a book about Barack Obama; a book about how the Internet is rotting our brains. They're all up for grabs.

Getting in the game is easy: Visit Critical Mass every day through June 23 for Book Quarterly Trivia Week; answer ridiculous questions about the books mentioned in these pages; and if you win, we'll send you a copy. Free. All you have to do is read.

(carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net)

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