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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
I'm not keeping track, so, I've honestly no idea...
What I do find curious though, is that graph you posted.
The Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, France, England and Ireland read a lot of books. France is the weird one here, as the others are the Northern Eruopean countries (Netherlands often falls in the same category as the Scandinavian countries in these kind of studies). The Southern European countries read a lot less. And the German fall in that same group!
I can understand that the further north you get, the more books are read. Darker and longer winter nights, and less perfect weather during the summer (more rainy days and such). But why are the German speaking countries (and Belgium for that matter) so low? And why is France so high?
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hm, those are interesting points about the daylight / weather being a factor in reading. i would say that for france it only partially holds true (or rather, it is perhaps a less important factor than some others) because while the northern half of the country does tend to have pretty terrible weather (and short days, in winter) even though the southern half tends to have a lot of sun and nice weather, we also have a very strong culture of reading here, books are still a really important part of life to almost everyone (i might know a few people who don't read any "heavy" litterature and only read "light" books, but i don't know anyone who doesn't read
at all). books are discussed in all media (even the frivolous women's magazines have a book section) including television, and the "rentrée littéraire" is always a topic of discussion every year ("la rentrée" is in septembre, when everyone returns from summer holidays, kids go back to school, adults go back to work, and everyone has to be "serious" and it's quite an annual milestone even if you don't have any school kids or go to school yourself and even if you don't go away for the summer ; it's a change in tone from lighthearted summer. many things are planned for this period including a lot of new books coming out, thus "rentrée littéraire"). and we hold writers generally in high esteem, both the old dead ones and the new ones ; writers can easily be stars here just like a musician or actor. also i think television is perhaps a bit less universal here ; most people do have one, but i know a lot of people who don't, whereas i get the impression that in many other places a television is an expected fixture of life like having a telephone or a stove in the kitchen.
as for germany, all the germans i have known are really sporty outdoors types and are often going camping or hiking or bicycling or skiing, and they travel for the holidays (and go camping, etc. there
) so it makes sense to me that with this very active lifestyle they have less time for reading (i think reading on skis is a recipe for disaster !).
of course, these are all generalisations, but i think they are nonetheless relatively true...