Via the Washington Post (archive link here) You Gov published the results of a survey on US reading habits.
“Just over half of all Americans said they read at least one book in 2023. Most of them read just a few books this year: 82% of Americans read 10 or fewer books.
https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/48239-54-percent-of-americans-read-a-book-this-year
Book-reading is strongly associated with college education. 44% of U.S. adult citizens without a college degree said they read at least one book in 2023, compared to 73% of those with a college degree.”
There is an interesting framing to the data because it is collecting data from people on what they read, whereas data on books is often book centric (sales, Goodreads or Amazon rankings or library usage). So, for example, when looking at genres Romance looks less huge than you might be used to from other data sources:
Partly this is due to mixing fiction and non-fiction but also because it is counting people rather than books, you can’t see the extent to which Romance is a genre where some readers read many, many books. So with most of this data, it is important to see it as counting how many people have read at least one book rather than how many books are read.
Of all the genres listed (fiction and non-fiction) History books had the biggest gender difference with 49% of men but only 29% of women saying they had read at least one history book. Within fiction genres, Romance had the biggest gender gap (30% of women and 12% of men) but Science Fiction also had a big gap (31% of men and 14% of women). However, Fantasy was much less gendered with 31% of men and 23% of women.
In niether the Washington Post article or the You Gov article does Horror appear as a genre. I don’t know if that is because it wasn’t listed in the survey or whether the genre didn’t get enough responses and was just lumped in with “other fiction”.
An earlier poll by You Gov also covered in the Washington Post article, looked at book ownership.
“How many books Americans own are heavily tied up with other demographic variables. Those with large libraries tend to be older (more time to accumulate books), to be wealthier (more money to buy books), and to have more formal education (which often involves extensive reading).
https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/47712-how-many-books-americans-own-and-how-they-organize-them
For example, among Americans who earn less than 75% of the median national income, 15% own no books and 16% own at least 100. In contrast, among Americans who earn at least 200% of the median national income only 4% own no books and 40% own at least 100.”
No huge surprises here but interesting nonetheless.
Camestros Felapton 
8 responses to “US Reading habits”
Just mostly sad. 240 books here, this year, spread across multiple genres.
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Very sad. I think I read at least one book in all the categories save biography, politics, and crafts.
I’d like to have seen the 65+ group broken down further. The younger of that group contains the generation who had the hippies, who really dug SFF.
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indeed, romance readers get through an astonishing number of books, often several per week. I seem to do about one book per week, across a range of genres, but I reread old favorites as well as reading new stuff.
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I’ve known cozy readers to go through series mysteries at a fast clip too.
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The age split is interesting too. Old people read mysteries and young people read fantasy. I wonder how much of this is due to the way a lot of fantasy books are marketed as YA?
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No one reads science, it seems.
Yet A Short History of Time was a bestseller. As was Cosmos.
(And Chariots of the Gods.)
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I’m guessing it folds into a mix of “Other Non-fiction” and “Academic” depending on publisher. Popular science books remain popular in most brick-and-mortar book stores around here.
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I’m amazed that there are people who own no books—not a few, but no books at all—and that some of them are in high income brackets. My kids received their first books as gifts when they were still in utero, and my dad was buying books right up to the end of his life.
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