A lot of people who say they “read books” really mean they bought one or checked it out from the library, then only dipped into it here and there, maybe a few paragraphs at a time.

I haven’t read a proper book cover to cover in years, probably not since high school. But I do read a lot every single day, either for my job or because I genuinely want to grow professionally. I’ll also read a few chapters from books friends or coworkers recommend, especially the parts that seem most relevant. I just don’t really see why I need to finish the whole thing if I’m already getting what I came for.

My parents, meanwhile, will read the same books over and over again, cover to cover, every year.

I have nothing against audiobooks, but they are not the same as reading. It is a passive consumption of the content. You can daydream or lose focus and the story keeps rolling on. If you lose focus while reading, the story stops. You may find that you've "read" a few sentences, but it's quickly self-correcting.

Additionally, reading forces you to parse tone, interpret context, and resolve syntactic ambiguity on your own. Listening to a narrator removes those tasks.

I think that this door was opened when we started accepting that reading graphic novels was the same as reading a book of text. Rather than elevating new(ish) media for storytelling for their own merit, we've lumped them into another medium that was already deemed "good".

All that said, listening to an audiobook or reading a graphic novel is still better than not reading a book at all.

1: https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/53804-most-a...

I don't know, my reaction is "wow, Americans truly love reading," or alternatively, "they really like to boast their numbers even in anonymous surveys."

Even if you only read fiction, 8 books are like 500k to 100k words. That's a lot of words!

It is a self-reported measure, and it's phrased "read or listened to"--I don't normally think of "listening to audiobooks" when I think about reading, and I can imagine how that might broaden the pool. Other sources (e.g. the NEA survey at [0]) seem to put print book readership closer to 50%.

Though at least one survey [1] points out the wide range of genres that count as books for this purpose: manga, the Bible/Torah/Quran, cookbooks...

[0] https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-... [1] https://gitnux.org/readership-statistics/

These days when it comes to technical stuff I much more prefer to fill in gaps by reading articles or documentation. Technical books are so long it feels like authors are paid by words.

And when it comes to fiction I have really leaned into audiobooks. My eyes are too tired from computer work, and I can combine audio with other activities like jogging or cooking.

There are some "technical" audiobooks as well, but only a small category of technical books makes sense in the audio format.

But! We take our kids to the library every couple of weeks, and while we do let them check out Nintendo games, they also will each pick a stack of books. So my kids are going through 4-8 books a month. And my wife is part of a book club at the library so she's doing 8-10 in a year at least.

But for myself, I just have a hard time sitting down to do it. By the time I'm done with work and chores, it's late at night, and my brain barely has enough power to handle a TV show.

How do all y'all readers with young kids do it? How do you find the time?

When I looked closer in the app it's because all of my books are 99% finished because I didn't click in every page until the end. Annoying.

I use my garmin connect app to track exercise, blood pressure, water consumption, etc. it would be cool to have something similar for the mind.

The reduction is from a lot more time spent on educational series on YouTube and other paid video sources. Is it intrinsically bad if I trade 1 book for 10 hours of instructional videos?

[1] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...

https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...

Yes it includes audiobooks in "books".

physical books were around three times more popular than ebooks or audiobooks.

75% did not read anything to children (kind of surprising 25% of the population has access to pre-literate children)

15% don't read books they own, which is surprisingly high. A third borrowed their books from the library.

54% of the population inaccurately think they "own" an ebook as opposed to reality. 40% "a book you accessed for free online" Sure thats all project gutenberg LOL.

Mysteries and Crime are top of the charts. I have no idea if "computer books" count as 11% other non-fiction or academic or hobbies.

Only 51% have a library card. I know they are cracking down hard at my library, show up physically with proof of residence or it gets cancelled. Its harder to get a library card in my community than to vote, get a job, or register for school, your community may vary.

Most people go to the library less than once a month. This sounds about right.

Shockingly 20% of people never go to the library just to hang out. As a parent of older kids I do that a LOT, drop them off then go silently read or compute or whatever at the library. The attempt at turning libraries from book warehouses into makerspaces seems to not be working very well according to this survey.

People own a surprisingly small number of books. A "large full height bookcase" puts you in the elite. I'm kind of surprised at that.

Virtually no one hoards digital or audio books, I am apparently a far extreme outlier in that regard LOL. I'm easily five figures each. From, uh, totally legit sources.

Most people actually own about two dozen books and think most other people own about twice as many around fifty.

Since I was a little kid I always read a little before bedtime and it seems this is very popular.

Most people don't organize their books but think they have an easy time finding them (not unlike how people organize computer files...)

Surprisingly there is zero to very minimal demographic difference in every category among people who do not read, which I find very surprising and unlikely.

Reading is so much more than curated dead trees.