A powerful article published in the New York Times shows that reading, the arcane act which Proust says allows us to communicate in solitude may be in decline and, as a result, our very civilisation may change irrevocably and not necessarily for the better.

Our ability to judge what’s right and wrong based upon conceptual ideas rather than experiential evidence may even remove much of what we now accept to be our morality.

The article makes a strong case for the power of a book and the ability of readers to be reached by an author. It makes a frightening case for the ability to exercise our minds, run ‘what-if’ scenarios, visualise ourselves and our values in the world and remain open to possibilities that stretch credulity and imagination without running into the realm of blind superstition.

In the article Caleb Crain makes a powerful case for going out and buying all the books you can (and I hope mine will be amongst them) and giving one as a present to each of your friends this Christmas. But more than that, Crain makes a powerful case for what we, as readers, have known all along: That picking up a book constitutes far more of an intellectual, intelligent activity than even the lightest of readers (or those who prefer to read light books) would have you believe. Picking up a book is a conscious decision to withdraw from the world and yet participate, conceptually, in the fullest sense possible.

Reading is an act which when seen in this light is truly dangerous. Should be discouraged (and has been) by many totalitarian and fascist regimes and which carries with it just the right degree of non-conformity and sedition, questioning and doubt required to make things happen in our world. To take progress forward. To crack open the atom and look at the stars and imagine ourselves there.

As a writer these are all things which I know to be true. As readers these are things which most of us have felt to be true. To have them suddenly delineated in research-based facts and figures like this is frightening. Before this we had our intuition. We felt that reading enriched the mind and changed the way we view the world. To suddenly have it quantified in this way and backed by research carries with it the possibility that our fears that the gift of reading might one day be taken away can become reality. We can find ourselves in a world which ostracises the written word, fears reading and hunts down readers.

This is Fahrenheit 451 territory and Crain’s piece in The Times suddenly makes Bradbury’s whimsical speculative fiction work look like the work of an oracle.

Right now we appear to be on a cusp. Internet culture is still text-based and television and video are on the ascendancy but still complement rather than supplant books. Which way we go right now however is entirely up to us!