I don't know if nobody reads. Nobody reads modern books, perhaps.
It's tough to say something meaningful in a medium that's existed for centuries. You know? So much has already been done that now the medium is shrinking. The people who do remain are less likely to be as talented, because the really talented people have moved on to other things.
Television, for instance. The last 10 years has seen better TV shows than ever existed in the past. The best-written thing I've come across in the last two years was The Wire. I'd compare the quality of writing in that to anything up-to-and-including Shakespeare. And it did stuff that you couldn't have done in a novel. Or in a movie, for that matter.
Mind you, my all-time-favorite novel was published in 2006. And Mark Z Danielewski is still innovating within the form: his House of Leaves is a classic, and it was written just 8 years ago. But those writers are rarer. There's less to be done within the form of pure prose than there was even 40 years ago.
I don't know why, but I really can't stand McCarthy. I've tried again and again, and the man is so imprecise with his language. I want to like him, because I like interpretations of his work by, say, the Coen Brothers, but I'll read a few pages of his book and just not be able to take it anymore.
No, my favorite book is a novel called Adverbs, and it's by Daniel Handler, who wrote the kid's Series of Unfortunate Events. I've read it far too many times and I still love it, though now I spend a few months between reading it. And it's just incredibly beautiful. It's a collection of 17 short stories that are all interrelated, and it's playful with language to a fault. It's tough reading the first few times, but it's so worth grasping, because it does stuff I've never seen in other books.
So I don't think it's the best book ever written, but it's enjoyable and it's in love with words, and far too few people have heard it.
Reading IS dying. Even I, who used to read a hella lot of books are reading a lot less books (but reading a lot more in general), and my attention span is really short now.
another anecdote: i read handfuls of novels and dozens of short stories a month. a book before sleep helps settle the mind. much nicer than working on the computer until i drop.
She's turned to writing scripts though, there seems to be more traction there.