Despite the troubled economy, despite my wallet being a bit leaner and looser than I would like, I managed to make a pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble this weekend and pick up a couple of books. It appears that I am not alone in this.

With the recent spate of tragic news regarding the publishing industry at large, the New York Times is running a story this morning that should be a welcomed ray of light. For the first time since the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) started keeping track in 1982, the number of adults reading for pleasure has increased.

The jump was rather significant – 3.5% – and one that means that the majority of Americans over 18 now read at least one novel, short story, poem, or plays in either print or online, a year. While phrasing the statistic like this makes it seem like the NEA is casting a particularly broad net, it is significant for one very important reason.

Reading is addictive. Not addictive in the sense that you’re going to cart your television down to the pawn shop so you can score some Russian Lit, rather addictive in that once you start doing it, it can quickly become a part of your life.

With the economy in it’s current sad state, and people shifting into Depression-Era mentality, does this bode well for books? With a paperback novel ranging around $8, and lasting the better part of 10 or 12 hours to read – there’s certainly a far better bang for your buck the the other entertainment mediums which are competing for the few dollars allocated to them in the average budget.

As far as my weekend purchases? I am ramping up from the release of Watchmen and picked up the graphic novel – which I devoured in the weekend. I also snagged a fantasy novel by an author I’d never heard of before – Raymond E. Feist. After doing a little research on him, his writing history has a lot of similarity to my own.

More on that to come.

And by the by, my Sunday morning copy of the Washington Post never showed. Or it was lifted. Either way, I’m still iritated about that.