I read 10-20 books a year - but I think this obsession with book reading is excessively chauvinistic. If the benefit of reading is consuming complex long form stories, don't we get that from long-running TV series, audiobooks, visual novels, videogames, manga? If the answer to that is NO - then the benefit is the mechanical act of reading text? Well we do that on social media, news, group chats.<p>I do not see how it is possible that the benefit of reading a book has not been subsumed by all of the content we manage to absorb in modern media.
So, I listen to about 25 audiobooks per year (mostly fantasy and sci-fi, with a few political, popular science or popular economics book sprinkled between). I'm quite happy about that, because it's something that I can do in bed, while travelling to/from work, while doing groceries, etc.<p>You might say that it's my "escape from reality".<p>But.. well.. who cares?
I don't think that my unending love for Dungeon Crawler Carl is somehow making me a better person.<p>I think that something much more relevant is how much exercise people get, how many people do weekly sports or exercise for example? And that's something that the Hacker News crowd in particular will likely score worse on then how many books they read per year.
I don't know why that is surprising or worrying. Honestly I suspect the true number is higher.<p>After checking it includes audio books which might explain it, but still... 60% of Britons have read/listened to a book in the last year? I doubt it.
so 60% of britons <i>have</i> read a book in the last 12 months, this is literally the most positive news i've seen about britain in over a decade. 60% seems <i>nuts</i> based on the people i know in real life.
"YouGov Survey Results Sample Size: 2121 adults in GB Fieldwork: 29th - 30th January 2025"<p>I can't find their methodology anywhere. Given some of the results,<p>I expect:<p>- This is based on self reported unverified answers, probably overinflated in terms of how many books actually read because people don't like to be perceived as a 'non-reader'.<p>- potentially also a selection bias? How were interviewies selected? Ho random was the selection process? Did they randomly phone people (would this count as fieldwork)? Were they standing outside a library or uni? Did they hand out 10.000 forms and put up a dropbox?<p>As a student I worked for some of those companies to which 'fieldwork' eas outsourced. There was not much supervision besides "get back 150 filled out questionairs today".
I suspect it doesn't capture how knowledge is ingested now. I haven't read a book in over a year now. But I do read papers (academic), news articles, technical blogs and YouTube lectures.<p>I practically don't have the time to read for leisure - tech moves very quickly, and that takes up the bulk of my thinking/study time/energy
I think books are a bit of an outdated format related to mushing up trees, turning them into a product and putting them on shop shelves. I read all the time but seldom whole books these days as they often seem to force an idea which could be communicated in say ten pages to be padded out to 400 pages to fit the retail requirements.
Being in my mid 70s I have found that a corpus of fiction amounting to about 100 books is enough for me to read in a cycle without any sense of repetition. One of the benefits of forgetfulness.<p>I do intersperse with a pile of non-fiction, mostly history, which I march through about a chapter at a time.
Doomscrolling appears to have totally replaced reading on the commute.<p>I’m not sure it’s that much more virtuous to read a few Dan Browns or John Grisham per year though?
Well it comes in phases. Last year I read a new book every few days. I probably read 30 books or so, then I got sick of it and stopped. Haven't read a single one since then but also dont care too much about it.<p>I've found watching a tv series and reading a book are very similar. They both share two key issues:<p>First reason there are good and bad books, and finding the good ones is really difficult for me. Just like with a tv show, I will stumble on a book and read it, it will be a great book that really moves me and makes me think. Now hooked on books, I will look for more books. I will read one after the other. I will eventually find one thats tiresome or "bad". I will fight through it. But then when the next book is also not great, I will stop entirely. Exact same happens to me when watching tv shows (last great one was succession).<p>---<p>Second reason is just getting sick of the medium in general. Like with many things in live I just get sick of reading. It also happens to me when I regularly watch tv shows, at some point I get sick of the activity all together and stop for a few months (or years).
It's crazy to me how many comments in here are saying how they don't have time to read.<p>The lack of free time in modern society is the source of so many of our problems. Historically, people had way more leisure and down time. The amateur anthropologist/youtuber Stefan Milos mentioned this in one of his videos recently when talking about human rituals.<p>I'd really like to know how much time folks are spending on their phones instead of doing something that would count as leisure or free time activities. It's not hard to read for 10-30 minutes but I'd wager most people wouldn't bother when they can scroll for that same amount of time, especially in public. It's way easier to shove your face into your phone in public than to read a book. I find myself doing that all the time, so I'm not trying to take anyone down.<p>Remember "being bored" as a kid? Having nothing to do so you'd make up stuff with your friends? Good times.
If we are speaking of reading a book to completion, I’d have to admit it’s been perhaps not a full year, but a while.<p>I do not like to read from screens. The next book I was keen on, from the Culture series, arrived from Amazon (ordered new) with signs of heavy water damage, making it unwieldy to read. I have been in a limbo of not wanting to deal with that and not wanting to be wasteful by ordering another one. There are also more non-fiction books that have been in various stages of completion for more months than I would care to admit.<p>However, while I like books, I wonder if in the golden age of information (now drawing to a close) it should be expected that fewer books would be read without a decrease in literacy or education: for a while in somewhat recent past non-fiction books used to be the <i>only</i> way of obtaining a wide variety of information, a lot of which is now covered by numerous other sources (blogs, references, and so on).
<i>Not all Britons are equally likely to pick up a book. While two-thirds of women (66%) say they have read or listened to a book in the last year, just over half of men (53%) say they have.</i><p>This is not necessarily unique for Britain and feels like more of a world-wide trend. Of course, this can be partly explained by women reading a <i>lot</i> of romance books, I think it could be a worrying trend for the future. Reading is an important aspect of a man's life. Sitting down and being forced to uninterruptedly focus on a singular task is exactly the kind of thing that is missing from many lives of young men.<p><i>All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.</i> Blaise Pascal
In America, that number is closer to 55%.<p>The devil is really in the details: not all books are created equal, because simply reading a random fiction book doesn't automatically convey moral or intellectual superiority. Elucidation through deliberate intellectual effort combined with a healthy information diet is necessary beyond simply cargo cult pantomiming one habit or another.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States</a><p>>Overall, just over half of U.S. adults, 54% or 130 million people, are deficient in basic literacy.<p>Over 40% of Americans don't read at a 6th grade level.
What counts as a book? The survey gives the impression it's just reading for pleasure?<p>This probably plays into the class divide, my wife hates reading (for pleasure) she says that comes from having to read a lot at work. I imagine a lot of people read quite a bit but maybe have less interest in reading in their free time for entertainment.
I probably fall into this, as long as you don't count kids books.<p>I just don't get much time where<p>* It's a decent block of time<p>* I won't be distracted or need to do something else<p>* I want to be alone<p>* I can be alone<p>* I'm mentally engaged enough<p>* I'm not trying to fit something else in like exercise<p>If you include kids books it's 1-2k but they're not really the same.
Reading a book isn’t always easy and requires dedication. Some time ago I decided to read a Victorian novel in original (English is my second language) and it took me months to complete.<p>Adults only have so much time to read, that you need to do it at an expense of other important things.
Technically I only read (as in completed) 2 books last year. My average pages per day was ~466 though (e-reader pages, which are not quite 1:1 with real book pages but pretty close, I think).
I "listened" to Dance Monkey, Dance! 27 times. Does that count?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGphsPOHi2M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGphsPOHi2M</a><p>Ernest Cline has a lot more to say than most book authors...<p>"Some of the monkeys read Nietzsche"<p>"The monkeys shave the hair off of their bodies in blatant denial of their true monkey nature"<p>"The monkeys are polluting and raping their planet like there's no tomorrow"<p>"The monkeys like to pretend that everything is Just Fine"
They should also quantify how many of the books that people are reading are trash fiction and self-help books. Not many people that read are actually reading substantive, educational works.