[jhowell]

Something is off about those results.

Originally Posted by GeoffR

88% of adults read a book.

Actually it is "read or started to read at least one book". That is a much lower hurdle.

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Average 20.6 books per year(*).

One thing I noticed is that it is the average of those who read at least one book, not average for the total population. Still, that number seems unbelievably high to me. Perhaps the survey shows that people lie about how much they actually read.

The breakdown of average books per reader is odd: 13.7 fiction books, 4.4 poetry books, and 8.0 non-fiction. I am guessing that this is the average for those that read that particular type of book. Still, odd.

Originally Posted by GeoffR

According to Public Libraries of New Zealand statistics for the 2015/2016 year, there were 35,214,362 loans to public library users.

The number of loans does not specify the type of item being loaned, but let's assume books. The same spreadsheet shows the total collection across all libraries as 8,362,219 books. So every book had to be leant out over four times on average. I can see that for popular books, but every book in every library? I suspect that the total number of loans includes other items, such as videos.