Thank you to everyone who participated in our Reading Habits Survey!! I am completely overwhelmed that we had 200 people respond! Honestly, my goal was 25 so I’m absolutely delighted with the results. I had so much fun reviewing the answers and I’m excited to share them with you today. I’m also posting this same summary over on my blog, Never Enough Novels, so everyone who participated can find out the results.
Basic Stats:
Our readers cover all age groups, but are mostly over 18 and are predominantly female (special thanks to the 3 guys who responded!)
I was surprised to see that a third of you read more than 50 books each year and own more than 200!! I’m glad it’s not just me with an overflowing house 🙂
Reading Preferences:
The majority of you prefer physical books and 65% of your books come from the library. Also, more of you purchase new books versus used books. How do you afford it?? I have to limit myself to $2 books from library book sales haha.
Your Top 3 Favorite Genres are:
- Mystery / Thriller
- General Fiction
- Literary Fiction and Historical Fiction (tied)
Almost 70% of readers use Goodreads to track their books. I was impressed to see the second highest option was the use of paper / journal. I’ve never had the discipline to keep up with a reading journal. There was also a write in response from someone who uses 3×5 cards. Great idea!
Your book recommendations mostly come from book blogs (hooray)! The Other responses covered book podcasts (an option I always forget about), social media (#bookstagram), and simply browsing the library, Amazon, or bookstores.
I quickly realized I should have added another option to the “What time of day do you prefer to read?” question for those of us who read any chance we get / all day! There were quite a few write in responses along those lines. However, evening reading won the day with 70% of the results!
Controversial Topics:
Is It Acceptable To Write In Books? The jury is still out on this question. The responses were almost split evenly between yes and no. I’ll note a lot of you say it’s ok if you own the book or if it’s a self-help book or textbook.
Do You Abandon Books You Don’t Like? Overwhelmingly yes! About 3/4 answered yes or wrote in that they do it sometimes/occassionally.
Do You Read The Last Chapter / End Of Book First? I’m with the 85% of readers who say no to this question. Frankly, it’s astonishing to me that even 15% say they will skip ahead. I had to laugh at the two responses that said they’ll skip ahead to see if the book gets any better. That’s the best reason I can see for doing it!
How Do You Mark Your Place In A Book? Once again 85% of readers answered together and picked bookmarks. There are 8% of you out there who don’t mind creasing the pages.
For the final question, there were 138 books that you hated or didn’t like from this past year. I won’t list them all here, but it was fascinating to see a huge variety of popular books, books I loved, and some that I’ve thankfully never come across. Here are just a few:
- Sing Unburied Sing
- Vox
- Harry Potter (nooo!!!!)
- A Man Called Ove
- Lincoln in the Bardo
- An American Marriage
- The Handmade’s Tale
- A Court of Thorns and Roses
- The Clockmaker’s Daughter (agree!)
Two of you also expressed a sentiment that I’m sure most of us can agree on, “Reading keeps me sane!” Amen to that! Thank you once again to everyone who participated and I hope you enjoyed filling out the survey and reading through the results!!
