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Four hundred and fifty-one degrees. Paper spontaneously combusts at that temperature, as famously described in Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel, "Fahrenheit 451."

The novel is set in an America that has banned reading books. "Firemen" torch forbidden volumes. Readers get locked away.

It's fiction, of course. But quietly, the country is drifting closer to the future Bradbury painted, not because of censorship, but because of the combined weight of the choices we make every day: We are reading less.

One survey found Americans are more likely to watch three hours of TV every day than to have read a single novel in the previous year.

The survey also found that the percentage of Americans who spent any leisure time reading fiction in the previous year dropped from 57 percent in 1982 to 47 percent two decades later .

That's the equivalent of 20 million people.

The decline in reading cuts across all segments of society, according to surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts. College graduates read less. High school dropouts read less. Older, younger, male, female. Everyone is reading less.

The trend has profound implications for our future work force, for the ability of people to make informed choices about the future of the country. Those who read less are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to vote and participate in civic affairs, the NEA finds.

Beyond that, reading sets the imagination afire and creates unforgettable characters that illuminate the world in which they live.

Think Huck Finn on his raft floating down the Mississippi, Harry Potter soaring through the sky playing Quidditch , Bridget Jones snarking her way through dodgy romances.

Increasingly, we live in an electronic world at a pace that allows little time for the arc of a plot to unfold, time to sink deeply into a chair and let reality dissolve away until, like Max in "Where the Wild Things Are," we find ourselves in another world entirely.

Perhaps most disturbing, the sharpest drop is found among younger readers. That trend led an NEA report to ask: "Are we losing a generation of readers?"

What are we missing?

When Scott Romine was in high school, he read two books that changed his life.

One was William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury"; the other, "The Once and Future King," a retelling of the legends of King Arthur.

Suddenly, his world grew.

"Reading those two books … gave me a sense that there was something out there in books that was fascinating and compelling," he said.

Romine grew up to become a professor of English at UNCG. Reading gives him a livelihood.

But the effects go deeper.

Romine talks of decisions he has made, relationships he has been in where something he read in a novel made a difference in the path he chose.

"It's changed who I am in a fundamental way," he said.

The decline in reading has more measurable effects, as well.

According to the NEA surveys, only slightly more than a third of high school students read proficiently, and adult literacy scores are dropping .

A majority of employers say reading skills are lacking. Those who do read well are likely to earn more than those who don't.

But for many readers, the benefits aren't as quantifiable.

For them, losing themselves in a book offers a way to travel to places and times that are otherwise unreachable.

"It's great to get into this whole other world … a different time and place, and put yourself in someone else's shoes," said Jessica Emerson , who belongs to a book club that meets monthly.

Sometimes, it's hard to find the time to read, but if you want to, you can, she said.

Maybe you don't spend those 30 minutes on the Internet. Maybe you skip the shower and take a book in the bath. Maybe you read on the bus.

The investment is worth it, Emerson said.

For her, reading is calming.

"Sometimes it's fun to just have an escape, just get lost in this other world and not worry about the sink full of dishes or those problems at work."

Why are we reading less?

Chances are, even as you're reading this, you're well within range of a host of electronic gadgets. Maybe you're even reading it on an electronic gadget.

More than ever, we live in a world in which information is measured in bandwidth and etched across a screen.

According to the NEA, Americans older than 14 spend more than half of their weekday free time in front of the TV. Only about 7 percent of their free time is spent with a book.

Children spend more time watching TV than they do reading, participating in sports or outdoor activities, playing, working on hobbies and art — combined .

And it's not just about TV. Children spend more than twice as much time on the computer as they do with books.

Other gadgets eat up even more of their time.

Romine suggests that the shift to electronic media affects the way we process information.

We are living in a multitasking world.

Cell phone. E-mail. PDA. YouTube. Texting. Googling.

Handling the flow of that information is a skill vastly different from following the plot of a classic novel.

"Our minds are trained to switch on and off to various tasks and to do so without missing a beat," Romine said. "The brain's like a muscle: What you train it to do, it becomes good at, and what you don't train it to do, it becomes bad at."

Many students don't like to read long descriptive passages, instead skipping over them. Professors assign fewer long novels.

"It's kind of the impatience, I think, the contemporary mind has," Romine said. "We have more information coming at us."

Gwen Hunnicutt , a UNCG sociology professor who started a book club, says that television plays a role. TV encourages passive consumption, often carved into small, fast foodlike bits.

But it's not just that our minds are staying busy, she said. We stay busy, period .

"Americans are busier than they've ever been. And they work harder than they've ever worked," she said. "We just don't have the leisure time."

Some students simply don't like to read.

"I do see some students for whom reading is a very alien activity," UNCG's Romine said.

Guilford College student Deanna Banner loves reading but said her passion isn't necessarily shared by others her age. "My brother and sister don't pick up a book unless they have to," she said.

Some see a culture shifting under their feet, the irresistible pull of electronics all but impossible to resist.

Guilford College student Justin Shreve recalls reading at night when he was growing up, keeping a lamp on until he was finally told to go to sleep.

That's unusual, he said.

"You can look at the next generation. Nobody's going to be reading."

Where are we going?

The scene: A coffee shop on South Elm Street.

Six people sit around a little table in a room off to the side, alternative music from the '80s playing on the stereo, an abstract blue painting on the wall. They're discussing "The Sea," a novel by Irish writer John Banville . It's a meditation on loss told through the lens of a widowed man looking back on his life. The conversation flows as they tease out themes and devices. It's like a graduate seminar transplanted to a coffee shop.

The scene is repeated every day across the country. Even as reading declines, a culture of reading thrives.

Ironically, much of book clubs' popularity is owed to the Internet, which enables book lovers to find others who share their passion.

It's unclear whether the transition to electronic media is inherently bad, said Sandy Neerman , director of the Greensboro Public Library.

"I just wonder if we are somewhat linear in our thinking about this," she said.

Even as reading drops among teens, other activities are on the rise.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that teenagers are increasingly creating their own content on the Internet. Although some of that content consists of goofy videos, it also includes thoughtfully written blogs.

The library is changing along with its patrons. When it closed, the old main library on Greene Street had eight computers. The new library on Church Street? More than 100.

That said, the trends needs to be addressed, Neerman said.

"It should be a wake-up call to all of us and a call to action," she said. "We need a ren­aissance of reading."

In the end, the decline of reading may increase the gap between the wealthy and the less affluent in our society, said Fred Chappell , a Greensboro resident who has written more than two dozen books. He's a former poet laureate of North Carolina and a retired professor of English at UNCG.

"If you read for pleasure, you'll have a prosperous life," he said. "It's going to just be more and more stratified."

Chappell believes reading will never truly go away.

"Reading will always be with us until the whole structure collapses, and probably after that, too," he said.

'Lyrical ... and beautiful'

Back at the book club, the readers are chewing over the month's selection. The consensus: The novel was difficult and more than a bit grim.

Melanie Crenshaw , a law student at Elon University, said she made the mistake of reading a big part of the book before going to bed one night.

"I'm lying there awake thinking, 'Why can't I fall asleep?' And then I remembered, 'Oh, yeah, I read about death for the last hour and a half.'"

But Hunnicutt, who founded the group three years ago, finds something to praise in the book's bursts of dazzling prose.

"Lyrical and intense and poetic and beautiful," she said.

Finally, the group breaks up, no consensus reached, small talk replacing the earnest discussion. They walk out into the lights and the chill of a winter night on Elm Street.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com