Stranger Fruit

If you’re going to read one book this year …

Posted by John Lynch on August 21, 2007
(3)
More »

… you are doing better that 25% of the American public.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released today.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey [who read any book], more than all other categories. … Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners,
rural residents, Republicans and Conservatives. (source)

Interestingly, "those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many [books] as those who attend frequently."

(3)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 RfP
    August 22, 2007

    Actually, probably better than 50% of the American public. The new AP poll is at odds with some much larger and more rigorous datasets–here’s my discussion of where the AP poll conflicts with the others. I’ve recently been looking at the older surveys in posts on “How much do we read?” and “Who reads genre fiction?“

  2. #2 TomS
    August 22, 2007

    I had once heard – and I’m bringing this up because I’d like to be corrected if I’m wrong – that many people consider reading a magazine to be reading a book.

  3. #3 Laurent
    August 23, 2007

    Hum, amazingly poor statistics. This is one of the damn shocking things with this society, the way books are treated.

    I was asked last week, while I was organizing my moving sale, if I was teaching litterature, for the books I was selling were from classic authors…