#4 - Compared to us, people who lived a century ago had very

[jrc3813]

I'm having some trouble finding an adequate reason why C is wrong other than that B is a better answer. One reason is that there are more people today, so more books could be sold today but yet fewer people are reading or people are reading less. The population could increase by 1 billion but only 1000 more books are sold. If that was the case then people are probably reading less today. But what if it said books sales per capita are larger today? People could be buying more books but maybe not reading as much so it's not a perfect answer but does that not weaken the conclusion a bit? I'm other words is the answer wrong just because it's vague or is there a more fundamental problem that I'm missing?

[nicholaspavic]

Hi brc,

This is great question. One of the problems, as you note, is that book sales do not translate automatically into more reading. For example, what if it was a trend to have a library in your home? Certainly book sales are going to go up per capita, but that doesn't mean the books are being read. Perhaps they are only decorative. Of course there could be a whole host of reasons for book sales going up. Book sales go up at times when people are burning books and book sales increased when the adult coloring books came out but nobody was "reading" those. So there is a problem with this answer on many fronts. Thanks for the great question and I hope this helps!