...that is the question. "Of national consequence," saith a recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This 99-page report is full of tables and graphs and the picture they portray of the reading patterns of Americans is not very pretty. There is a national decline in reading in the US...

Wasn't it just a week ago that Newsweek heralded a Future of Reading with the launch of Amazon's Kindle? In fact, the NEA report was made public the same day that Kindle was launched.

And what's this BBC news article about UK children reading too early?. Are we getting dumber or are we getting smarter?

That is not the question. The NEA report puts reading at the center of a free and prosperous society, the decline of which then becomes not only a cultural issue but a political and economic issue as well. It is a call to action.

The BBC article pulls accelerated reading into the debate about the negative effects of too-early formal training. It is a word of caution.

The Newsweek article pushes reading into the frontiers of reading technologies. It is an ode to human-machine literacy.

What should we read? How much should we read? How often should we read? Why? Is to read or not to read to be or not to be?