QUICK TAKES - Jan. 13, 2009

There’s good news about reading, the National Endowment for the Arts said in a report released Monday.

For the first time since the NEA began surveying American reading habits in 1982 -- and less than five years after it issued its famously gloomy “Reading at Risk” report -- the percentage of American adults who report reading “novels, short stories, poems or plays” has risen instead of declining: from 46.7% in 2002 to 50.2% in 2008.

“Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy” is the triumphant headline on the new report. In a preface, outgoing NEA Chairman Dana Gioia called it a “turning point in recent American cultural history.”

Yet the survey contains bad news as well.

The percentage of American adults who report reading any book not required for work or school during the previous year is still declining. It fell from 56.6% in 2002 to 54.3% in 2008.