“While we read the books, the books read us. Can books read people? Of course they can!How else would they know everything about us?” (Lennart Hellsing) This quote shows how important books are to us humans, the youth today and the youth oftomorrow. Our study focuses on how literature matters to young people today, their experiences and reflections of reading and the literature teaching in school. The study assumes a pupils’ point of view and the analysis is based on a questionnaire, where pupils from the ninth grade describe their own reading habits and reading experiences, in school as well as in their leisure time. Previous research shows a complex picture of the changes in Swedish young people’s reading habits, but one important aspect is that boys tend to read less than girls. For this reason gender became a general perspective in this paper. Our study also shows that there are gender differences and that the boys do read less than the girls in the same age. There are various reasons for these tendencies among both boys and girls. For example parent’s education is one of the main reason why boys tend to read less then the girls.

<p>“While we read the books, the books read us. Can books read people? Of course they can!How else would they know everything about us?” (Lennart Hellsing)</p><p>This quote shows how important books are to us humans, the youth today and the youth oftomorrow. Our study focuses on how literature matters to young people today, their experiences and reflections of reading and the literature teaching in school. The study assumes a pupils’ point of view and the analysis is based on a questionnaire, where pupils from the ninth grade describe their own reading habits and reading experiences, in school as well as in their leisure time. Previous research shows a complex picture of the changes in Swedish young people’s reading habits, but one important aspect is that boys tend to read less than girls. For this reason gender became a general perspective in this paper. Our study also shows that there are gender differences and that the boys do read less than the girls in the same age. There are various reasons for these tendencies among both boys and girls. For example parent’s education is one of the main reason why boys tend to read less then the girls.</p>