Big names close out Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
KESQ News Team
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (KESQ) – The Rancho Mirage Writers Festival came to an end on Friday. The three-day festival featured literary powerhouses and some of the biggest names in politics and culture today.
News Channel 3 caught up with popular author Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Daisy Jones and the Six and the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Her latest book is called Atmosphere, about an aspiring female astronaut.
Reid talked about the decline in the number of people reading for pleasure.
“I think that one thing that a lot of people forget, and one thing that’s great about book people is they haven’t forgotten, is that reading is fun. Reading is supposed to be fun, and we’re going to get things from it and we’re going to learn things from it, but it’s first and foremost fun,” Reid said.
A University of Florida study shows the number of people reading for pleasure has dropped 40% over the past 20 years. Only 16% read for fun, down from 28% in 2004.
But Reid also talked about the joy that can come from reading and why it’s so important.
“It feels good to open a book and want to keep turning the pages because you can’t wait to see what happens next. So I write books for a lot of reasons, but I never forget that my job is to make it fun for you. My job is to pull you through to the end of the book because that’s what’s gonna make you keep reading,” Reid said.
Passes for the festival this year sold out in three minutes.
If you’d like to watch any of the sessions, festival organizers are live streaming all sessions for the first time. They will be posting them online later at https://rmwritersfest.org/