Average Books Read Over Lifetime

[ucfgrad93]

I can guarantee that I hit 100 books by the time I finished high school if not sooner.

[speakingtohe]

Lotsof people don't read books. My sister has read less than 20 and she is close to 60. She is big into movies though.

Generally I read 3-12 books a week because that is my big entertainment fix. No better or worse than my sister's video/movie enjoyment.

Helen

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

I think reading pretty much has hit its nadir, but thanks to e-readers and smartphones, it's going back up.

I mean, a hundred years ago, everyone read. It was pretty much the popular form of entertainment. People also constantly wrote letters to each other, and so on.

*Everyone* didn't read 100 years ago; books were expensive and there was a significant illiteracy rate (10% overall; almost 50% for blacks). Almost everyone in the middle class read (middle class would be upper middle class today; not a huge number of people). Most of these people could play a musical instrument as well, since buying sheet music and playing it at home was the only way to hear music at home.

Recorded music caused a serious decline in the number of people who could play an instrument; radio, movies, and especially TV caused a less serious decline in reading. (Although - relatedly - society has changed such that people have less free time than formerly - if you read Trollope, you'll notice that the people with office jobs are eating breakfast at 10 and getting to work at around 11 or 11:30...and staying until 6 or so - sometimes 7 if they are diligent; sometimes leaving even earlier).

[DMB]

I think I've read about 5000 books.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by twowheels

On the Kobo "Reading Life" website, they say:

-- "The average person reads less than 100 books in their lifetime."

That's an amazing, and sad, statistic. While I admit that I've really picked up this pace since I purchased my K3, I still think that I've read far more than 100 books already!

I wonder where they got that number...

I just think that is kind of sad, considering that there are people here that read that much in a year.

[maianhvk]

What about reading other things? My parents are into newspaper. They literally indulge in dailies, read them from the first page to the last. Having free time? Waiting for the News on TV? Before/after lunch? ANY time at all? Let's grab some newspapers...

Strangely enough, I never saw them reading books they said books make them sleepy

I'm pretty sure I'm their daughter but I'm totally opposite I read books, and books only. No magazines, and very little of newspaper.

[Rumpelteazer]

My father never reads books. He used to read newspapers daily but has now shifted his news intake to online news websites. Until a couple of months ago my mother used to read a lot. A combination of getting an iPod and needing new glasses stopped her reading any books.

When I was young I loved to read comics, my grandmother tried to get me to read proper children's literature (Thea Beckman and such) which put my off reading until my early teens when I started reading books in english.

My sister reads, not as much as I do, but I think including YA books she has read well over a 100 books.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by ucfgrad93

I can guarantee that I hit 100 books by the time I finished high school if not sooner.

High school? Try elementary :-) When I was in elementary school (or the Dutch equivalent, 'lagere school') I used to go to the library several times a week because you weren't allowed to borrow more than 6 books at a time...

[Tome Keeper]

I'm pretty sure I hit a hundred books way before High School. Like mbovenka I visited the library several times a week and that was with a 12 book limit.

[afa]

While I, too, would be interested in knowing how that figure was derived, I can't say I'm particularly surprised. Nor would I say the figure seems low.

Sometimes, we avid readers tend to over-estimate how common an activity reading books really is. The sad fact is, it's not nearly as popular a pass-time as we would like to believe. pdurrant's post, while (deliberately) simplistic, illustrates this point. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence.

I am the youngest in a family of seven. Of my five siblings, precisely one enjoys reading, and even she hardly finds the time since she got married a couple of years ago. The end result is that I am now the only member of my family (even if I start including cousins) who reads on a regular basis. And I don't exactly come from a family of illiterates.

100 books in their lifetime? If anything, I say that number is too high. If you take away 'forced' reading (school textbooks, etc.) I'd be surprised if the average person has even read 20.

[orlok]

I've calculated that I've read in excess of 4000, and probably significantly more, as I could easily read between 5 and 10 books a week when I was (much) younger. My brother, however, has read 2 books, one of which was The Hobbit, which I read to him...

So how's that for messing up any averages...?

[theducks]

100 books. That count would have been hit before I got done with the Juvenile section in my home town.
My folks personal (juvenile section) library (Twain, Lofting, Baum) provided more fodder
I subscribed (and read) Analog Magazine for 40 years.
I have a Lifetime (given to me at birth) subscription to Readers Digest.
1002 (read) Fiction (technical ones not inventoried) books still in my paper Library (does not include books loaned, that never came home )
Not a clue on how many (adult section) Library books have been read over the years.
Our house has always had a working TV since 1950. Never slowed me down (much )

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by orlok

.......................So how's that for messing up any averages...?

Or , indeed the millions of people who can't/won't [your bro ?]/have no opportunity to/are not permitted to, etc...

It sounds like they're talking about Koboland, frankly, which makes it not quite so scarifying.
I've always read voraciously, but I was always in a minority at school, and more so thereafter. My son is in the same position.
Book Clubs have never swamped society, and an awful lot of people would never think of joining one.
A number of my acqaintances only read a couple of books a yea, but as Diap highlights, they always read newspapers & magazines.
It's only in relatively recent times that reading materials and sources have become readily available to use to "all", and I can't see ereading increasing that by much yet.

In my opinion, this is a meaningless guesstimate - but hey, it made me read it, so I wonder if that pushed up the average ?

[Tome Keeper]

My OH has read exactly one book that wasn't forced on him at school, at that was a walkthrough guide to a videogame *facepalm*. I think there are many people in the world just like him and many people who cannot read - so I think 100 is optimistic.

[jehane]

This discussion highlights one of the biggest problems in using and interpreting statistics. Kobo have calculated an average. We don't know their methodology so cannot comment on what assumptions they've made and how their data was collected. However the discussion strongly suggests that they and we have assumed that reading quantity across a population will follow a normal (bell) distribution and that the mean is a meaningful statistic. Is it? Have they actually done a test to see if the normal distribution is appropriate? I suspect not. I would think (based on personal experience and no data whatsoever :P ) that the Pareto principle (20% of people do 80% of the reading) would be a closer fit. Actually I think it's more likely 10/90 or even 5/95, and even that may be optimistic. But you get the idea. There's every possibility that there are two peaks - avid readers and non-readers, with relatively few in the middle ground.

Originally Posted by JoeD

Most people I know that read, will read a lot more than 100 books in their lifetime if they continue at their current rates. A conservative estimate of those readers may be around 10 books a year (they're not heavy readers unlike I expect most of us on mobileread). However, the number of people I know that don't read at all or read very lightly (1-2 books a year) is significantly greater.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to see how most people may be non/light-readers and will drag the average down. Whether it's made up or based on the logic pdurrant suggests, it does at least feel like a reasonable number to me.

Joe's first paragraph illustrates my last point. The second shows his bias [1]. If we assume that most people are in the non-reader category, then it's those of us in the avid reader category that are in fact dragging the average *up*.

[1] I don't mean that in a bad way - we all have bias, we just have to try and be aware of how it affects our interpretation of results.