It's the National Year of Reading. Just as well, as one in four adults say they haven't read a book in at least a year. With so many other ways to get information these days, do we still need books?
When did you last pick up a book to hunt out a nugget of information instead of Googling it? Or read a novel instead of powering up the PlayStation or the telly?
Some time ago, quite possibly, especially if you're a man and aged 16 to 24 - half haven't read a single book in the past 12 months, making this group the least likely to read books, according to government statistics.
The rest of us aren't much better. And some, including Victoria Beckham, claim never to have read a book at all.
Yet books are hyped as life changing and a way out of crime, poverty and deprivation by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who launched the National Year of Reading on Wednesday. Quite simply, they have the potential to open up new worlds for the reader.
So why don't more of us make use of these repositories of knowledge and, with so much information to be gleaned online and from the TV, do we need to read books any more?
"They're vital to learning. Half the population don't go to football matches but that doesn't make football any less important," says Professor John Sutherland, who has chaired the Booker prize judging panel.
Books are essential because at their very heart is the storage of information, he says.
"The best storage system we have is the book. Few artefacts have lasted as enduringly - and few will. If you dropped Chaucer into the middle of Oxford Street today he wouldn't have a clue what was going on, but if you took him to a bookshop he'd know exactly what they were, even be able to find his own work."
By Denise Winterman
BBC News Magazine
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