Bethlehem appears as something of a surprise among the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, part of the Appalachian range. The old steel town straddling the Lehigh River seems larger than its population of 76,000, part of the Allentown metro area, 50 miles north of Philadelphia. But Main Street is a tree-lined time capsule, flanked by brick buildings with arched windows and ornamental borders, and streetlamps that look like they could hold a candle. The only building past four stories high is the 100-year-old Hotel Bethlehem, where bellhops bustle past analog elevator dials while someone plays a grand piano. Across the street, through a series of two-story windows, the destination of my pilgrimage stands in unassuming contrast: America’s oldest bookstore.
“Moravian Book Shop, Est. 1745,” the sign reads. Like the city, it was founded by members of the Moravian Church, a small Christian denomination based in what is now the Czech Republic, as an outpost for its missionary efforts in North America. Today, nearby storefronts feature a bustling array of Spanish, Dominican and Mexican restaurants, specialty stores with intricate Christmas-themed window displays and scattered plaques memorializing pilgrims and proselytizers. The shop occupies two connected brick buildings painted in blue, gray and white. The newer building serves as campus bookstore for Moravian University — also one of the country’s oldest — but that’s not what I’m here for.
I came to find out what’s wrong with me. I’m not the sort to seek out bookstores when I travel, but this is the kind of place my mom would visit. She is a book person. When I was a kid, she’d visit the library every weekend to drop off a stack of seven or eight titles and pick up a new stack she’d reserved in advance. You can still find her cradling her Kindle with her eyes buried in a mystery novel. See, there are book people, and there’s everyone else — and I, to her lasting disappointment, am not a book person. But books seemed important to the people who settled this town when there was nothing around it, so maybe it can help me to figure out why I have failed in this regard. And why so many folks my age seem to be failing, too.
See, there are book people, and there’s everyone else — and I, to my mother’s lasting disappointment, am not a book person.
I’d like to be a book person. And Mama tried. When I was little, she and my father would read to me at night, stories like “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown, “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak, or a kid-friendly Bible story like David and Goliath. I grew up thinking book people were the norm, for all they hassled me. But like so many things we teach our kids, that turned out to be more aspiration than reality.
When I muddled my way through “Death of a Salesman,” “Brave New World” and “Othello” in high school — half-heartedly, I’ll admit — I didn’t know I was already reading more seriously than many American adults. I still do, though I’m more likely to read a magazine article than a whole book. So why can’t I bring myself to sit down and read a book?
I read constantly, if you count social media, sports columns and magazine stories, but that doesn’t make me a reader. As a writer, I’m plagued by guilt for not reading enough books. I’m happy when I’ve read one — but only after the fact. Reading itself has always been a chore, not something fun. Not with a working television right there. I had a hard time reading even half of what was assigned in English class. Other things seemed more important, like finishing my homework early so I could watch cartoons. My reading habits have evolved, but that basic impulse remains, and even when I enjoy a book, reading still feels like soldiering through. I don’t understand why, but I’m not alone.
Like me, most Americans ingest a steady stream of “content,” the kind of short-form texts delivered on phones and tablets that have overwhelmed our minds, slashed our attention spans and reshaped our lifestyles. But a recent YouGov poll found that nearly half of us have not read a single book in the past year. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences found significant declines in minutes spent reading between 2003 and 2018. That fall was especially pronounced among older Americans, although those over 55 were still more likely to read. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual Time Use Survey, Americans spend 16 minutes reading for pleasure each day — down from 23 minutes in 2004. Across the Atlantic, a survey by a London-based charity found that only 35 percent of British children between 8 and 18 enjoy reading as leisure — down from roughly 2 in 3 as recently as 2016.
Even more alarming is the crisis of literacy itself. More than 90 percent of Americans have been able to read and write since the 1950s, but that number has now dropped to 79 percent of adults, as reported by the National Literacy Institute. More than half read below a sixth grade level, which makes it hard to parse the label on a bottle of ibuprofen. Illiteracy correlates with poverty, unemployment and prison stays, and costs the U.S. economy about $2.2 trillion per year. On a more human scale, the report points out, 130 million adults can’t read their kids a bedtime story.
I can’t fathom how this is happening under our collective radar, but I can’t say I’m entirely disconnected from it, either.
As it turns out, lots of people had strong opinions about the end of an era for the nation’s oldest bookstore while they looked on from home via the screens of their smartphones.
Inside the shop’s main entrance, white light glares across racks and stacks of Moravian University merch. Blue-and-gray sweaters, polos, hoodies, tank tops and T-shirts — go Greyhounds! Behind them, I find some dusty shelves waiting for the next semester’s textbooks. It’s disappointing. I didn’t expect a living history museum or a venerable old establishment like Shakespeare and Company in Paris. But it feels like any campus bookstore that is now managed by Barnes & Noble — which happens to be the case.
Bookstores are changing everywhere. All that remains of “Book Row” in Manhattan, once home to over three dozen bookstores, is The Strand — although there’s a Barnes & Noble across Union Square. Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore was a downtown landmark in Salt Lake City for most of the 20th century before moving into a mall and rebranding itself as something modern. Nearby, Ken Sanders Rare Books has moved from its iconic warehouse into the gift shop at a local museum. Many still travel to Powell’s in Portland, a storied bookseller that has become a local chain, with three branches and an airport location.
The original settlement of Bethlehem was like a commune, base camp for a Protestant movement that predated Martin Luther. Here, they built a water works, a tannery and the Moravian Book Shop. It sold religious texts and secular books, and doubled as a general store, offering stationery, cloth and other supplies needed on the frontier. By 1924, it started selling Moravian stars; the many-pointed glass Christmas ornaments are now a symbol of a town that calls itself “Christmas City USA.” Eventually, it evolved into a corporation that subsidized Moravian ministerial pensions.
Business was steady until the Great Recession in 2008, but the store “never operated at a profit of any consequence,” says Rick Santee, former president of the board of directors. Around that time, big-box retailers like Barnes & Noble moved into the local economy, even as Amazon presented a growing threat online. The store itself was in need of renovations, but Moravian was struggling just to keep up with the competition. “We tried. People would come in, take pictures of the merchandise and then try to find it online. It was very difficult.” When the university offered to buy the store in 2017, the board decided to “keep it in the family.”
It’s hard to fight economics. I duck into a small hallway, hoping it will lead me somewhere more illuminating. The passage to the next building is stacked with an impressive assortment of ornaments, including a towering display of those stained-glass Moravian stars. They’re beautiful and unique. But I still haven’t seen any books.
Down three wooden steps, I find myself in a room for children. Racks are stocked with colorful baby onesies, board games and stuffed animals. And yes, books. I scan the shelves, comforted to find “Goodnight Moon” and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle, another childhood memory. I worry about my own infant son growing up in a world where books like these feel like rare treasures hidden in a corporate archive, while digital devices clamor for his attention. I know reading is important. It’s just not so easy to focus anymore.
Unless something reaches out and grabs you.
When the store’s sale was announced in 2018, blowback was immediate and intense. Most notably, former employee Leo Atkinson launched a Change.org petition that garnered more than 90,000 signatures opposing the transaction. Now 35, the former English major has switched careers, pursuing computer science instead. But he’s still a book person, and like Santee, he loved the old Moravian Book Shop, where his mother also worked. “It was my favorite job I’ve ever had,” he says. “I love books, love bookstores, love reading.” What he didn’t love was the abruptness of the sale. Many, it turned out, felt the same way. The petition was “overwhelming,” he says. “There was a narrative there that people connected to.”
In the next room, I find what I’ve been looking for. A broad space lined with stacks under purple signs advertising sections: Fiction, Religion, Cookbooks. This part of the store feels older, like something out of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, where one could just as easily buy a magic wand or flying broomstick. Under Classics, I find a copy of the same printing of “The Catcher in the Rye” that I pretended to read in high school, J.D. Salinger’s coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy so artistically sensitive, socially ostracized and self-absorbed that everything he sees seems “phony.” So I’m told. It’s next to George Orwell’s “1984” — a work of dystopian fiction about a government that manipulates language, history and storytelling to control its populace by deciding what is true.
It’s not the kind of uniquely curated selection that would entice a book person to drive 90 miles to visit, but it’s not bad, either. Still, it’s not exactly packed. I can’t help noticing the irony behind that petition, and neither can Santee. As it turns out, lots of people had strong opinions about the end of an era for the nation’s oldest bookstore while they looked on from home via the screens of their smartphones. “Everyone talks about how good it used to be,” he says, “but they weren’t coming.” He jokes that locals here just miss the old days, but it doesn’t feel unique to me. My life is full of people who like the idea of something timeless, like reading, much more than they like doing it.
I’ve been looking for theories to explain why we don’t read like we used to. What if it runs deeper than our habits?
A clearance shelf hawks titles for 50 percent off. I flip through “America Fantastica,” a minor novel by Tim O’Brien, author of “The Things They Carried,” a definitive short story collection inspired by his military service in Vietnam. In that book, he recounts the death of one man through the lives of each member of his platoon, tracing the objects they hauled in their rucks. There’s a rare magic in finding a new way to tell a story, so I decide to take the novel home. It’s the story of a reporter turned online troll who resorts to robbing a bank. We all have our baggage.
I’ve been looking for theories to explain why we don’t read like we used to.
Some say we’re just too busy and mentally exhausted.
Some say we’re spoiled by passive entertainment, which didn’t exist before radio and television, video games and smartphone apps. Modern media don’t ask us to exercise our imaginations, but their worlds are potent substitutes for the real one, as well as our mind’s eye. All they ask is that we keep clicking. And if we step away for too long, they let us know.
Or maybe we read more than ever, we just waste our daily allotment of words on Instagram captions, memes and an endless scroll of horrifying headlines. Snacking adds up, and our brains lose something when we don’t give them enough of the right kind of work.
What if it runs deeper than our habits? For thousands of years, books have been an anchor and a guide for all humanity, from papyrus scrolls to the Gutenberg Bible. But life has never moved so fast. Even the internet struggles to keep up. What if it’s all too much for books to handle? That would be unthinkable, even for a person who doesn’t like to read.
I hoped the Moravian Book Shop would give me an answer, a miracle cure to remake myself in my mother’s image. But even novels tell us there are no easy solutions. My little pilgrimage didn’t reveal why I’m not a book person. But it did deepen my resolve to become one.
Reading a good book feels cleansing compared to social media, which has never felt more toxic and isolating. A lengthy narrative tickles my brain in ways that no dopamine rush can touch. It’s a pleasant feeling. Reading makes me a more thoughtful, deliberate and compassionate person. I know it’s worth it. It’s just not optimized for my convenience, or even my addiction. Maybe the only way for me to become a book person is to commit.
Back home, I open the O’Brien book on the patio and start reading. Sipping from a mug of hot tea, I soldier through 30 pages that feel like less of a forced march with each flick of my thumb. When it gets too cold, I head inside, sit at the kitchen table and keep reading. I wish I could stop my story there, triumphant. But the truth is, weeks go by before I pick up the novel again.
Still, there’s hope. I also brought home a couple of books to read to my son. I don’t know how much he understands, but I’ve read them to him many times already. And that feels right. It feels important. And at this rate, he might be a book person yet.
This story appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.