Every year you run across a headline lamenting the downfall of the book. Fewer people read books and competition from other media like movies and computer games suck up more market share. Despite the truth of this trend, books persist as a beloved form of entertainment for a significant number of people. A Hollywood blockbuster often deserves to be popular, but there really is nothing like a good book.

An extensive survey of book readership among Americans was conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts. Published in 2004, the study found that book readership had declined by 10 percent between 1982 and 2002. Discouraging as this drop in readership is, the study reported that 45 percent of Americans read novels, nonfiction books, poetry, and short stories. This equals approximately 93 million people who are reading, which means that books still have a viable market — a portion of which is quite devoted.

The strength of a book’s appeal is found in its ability to engage the mind. As you read, you begin to hear the characters speak, share their emotions, and care about what will happen next. Reading is a tremendously intimate form of communication because it allows you to think, feel, and imagine all at the same time. And the dynamism of the experience can continue even when the book is not in your hands. When you are forced to put down an enthralling narrative, you will continue to think about what may happen and crave your next opportunity to get back to the book.

The book is also the best medium for conveying a narrative of great complexity. A book can accommodate many characters acting along multiple subplots whereas the time-constrained window of a movie can be overwhelmed by narrative complexity. Richness of detail and nuance swell from books like the limb of a tree heavy with ripe fruit.

The stimulation, whether fanciful or intellectual, that you receive from a good book leads you into one of the most powerful qualities of the medium: addiction. Upon finishing a book you liked, you generally will want another good book to read. It is as if once your brain has traveled the imaginative pathways of a narrative, it wants to keep going through the labyrinth of possibility. Basically, reading leads to wanting to read. Once you start reading regularly, your brain begins to feel bereft of stimulation if you stop reading, and other media cannot quite fulfill the need.

Although books have admittedly lost market share amid other spectacular media options, books — defined as long written narratives — will surely endure. Many movies and computer games are based on written works. Consider the recent blockbuster “300″ that was adapted artfully from Frank Miller’s graphic novel. All entertainment mediums pull water from the deep and generous well of books because it is a story that inspires not special effects.

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