That statistic about reading habits from 2012 still haunts me

I was digging through old book club notes from 8 years ago and found a fact from a Pew Research study that said the average American only read 4 books per year back then. It shocked me because my club reads about 12 books a year and I thought everyone was around that number. Found it buried in a folder labeled 'discussion starters.' Anyone else ever realize your own group is way off from the national average?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_cameron5d ago

Wait, you found a folder from 8 years ago labeled 'discussion starters' too? I just found one in my closet last week from when I was in a sci-fi book club back in 2013. It had this weird note I wrote about how we all argued for hours over whether a character's choice was morally right, but nobody could remember the book's actual plot. That study always made me feel weird because my group would read like 15 books a year but half the time we'd only finish maybe 8 because someone would pick a dense 800 page novel that took two months. I remember thinking, back then, that those 4 books must have been mostly people who just counted whatever they skimmed on vacation. My old book club notes are full of half finished thoughts like 'why did we pick this?' next to a list of books nobody actually read past chapter 3.

chen.casey5d ago

Book clubs are just structured ways of lying about finishing books. Half those "read" books were just people showing up after reading the Wikipedia summary and the first chapter.