Reading Books

This survey at Yougov.com is very disappointing. It found that just over half of all Americans said they read at least one book in 2023. Most of them read just a few books this year: 82% of Americans read 10 or fewer books.

One wonders where our presidential candidates would fall in this survey. At any rate, here are some of its other findings:

Book-reading is strongly associated with college education. 44% of U.S. adult citizens without a college degree said they read at least one book in 2023, compared to 73% of those with a college degree.

Americans who did read were more likely to read physical books. More than 40% of Americans read a physical book in 2023, compared to 21% who read an e-book and 19% who listened to an audiobook.

Mystery books and histories were the most popular book genres Americans read in 2023, with more than 35% of those who have read at least one book saying they read a book in each of those genres. Fantasy, historical fiction, biographies, and literary fiction were other popular genres.

Genre choice is heavily influenced by gender. 45% of female readers read at least one mystery or crime novel in 2023, compared to 28% of male readers. On the other hand, 49% of male readers read at least one history book, compared to 24% of female readers.

History was still a popular genre for female readers, like mysteries were for male readers. Mysteries were the fourth-most popular genre for men, and history was the sixth-most popular genre for women.

If you read or listened to only one book in 2023, then you read more than 46% of Americans. Reading five books puts you ahead of two-thirds of U.S. adult citizens. Readers of 10 books are in the 79th percentile, while Americans who read 20 or more books read more than 88% of their peers.

Charts at the link give more details on the above summary. They're very interesting. One of the data points that especially caught my eye is the number of college educated individuals who read no books last year - about one in four.

It's disappointing but not surprising that 46% of Americans read no books in 2023. It's also disappointing but not surprising that among the popular genres listed above only one, biographies, was non-fiction.

To quote Thomas Jefferson once again, "Any nation that expects to remain ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be."