Are People Reading More?人们读更多书了吗？

Some might say reading a good book is like running away to another world.Through the pages， you can learn new things， meet new people and travel to newplaces—all while sitting in the same place and having a relaxing time.

On April 23 every year， World Book and Copyright Day celebrates theimportance1 of literature2. It was first started by UNESCO in 1995 to promote3reading books.

Celebrating activities like this might be more important these days. Severalstudies over the past ten years have showed that people are reading less than theyonce did.

For example， a 2022 survey found that nearly 50% of US adults4 hadn’tread a book in over a year. But other studies have found that the COVID-19pandemic5 helped many people find their love of reading again.

In a 2021 survey by a website， nearly 60% of over 5，000 people said theywere reading more since the pandemic began.

And in December 2022， a smaller survey of 945 people in56 countries found that two-thirds of readers said they plannedto read more books in 2023 than in 2022.

However， world’s book sales， including digital6 books， have gonedown by an average7 of about 1% each year since 2017. And whilesales did grow almost 8% in 2021， they went down by 10% in 2022.It’s said that they will grow about 2.5% in 2023， to $78 billion.

有人可能会说，读一本好书就像逃到另一个世界。（剩余609字）