Ipsos Reid Poll, Americans Reading

Americans and their Books

By Joshua S. Hill

Thursday, August 23, 2007

I'm an avid reader, and my friends are more often than not amazed at the speed and voracity with which I tackle my books. So color me a little biased when you read this piece, and try and ignore any mightier than thou tones that might escape me. But when you are dealing with polling data that suggests that 27% of American citizens haven't read a book in the past year, you may just pardon anything I say.

In a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs at the behest of AP, 1,003 adults were interviewed regarding, among other topics, their reading habits. The results showed a less than healthy appetite when it came to Americas literary leanings.

Asked how many books they had read in a year, 41% fell between 1 to 5 books, 31% between 6 and 15, and only 27% had read more than 15. You may think that 27% reading more than 15 books is a decent percentage, but when you look at the data, only 13% - or approximately 130 people -- read more than 30 books in a year.

Now not everyone has to be an avid reader like myself, but surely a good book is not that hard to come by. The amount of reading lessens in significance once you see that, of those who do read, a high percentage of them count the bible or another religious text as part of their reading, with popular fiction, and historical or biographical books falling behind.

When mentioning this fact amongst friends, it seemed a general consensus that this could very well be the reason comments such as "At least America's 'Smart-Missile's' can find Iraq" are so prevalent, and apparently so accurate.