In a New York Times article released in

July, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., made a strong proclamation regarding how much people read these days.

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said in the article. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

But both the Harry Potter series and final installment in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, are proof despite the drop in reading rates across the country, people still enjoy books just as much as they used to.

More than 1.3 million copies of Breaking Dawn were sold after it went on sale at midnight Saturday. Many bookstores across the country held events where customers could dress up and discuss the previous books before the release of the new one.

Breaking Dawn is the fourth and final book in the series which focuses on a teenage girl named Bella and her relationships with her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen, and her best friend who happens to be in love with her, the werewolf Jacob Black. The books are a mix of fantasy, science fiction and romance and are geared toward teenage girls.

Though the book's sales don't live up to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which sold 8.3 million copies last July, the amount sold in one night is still impressive.

What is even better is knowing the fever Harry Potter created is not gone and Breaking Dawn won't be the last book blockbuster for this year either. The third installment in the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, Brisingr, won't be released until Sept. 20, but is already No. 5 on Barnes and Noble's Bestsellers List. Bookstores across the country are already gearing up for the book's release, planning midnight parties and book tours.

Despite many adults being caught up in these novels, the most interesting part of all of this is the fact these books are geared toward young adults and teenagers -- and they're all fantasy novels. There's no midnight parties, no huge book releases for novels by Stephen King or even bestsellers such as the Da Vinci Code, which reached close to Harry Potter-style hype.

Fiction and non-fiction have never been as hyped up as science fiction and fantasy, and that lies in the audience and what the reader gets out of those types of novels. Science fiction and fantasy often times are more widely enjoyed by younger readers. They involve characters the reader can often relate to despite the sometimes unrealistic plots. They pull the reader in and leave them wanting more. And they're an escape from everything that ties us to this world.

Within the pages of a novel, be it about wizards or vampires, lies the key to what makes us enjoy the fantastic so much -- the imagination. Of course, movies allow us to leave reality behind too, but they don't leave as much up to the imagination. Movies don't allow us to create, they only allow us to see.

It might just be that many times adults are too grounded in reality and the stress of day-to-day activities to sit down and get lost in a book. Maybe it's not that people don't enjoy reading anymore, it could be that as we grow older we don't have time to allow ourselves to get caught up in worlds so unlike the lives we end up leading.

Katherine Dvorak is a junior majoring in journalism and English and is a copy editor for The Daily Collegian. Her email address is kzd111@psu.edu.