Which Country Reads the Most?

February 4, 2015 5:05 AM

A map showing the reading habits of 10 countries. For comparison, number of books published per capita in Europe.
posted by Alexandra Michelle (32 comments total)

Interesting, interesting. A shame that Iceland isn't on the latter map: my understanding is that it has one of the highest rates for novels published per capita. It's also my understanding, however incorrect, that Slovenia has a similarly high rate of poetry published per capita.

Dumb question: are translations counted for the latter page?
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:16 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

How can you call yourself "amazing maps" if you don't know where Sweden is, and don't know that saving maps as JPEG images is usually a rather lousy idea? Ah, right, it's Twitter.
posted by effbot at 5:23 AM on February 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

did they seriously mark poland as sweden
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:26 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Interestingly, the figure for India hasn't changed in a decade. I bet the result for India is definitely skewed by urban sampling bias and the fact that academic reading by the 13 to 21 age cohort in the world's 2nd most populated country contributes significantly to that number. If recreational reading could be accurately gauged, India's rank would be much lower.
posted by Gyan at 5:29 AM on February 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

effbot: "How can you call yourself "amazing maps" if you don't know where Sweden is"

Or how to pick a color scale.
posted by signal at 5:32 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wait a minute, none of the figures in the FPP seem to be different from the 2004-5 survey. I didn't catch that the first time. Must be the fatigue from all the reading I do here in India.
posted by Gyan at 5:36 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Crazy if true, that the UK is ranked the second highest in books published per capita in Europe, but among the lowest in hours spent reading.
posted by ardgedee at 5:39 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

We read fast.
posted by Segundus at 5:44 AM on February 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

Well, I'm doing my part to keep the national reading average up.... I'm tired of covering for the slackers out there, they're gonna have to start taking responsibility for their share!

And yeah, to follow on both Gyan and Segundus: does this chart take into account required reading for schools, or only recreational reading? It'd be a more honest chart if those two were split. How about the differences between fast and slow readers --- a dude I work with has dyslexia and reads very slowly, while I read considerably faster than the majority of people, which means that x hours of reading for him equals a fraction of that for me. And how about comprehension rates, are those considered? Reading without comprehension is basically the same as staring at a wall!
posted by easily confused at 5:54 AM on February 4, 2015

We read fast.

It helps you read fast when you read these kind of stories.
posted by srboisvert at 6:00 AM on February 4, 2015

Interesting, interesting. A shame that Iceland isn't on the latter map: my understanding is that it has one of the highest rates for novels published per capita.

Apparently Ireland (which also is a N/A on the second map) also punches above its weight in books per capita.
posted by acb at 6:03 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've always wondered with these sorts of questions whether sites like Metafilter or even magazines like New Scientist 'count', especially when read online. I feel like I still read as much as I've always had (maybe three-four hours a day), it's just distributed differently.
posted by Trifling at 6:07 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with these factoids, crazy map implementation and all. While books are still the reigning champion of reading mediums, you cannot overlook the amount of reading someone like myself does online in any given day, nor can you overlook the micropublishing and consumption of material as seen in apps like Wattpad.

Scoff at these new ways of content aggregation and consumption if you will, but sales of printed material as a whole are declining and digital is steadily rising. Disclaimer: I work for a large publisher of educational content.
posted by jsavimbi at 6:20 AM on February 4, 2015

Crazy if true, that the UK is ranked the second highest in books published per capita in Europe, but among the lowest in hours spent reading.

Not at all, really - English language publishers are targeting the largest pool of readers, it makes sense that they are putting more books out. If there's anything strange is that Denmark is in first place.
posted by Dr Dracator at 6:24 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Reading" includes: books, newspapers and magazines

So here wouldn't count as reading, for example. I wonder how much of these figures is a reflection of internet access?
posted by bonehead at 6:29 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

> If there's anything strange is that Denmark is in first place.

Not if they're still publishing those books "that men like" sold under the counters of magazine stands. If magazine stands are still a thing. Which in turn would go some ways towards explaining why Britain's reading time seems mysteriously under-reported.
posted by ardgedee at 6:30 AM on February 4, 2015

The source of the data also looked at non-work internet time.
posted by jaguar at 6:59 AM on February 4, 2015

...and tv viewing and radio listening. "It is interesting to note that consumers in the US and UK are below the global average (5.7 and 5.3 hours per week respectively) when it comes to reading, but significantly above the average on TV viewing (19 hours per week in the US and 18 in the UK), listening to the radio (10.2 hours per week in the US and 10.5 in the UK) and just slightly below the global average for computer/Internet usage (8.8 hours per week in both the US and UK)."

So I think the lack of reading is less about internet usage than about watching tv instead.
posted by jaguar at 7:00 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Where's Ireland? I would bet cash money that per capita we are in or around where the UK is. And we're not on the UNESCO list on the Wikipedia link either. Strange.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:16 AM on February 4, 2015

According to this Wikipedia chart, India has a 75% literacy rate. Iceland, mentioned first in this thread, along with Greenland, Ireland, Norway, Finland...and all the usual suspects, have a 99/100% literacy rate.

You know who else has a 99% literacy rate, according to that chart? The USA. That's gotta be bullshit, though, as the HuffPost reported recently.
posted by kozad at 7:17 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to be doing my bit to keep the US average up. But now that I've got a toddler, I can't any more :-(
posted by Anne Neville at 7:29 AM on February 4, 2015

I think 'time spent reading WHAT' makes a huge difference in meaning though. I'm a Brit who has lived in 1 of the top 3 countries and in the years I spent there, very, very rarely did I see anyone reading anything longer/ other than than a comic. It was also always remarked upon how much 'foreigners' (western holiday-makers) read.
posted by genuinely curious at 7:31 AM on February 4, 2015

I have this strange romantic feeling when I look at some countries and see that every year only a few thousand books are published. Were I to speak Slovenian, Lithuanian, or Latvian, I'm sure that I could read every important book (though by no means all) ever written in that language. What a great moment to put down a book a think, "well, that's it, I'm all read up til next year"! But when the UK puts out 184,000, and doubtless a similarly big deal is published in English elsewhere, there's no hope of ever reading but a fraction of even the most important books in English.

You could probably keep up with a single topic and that's about it. Maybe every vampire romance novel, or every book about late medieval agriculture.
posted by Thing at 8:58 AM on February 4, 2015

You know who else has a 99% literacy rate, according to that chart? The USA. That's gotta be bullshit, though, as the HuffPost reported recently.

They're just using different meanings for "literacy."

The 1% illiteracy rate from Wikipedia implies that around 1% of American adults cannot read and write at all.

It's very hard to tell what the 14% illiteracy rate refers to, since Huffpost is referring back to statisticsbrain who doesn't cite any further than a nebulous citation to the DoEd and National Institute of Literacy. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be any relevant DoEd publication from 2013 so I've no idea what they're on about, but there was a 2003 study that found 14% of American adults had "below basic" reading skills. I'm assuming that's what the "14%" links are pointing to.

But in addition to plain and simple illiteracy, you can have "below basic" reading skills but still be able to search out a short, simple text to find what a patient is allowed to drink before a medical test, and still be able to add up a deposit slip or locate easily identifiable information in charts and forms. That is, you can have "below basic" reading skills and still be able to read and write at least a little.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:05 AM on February 4, 2015

Um. That map is for 30 countries, not 10. Did you even read the list?
posted by sexyrobot at 9:18 AM on February 4, 2015

New Zealand forgot to read so badly that it sank beneath the waves and had to be erased from the map. That should be a stark warning to us all.
posted by yoink at 9:58 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Interesting spike for Byelorus, compared to its neighbors.
posted by doctornemo at 10:17 AM on February 4, 2015

Denmark has (as of my last residency over ten years ago) an enormous amount of government financial incentives for authors. They're trying to keep Danish alive.
posted by bq at 12:56 PM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it's interesting, and also somewhat misleading, that the two countries in Europe with the highest per-capita published books are the UK and Spain, both of which have huuuuuuuuge foreign markets. Wouldn't that throw off the numbers? I mean, I would love to see the number of books published in Spain that are actually sold in-country, rather than exported to other spanish-speaking countries.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 1:08 PM on February 4, 2015

I like how the "larger version" of the map is still postage stamp sized. Come on people, this isn't 2004. You don't have to keep your page size under 70k.
posted by Justinian at 1:27 PM on February 4, 2015

yoink, I observed tbe same thing, plus it seems that in Tasmania nobody reads.

A rather poor infographic. Its shortcomings make me doubt that its source data are sound.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 2:33 PM on February 4, 2015

Ah, you are correct sexyrobot. Sorry, I posted it in the morning and was in a bit of a hurry. It should say 30 countries.
posted by Alexandra Michelle at 6:52 PM on February 4, 2015