It’s worth recalling that mass literacy is only about 300 years old, so the modern culture of private reading is only slightly older than the United States, which is probably itself a consequence of mass literacy - sparked by Luther, Gutenberg, etc. Ironically, today the USA is also probably leading the decline in mass literacy woth a “post-literate president.” Maybe book-reading will eventually become an anachronistic hobby, although even Thomas Jefferson made this dire prophecy too about fiction [1].

“Acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.” [2]

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...

2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03205520