5 ms·

I don't find it to be a surprisingly high number. I wouldn't consider myself an avid reader; these days though I try to track everything I read on Goodreads.

I don't find it to be a surprisingly high number. I wouldn't consider myself an avid reader; these days though I try to track everything I read on Goodreads. This lets me get recommendations for other things I might like, but more importantly serves as a reminder of things I have read in the past so I don't re-read the same thing, or can locate and refer back to something I read in the past in the case of non-fiction materials. According to Goodreads I completed 10 books in 2016 and read roughly 3500 pages.

gnicholas 10y ago
I'm not surprised that there are some people who read this much, but 1/3 is not in line with other statistics I've seen. According to a literacy foundation, 45 million adults, or roughly 20% of the US adult population, are functionally illiterate (read below a 5th grade level), and in another survey 44% of US adults said they did not read a single book in a year [1]. I work in literacy and see stats like this regularly. I've never seen anything indicating that 1 in 3 US adults reads (and finishes) a book nearly every month. I am even a little surprised that 1/3 report starting at least 11 books a year, based on the basic illiteracy facts I've seen elsewhere. I'm certainly interested to see if anyone has seen other relevant stats. 1: http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/ http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/
- philipkglass 10y ago
  1/3 surprised me too, but the stats you cite don't say anything about the people who do read regularly, only those who don't. They don't say anything about the whole distribution. Lots of activities have skewed distributions where a particular individual is more likely to do something often or very rarely than once-in-a-while.
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    That's right—illiteracy stats typically focus on that end of the spectrum. My point was that if it's true that 44% of American adults don't finish a book in a year, it would be very surprising if 35% read 11+ books a year. That would be a shockingly bimodal distribution, at least to me.
    - philipkglass 10y ago
      On re-reading both sources, the more direct contradiction is that Gallup says that 16% of Americans read 0 books per year and the Literacy Project Foundation says 44%. The Literacy Project Foundation unfortunately cites names for the stats at the bottom of the page but does not link numbers to specific reports those numbers came from, so I can't dig further into the discrepancy.
      - gnicholas 10y ago
        It's actually not a contradiction — they just have different definitions of "read a book." If both are true, then it means that 84% of Americans started reading a book, but that only 56% finished at least one. But yes, it would be good if the Literacy Project Foundation linked to publicly-available sources.

gnicholas 10y ago

I'm not surprised that there are some people who read this much, but 1/3 is not in line with other statistics I've seen. According to a literacy foundation, 45 million adults, or roughly 20% of the US adult population, are functionally illiterate (read below a 5th grade level), and in another survey 44% of US adults said they did not read a single book in a year [1]. I work in literacy and see stats like this regularly. I've never seen anything indicating that 1 in 3 US adults reads (and finishes) a book nearly every month. I am even a little surprised that 1/3 report starting at least 11 books a year, based on the basic illiteracy facts I've seen elsewhere. I'm certainly interested to see if anyone has seen other relevant stats. 1: http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/ http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/

philipkglass 10y ago
1/3 surprised me too, but the stats you cite don't say anything about the people who do read regularly, only those who don't. They don't say anything about the whole distribution. Lots of activities have skewed distributions where a particular individual is more likely to do something often or very rarely than once-in-a-while.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  That's right—illiteracy stats typically focus on that end of the spectrum. My point was that if it's true that 44% of American adults don't finish a book in a year, it would be very surprising if 35% read 11+ books a year. That would be a shockingly bimodal distribution, at least to me.
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    On re-reading both sources, the more direct contradiction is that Gallup says that 16% of Americans read 0 books per year and the Literacy Project Foundation says 44%. The Literacy Project Foundation unfortunately cites names for the stats at the bottom of the page but does not link numbers to specific reports those numbers came from, so I can't dig further into the discrepancy.
    - gnicholas 10y ago
      It's actually not a contradiction — they just have different definitions of "read a book." If both are true, then it means that 84% of Americans started reading a book, but that only 56% finished at least one. But yes, it would be good if the Literacy Project Foundation linked to publicly-available sources.