Nora Scheid

Students don’t want to read for fun.

I counted down the days until the New Orleans Book Festival. Months ahead, its banner fluttered across the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, promising a celebration of literature, stories and voices. When it finally arrived, I went to four events, excited to hear authors speak and engage with this rare glimpse of intellectual intimacy on campus. But in every room, I noticed the same thing: grey hair. A sea of middle-aged and elderly attendees. And if there were students in the room, I would bet three out of five were there because of a required writing assignment. So, the question is not why Book Fest did not work. It did, just not for us.

The reasons why students did not attend the events all seemed like surface-level excuses hiding a deeper truth. Book Fest did not fail to engage students because of bad marketing or inconvenient timing. It failed because students did not want to go. Because the idea of reading — not just in general, but for pleasure — feels distant, optional and unnecessary.

And that disconnect is telling — not just about students, but about how we are engaging with reading at large. A huge part of the issue is genre. Many of the featured authors discussed memoirs, history and self-help — genres did not necessarily spark excitement for college students barely keeping up with coursework and already drowning in 20-minute podcasts about “how to fix your morning routine” or “build better boundaries.” When real life already feels like a to-do list with no off switch, who wants to voluntarily read 300 more pages that do the same thing, but slower?

Younger readers crave escapism. That is why romance and dystopian novels flew off the shelves during isolating times like quarantine. We were not reaching for books to grow as people; we were reaching for them to escape. But when literature on campus only highlights “important” books — realistic, issue-driven, sobering ones — we are reminded that curiosity is only acceptable if it is educational. And fun is only valid if it teaches you something.

But even if the genre was different, even if Tulane University brought in fantasy authors or rom-com novelists, I am not sure the turnout would change dramatically. Because it is not just about content — it is about connection. There is a gaping void between the ink and the author. Most of us have favorite books but cannot recall the author’s name. We have read quotes that changed our lives but never clicked “search” to learn where they came from. We like the product but forget the creator. And that means that events like Book Fest can feel optional and unnecessary.

This is where things get uncomfortable. The real issue is not just about leisure reading; it is about our unwillingness to engage with ideas that take time. Reading, especially reading for pleasure, is not optimized. It does not deliver value in under 30 seconds. It does not summarize itself or consider your low attention span.

Leisure reading in the U.S. is at an all-time low. Only 48.5% of Americans read at least one book per year for pleasure. This is a symptom of a larger issue — one where curiosity is eclipsed by convenience and where attention is traded for automation. Even the act of reading becomes a performance for productivity because we have been tricked into thinking that everything we consume must serve a purpose, a goal or a self-improvement approach.

We do not read because we are lazy. We do not read because we are addicted to being “efficient.” Because why fumble through a chapter when an AI tool can summarize it in one clean paragraph for your daily class discussion post?

Reading for fun is no longer just “fun.” It is a slow, inconvenient rebellion in a world obsessed with speed, clarity and deliverables. You do not need to annotate, but you need to start again by reading a page, a quote or something that makes you remember why you used to care.

No matter how optimized the world gets, books still move at their own pace. And sometimes, we need to remember how to move with them.