This week wandering the InterWeb, I came across the most fascinating study: Adults reading books in 2023. Since I fancy myself a bit of a reader, I was very interested to see the results.
To say I was a bit shocked is an understatement:
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Highlights of the survey results (original data here):
- Crime/mystery, and history were the most read categories at 37% and 36% respectively
- Poetry was the least read category at 8%; men read more poetry (9%) than women (6%), and younger people slightly prefer poetry to older people.
- The survey included physical books, e-books, and digital books. Physical books were the preference in terms of overall books, by gender, and by educational status (For college educated people, 60% preferred a physical copy and for non-college educated people, 33% preferred a physical copy.
- But....e-book readers read more than audio book listeners or physical book readers (32 books per year to 20 books per year to 18 books per year)
- Finally, they gave a table on how people stack up percentile wise versus the number of books they read:
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General Comments
- As long time readers may remember, I am a voracious reader (physical media; I struggle with electronic readers and can only manage about 30 minutes on an e-book). Looking back at my records (they only go back 10 years to 2014), I read on average 88 books a year with a maximum of 116 and a minimum of 69 (Current year count, figured into this number, is 87). To be fair, this represents a wide range, from several hundred page books to 50 page Osprey Publishing books, so it is not necessarily a linear number.
Likely in the above breakdown, I fall somewhere in the 99.9999th percentile.
- It is worth acknowledging that one of the things that has changed in the past several years is the growth of online video a.k.a The Tube of You as well as websites such as Khan Academy that give individuals access to similar information in a different medium. Even for myself, if I need to do a task I have never done, I am likely to try to find a video or two on how to do it (there usually are some) - that said, The Tube of You is not my preferred medium. Like audiobooks, I have a limited attention span.
- One of the interesting notes in general is the way the articles are positioned. The first reference from Statista is "46% of Americans Didn't Read Book a Book in 2023; the YouGov headline is "54% of Americans read a book this year". Both are true, but one sounds slightly more hopeful.
- The fact that Crime/Mystery and History are the most popular genres is not at all surprising. Perhaps, with the fact history is up there, we have a small chance to learn from the past.
- There was no breakdown by age, which would have been interesting. Is it an age based phenomenon and if that is it older or younger, or does it skip generations?
-The most interesting thing to me is that per the second table above, 79% of Americans read 10 books a year, not quite even one a month.
Final Thoughts
I am reader. I have been one all my life; it was ingrained into me by my mother and I, in turn, ingrained it into my children. They are all readers as is The Ravishing Mrs. TB (who, interestingly, is a great fan of audio books).
Reading to me is life. When I awake in the morning, I will read. When I am at lunch, I will read. At some point during the evening, I will read. Given my choice on weekends, I will read. To me, things like airline travel are just excuses to be completely off the grid and read.
I cannot fathom not reading a single book in a year.
Even discounting the Tube of You and online education aspects, it still bothers me. There are things in books you simply will not pick up in a video or online. A book - especially if it is your own - is a treasure to go back and back to again. The number of times I have "found" something that was always there but means something to me now is one of the most remarkable things of a day; it always excites me.
It is certainly a study I will look for next year.
Finally, as a reminder September 6th is National Read A Book Day. You have almost a year's warning, so I expect everyone to have one on the ready at midnight September 5th.
I cannot imagine life without a stash of books to read and reread. I have tried reading on a tablet but just could not get along with it - so much more satisfying handling a physical book and being able to look along shelves to pick something to dip into or reread.
ReplyDeleteWill, I cannot either. The idea of a home without books is always distasteful to me and - a personal failing - I look around with a sense of disbelief when I enter one.
DeleteInteresting statistics. I've always been a reader too, but when I started writing (about a decade ago) I read less. My allotted time was spent researching and writing instead of reading. Last year, I set all that aside to pursue other interests, and this year, started a reading list (to be posted at the end of December, probably). It's satisfying to add another book to the list.
ReplyDeleteI really like that they included audiobooks. I never used them much until this year, but they are wonderful for handwork tasks such as shelling seeds, snapping beans, mending, knitting, spinning, or weaving. Now, they make up the bulk of my reading list.
Not a fan of digital books, for the same reason as you.
Leigh, one great point you bring up is the fact that reading, at least physically or with an e-book, is an activity that demands 1) Time; and 2) Focused attention (excluding, for your reasoning above, audiobooks - which The Ravishing Mrs. TB has also been using to great effect as well as she does other things). That is something that in our amusement and outrage culture is less and less of a thing it seems, at least for many people.
DeleteI have to admit that one attractive features of e-books is the fact that you can find many out of print or very odd things - for example, there is an entire group on The Book of Face that is posts books on Islamic and Byzantine history and culture which are likely completely unavailable in print (at least, reasonably). I do wonder if finding a better reading medium for such things might make them slightly more palatable - after all, that may be only chance I can reasonably find them.
Dropping an e-reader might result in a fractured screen/scrambled innards while dropping a book won't, besides I don't have an e-reader, like the physicality of books. Always have visited the library wherever I've lived, the parents hauled me off to the Carnegie library in town when I was in elementary school and the habit stuck. Not reading A book in a year?!? Inconceivable to quote Vizzini........ :)
ReplyDeleteNylon12, I am tough on everything that I own, so the risk of break it is high (you should see the screen of my Not-So-Smartphone). And like you, I love the physicality of books. I love that I can underline them. I love that I can come to know them so well that I can predict some key things within a certain number of pages based on where it appears in the book.
DeleteOne of the last signs that my mother had truly slipped away was when she stopped reading. Even up to when we first moved her into the care facility, she still read a book - maybe the same chapter/page, but still read it.
Love the physical feel of books. But given the amount of what I read today isn't ON Paper and probably will never be physically printed unless I print it myself...
ReplyDeleteWife chuckles I'm a scribe when I'm handwriting important tid bits onto my garden logs.
Often enough all in an article can be summed up in a sentence or three.
That is interesting, Michael - I find that my mind works differently with the material when I am reading non-physical books. I find myself less engaged and more prone to distraction - that said, there is a great deal out there now that likely never will get printed.
DeleteThe Ravishing Mrs. TB also looks a bit bemused when I continue to write a physical journal, something I have done for over 30 years now.
I too am a voracious reader. A possible solution to the audiobook distractions is to speed up the reading. Instead of standard speed, I listen at 2x’s speed with perfect comprehension. The narrator voice needs to follow the speed at which YOUR brain processes information otherwise you will lose interest. Those of us who consume books at a high rate read MUCH faster than the typical audience of an audiobook. 2x’s rate will keep you engaged and allow for the enjoyment and satisfaction that books typically provide. Hope this is helpful!
DeleteHonestly, I guess i was surprised that the percent of people who never read a single book last year wasn't a lot higher. I grew up all my childhood years without a television in the house so options for entertainment were music and books. Back then, I was certainly in the 99th percentile and probably still would be today if I read a lot of fiction books. I find them really fast to read. But since my early to mid 20's, I abandoned fiction and read non-fiction almost exclusively and I find that reading and understanding those books takes me a bit more time. I don't keep track but I'm probably somewhere in the low ninetieth percentile. I have an e-reader but mostly prefer tactile reading devices for my input. Mostly that is because books I read tend to have maps and pictures that are omitted from e-reader versions. I find I like to refer to them often as I read through the book. I have also listened to the rare audio book, but I mostly save those for long car trips as I find just sitting doing nothing but listening hard to focus on. Holding a tactile reading device in my hands is much easier to focus on.
ReplyDeleteInteresting Ed - I was surprised that the percentage of people who read a book was that high.
DeleteWe had a television but limited viewing hours - but reading was always encouraged almost at any time (except meals - even there, being able to read during dinner was a special extravagance).
You mentioned over the years (that statement makes we laugh - we have interacted on line that long?) that you are much more a reader of non-fiction than fiction. If I am honestly thinking about it, I am much less of a fiction reader as well than I used to be. Partially I suppose it is because the fiction I generally read (science fiction/fantasy) is a wreck in the modern world, but also because I am going back and filling in my "missed education" of history, philosophy, and classic literature (which, I suppose, I am separating from fiction).
I struggle with audiobooks - but audio adaptations of books do not represent the same struggle. There is a great adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Mountains of Madness that I could listen to again and again.
Kindle sent me my list for the last 22 months. My average on Kindle is 19 books a month. Grandparents on mom side, Uncle who taught me to read. When I traveled for 19 years I packed 13 books every time I packed. Sometimes even that wasn't enough. I'm like so many of you about the weight of books, the smells of them. The over all feel. But when my thumbs developed arthritis and you can't hold the books or eyesight problems or all the other stuff the comes with our "Golden" years. Mom was a big reader, I am, daughter and son both are. But daughter reads about her field, son reads biography and accounts of war. Grandson loves audio books.
ReplyDeleteRecently when daughter was over I mentioned a series I was reading, she laughed and said it was the 2nd recommendation as grandkid had also recommended same series. So 3 generations passing on the love of the written word.
Anon - That is very impressive! One of the standing jokes when I travel is the amount of books that I will pack for a trip - a cardinal sin, in my world, is running out of material.
DeleteYou make a great point about the fact that we do have technology to adapt to physical limitations, especially as we get older.
I have also taken recommendations from my children as well as passed on recommendations (and books) that my mother gave me. It is nice to see such a tradition continue.
Amazon makes very cheap ($79.) Kindles that really only for books and a few things. So for flights of any length it's a godsend to not packing books. And a zillion of free books. Always my favorite.
ReplyDeleteThat makes a lot of sense - certainly for weight, I always add more than I intend to my suitcase.
DeleteI used to be a prolific reader of books (beginning in childhood), but over the last few years, I have not been. Part of the issue is arthritis of the thumbs, that made holding a book very painful, and then there was thumb surgery that was its own painful. I think I simply got out of the habit of picking up a book during the couple of years I seriously struggled through that. It's still not completely comfortable to hold a book, but I keep telling myself to just start reading again. It never felt like a discipline before and it makes me a little sad that it does right now.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time I couldn't understand why some people don't read books. Going through this... slump, if you will, I have a bit of understanding. If one sees reading as a discipline instead of a pleasure, it can be hard to develop/pick back up the habit.
Thanks for the prod, TB.
Becki, you are the second person now that has mentioned a physical issue that prevented you from reading that was not specifically related to sight. It was something I had never even considered before.
DeleteYou are quite astute to know that when things become discipline instead of pleasure they are often much harder to do. That is true and so many other things in life that should not be true in this case as well does not surprise me.