Are we still a nation of readers? Test scores, surveys, and just our own assessment of how we spend our free time today tell us that something has changed over the past few decades. We aren’t spending as much time with the written word as we once did. Of course, I’m over exagerating the problem, but many scholars and teachers feel that American students don’t read as much as they should. It affects everything else they will do in school, experts say. Is there really a problem?

This article in the New York Times does a good job looking at the problem. Nadia, the typical American teenager introduced to us in the story, doesn’t read in her spare time. Instead she text-messages her friends, spends time online in chat rooms and on favorite Web sites. “Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association,” writes reporter Motoko Rich.

“As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.” It’s an interesting debate, and passions run high on both sides of the issue.

If you were to pick your favorite literary passage to be permanently embedded into your skin, which would you choose? Something inspiring? Or would you choose a passage more emblematic of your core beliefs? “Tattoos may be associated in the public mind with bikers and football hooligans,” writes Matthew Moore in London’s Telegraph, “but the growing popularity of more literary designs is finding an outlet on the Internet.”

Take the quiz and identify the source of the quotes for the body arts. More photos of literary tattoos can be found at http://www.contrariwise.org.

I turned 40 today. I’ve been thinking about my 40th birthday over the past few weeks. It’s one of those birthdays that makes one stop and take note-at least it did for me. What would I say to people should they ask me why I see it this way?

One big lesson came this week in reading about Tim Russert’s life well-lived. He was a highly visible journalist, who was great at his job and had such an impact on so many viewers. But Tim was much more. Peggy Noonan, author and former speech writer for President Reagan, reflected on the coverage of Tim’s death. She writes: “The beautiful thing about the coverage was that it offered extremely important information to those age 15 or 25 or 30 who may not have been told how to operate in the world beyond “Go succeed.” I’m not sure we tell the young as much as we ought, as clearly as we ought, what it is the world admires, and what it is they want to emulate.

“In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn’t. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That’s what it really admires. That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important. We don’t say, “The thing about Joe was he was rich.” We say, if we can, “The thing about Joe was he took care of people.”

Thinking about Tim and his life makes me appreciate those I have in my life--a loving family, wonderful co-workers, meaningful work. It shows in the way that friends at work went out of their way to make sure I had a nice birthday. Or the person who gave me a birthday gift with a card, sending a money order because I’m guessing that it came from collected tips. That kills me with love.

Perhaps turning 40 is simply an internal call to action. Living and enjoying a proper life isn’t easy, writes Noonan. It takes “guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field,” she writes. “And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have.”

Am I going to be the kind of person remembered as Tim Russert was-someone who was good to others, tried to practice his craft to the best of his abilities, and kept his priorities in order? I hope so; not in some vain way to seek adoration, but simply so others might know how much I care about them.

I celebrate my 40th birthday later this month. That same month, the world lost a great leader.

Robert McCrum writes about the nature of the publishing industry, and how it changed during his ten-year stint as literary editor of The Observer. “When he started it was a world of ‘cigarettes, coffee and strong drink’. But that has all changed - new writers, big money, the internet, lucrative prizes and literary festivals have all helped revolutionise the books world,” writes the Observer. Take a look, here.

Bookstores can be found in out-of-the-way places to be sure.

I think everybody loves a good list: a collection that has been chosen with great care to help you sift through the clutter. Readers are no different. The New York Times reviews a book called “1001 Books to Read Before You Die.” I haven’t looked, but it would be good to know if I have read any on the list. ("No matter how well read you are, you’re not that well read,” writes reporter William Grimes. “If you don’t believe it, pick up “1001” and start counting.")

The Times: “The book is British. Of course. The British love literary lists and the fights they provoke, so much so that they divide candidates for the Man Booker Prize into shortlist books and longlist books. In this instance Peter Boxall, who teaches English at Sussex University, asked 105 critics, editors and academics — mostly obscure — to submit lists of great novels, from which he assembled his supposedly mandatory reading list of one thousand and one. Quintessence, the British publishers, later decided that “books” worked better than “novels” in the title.”

I’m sure the books cited will spark a debate (the fact that more than half of the books were written after World War II already has the Times’ reviewer ruffled).

I’ve just started a book that I have to recommend to other book-lovers. It’s A Library at Night, written by Alberto Manguel. Here’s the synopsis from the publisher: “Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.

“Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written—Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.”

If you want a taste, you can read Manguel’s essay in this recent issue of the New York Times.

Chris Anderson, author of the wonderful book, The Long Tail, speaks with British journalism conference attendees about how technology and market forces are fundamentally reshaping journalism as we know it. In the future, will we have the same funding for reporting that a democracy demands? How many jobs will the industry shed? Read (and listen) to what he has to say here.

Rachel Donadio has an interesting essay in the current New York Times Book Review that explores a unique American biblio phenomenon: while people continue to read fewer books every year, the number of books being published continues to climb at rather an alarming rate.

“A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn’t read a book in the previous year ... In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are thriving, while writers’ conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to network and “workshop” their work.”

With the barriers to entry with regard to publishing beginning to fall, perhaps largely due to print on demand, will traditional publishers and booksellers need to rethink how they can get the right book into the right hands? Probably not. Maybe it simply reveals what was always there: many have the desire to share their thoughts on the page whether it’s for fame and fortune, or simply to share a few memories with family and friends.