Do your friends read books? Is the readership rate high in your country?
Virtually none of my friends read books. I don't think my neighbors do, either. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only book reader. There's no one to talk to about the books I'm reading. I can post on the Internet and I will get a few upvotes here and there, sometimes a comment, but there's no depth to it. Also, I'd like to talk about books in person, not keyboard. The statistics of readership as conducted by our national library (Poland) were always piss poor, while I think they don't cover the whole society (because they focus on books lent from libraries?) it still seems accurate. Our nearest southern neighbors (Czechia) have high readership, same as our western neighbors (Germany, gosh I envy the sheer amount of books published in German). Poles not only don't read, but because of that we get only a small chunk of published books, oftentimes I search for a book online and there are English, German, Spanish, Russian, Czech (not as often, but a lot more than Polish) translations available, but not Polish -- I understand it, it's not worth it business-wise to publish some obscure books in Poland. It's a sad affair.
Turkish here, my nations reading statistics are extremely low as well. But if were to speak for people whom I know; my family and friends are occasional readers. History and classical novels ( 20th century Turkish literature and Russian literature are most read) are popular, with romance books coming up frequently among my female friends. Though compared to what you wrote we usually don't have translation problems but buying original can get quite a bit expensive. Libraries are crowded but they are mostly used for studying for tests rather than reading.
I guess it depends on the genre and on what you're looking for. Do you have a Turkish translation for Robin Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles? She's a highly popular fantasy writer, all her books were published in Poland, except the Rain Wilds series. It's smack in the middle of the Elderlings saga... I am 100% sure that if I search online I'm going to find it in German.
Do you have all Guy Gavriel Kay's books in Turkish? I wanted to read Under Heaven for years now, no publisher has bought the license in Poland. I lost hope. Again, I'm 100% sure that if I search now I'm going to find the German translation.
Sorry, you may not even be interested in fantasy, but those are some examples that came to mind immediately. I'm throwing them at you because you said you usually don't have translation problems, I'm wondering how big the Turkish book market is. :)
I read a bunch of books in English (the biggest ones being James Clavell's "Shogun" and Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora Star), so I can do that, but I strongly prefer reading in Polish, so as long as I have other books on my to-read pile, I'm picking them.
I think that if you want to read the originals, it's better to get an ereader and purchase them online.
I just checked and yes, they both have translations. E-readers aren't popular here ( absurdly expensive ), people usually purchase their books from second-hand bookstores.
Dang, litmus test passed. ;) Does Turkey (or are you Turkiye now? I'm missing the accented characters) have some official stats on readership? In Poland we have the National Library who run some surveys every year and post their findings in graphs and text.
For example, [https://www.bn.org.pl/download/image/1619425829.jpg](here's the graph of readership in the years 2000-2020). The dark bars mean "read at least 1 book that year" and the light bars mean "read 7 or more books that year". As you can see, some years 60% of the responders didn't read a single book. And the methodology is a bit odd as far as I know, where reading a book may mean reading 20 pages, not necessarily finishing it. So the actual numbers are even lower. It's a sad picture. I've always been in the second group (7+ books per year, usually around 18 but I'm a slow reader).
I have been looking at a bunch of sources for the last 30 minutes and the numbers they found doesn't seem consistent across sources. As for numbers who repeat; around 5% to 10% of population seems to be reading books with an average of 7 books per readers in a year. Which falls about right with my anecdotal experience.
The name change was just weird and it came out of nowhere, We don't care much about it.
I have only a few friends that I know read books regularly. But I think most of my friends and family will read a book once in a while, especially if we’re counting audiobooks too (which I do, I love them). I’m in Denmark.
I’m one of the people who is always reading 1 to 4 books at the same time, I don’t know anyone else who does that, not even in my family. When I tell people, they always react with a “wow, how is that even possible?”.
Right now I’m reading A Little Life, Atomic Habits and GoT: A Dance with Dragons. So it’s a good mix of things to chose between, depending on my mood.
Ask them do they just watch one TV series at a time or sometimes watch multiple? (This worked better before streaming services allowed binging) Then they might understand how you can read multiple. It's like a show for your mind!
That’s a clever way to put it. It’s weird, because I usually only watch one TV series at a time.
I think with streaming its more common now to dedicate time to one series, granted i still split up comedy/light hearted vs serious shows. In the 90s though you used to have a series you'd watch on a particular date. So I used to watch Law and Order on Tuesdays, Friends, ER, on Thursdays, etc.
I'm from India, and I feel there is a decent readership of newspapers and magazines but not books, however even this is changing now that mobile data is cheaper and everyone is addicted to their phone watching reels and shorts. People read books primarily for exams (engineering, civil services, and such). Personally, I am not an avid reader, but I am trying to develop a habit.
My mom used to read A LOT (she was mostly into romance :P but still). Then she discovered YouTube on her phone... She had a habit of reading a few chapters every evening in bed before going to sleep. Guess what replaced that habit a few months ago? Yes, YouTube. She still reads, but a lot less and will watch YouTube instead.
Good luck with that!
In the UK You can get a sense of what books people generally read by seeing the turnover in charity shops(thrift shops), mostly celebrity autobiography and celebrity chef cooking books.
Although I suspect the rise of kindle and audiobooks has meant people’s reading is now much more underreported/ harder to figure out without digging a bit.
I would argue that you don't see what people are reading, only what they are getting rid of. Often because they didn't read it to begin with.
Most people tend to hold on to books they've read and enjoyed, or use the library if they want to read but not keep.
I'm like that. I give away books that I didn't like or that were "just ok", but I'm running out of shelf space. I still keep 20-30+ year old paper books that I loved.
Well I think the charity shops are more a measure of what people don't like. Most people I know keep most of their books.
From a 2016 study by the Italian Statistical Institute:
Source
That it is not great, but I don't know how to compare it with other countries. At least, the fact that young people read the most is encouraging.
Personally, I read a disproportionate amount of books, and most people close to me read at least 15 books a year. But, of course, it is just a correlation (I read a lot because my family read a lot, and people tend to befriend people with similar interests, including interest in books).
I was a voracious reader as a child, it's practically all I did. I was homeschooled until eighth grade and there wasn't much else to do, but I also loved reading anyway. Once I was in English classes in public school, was asked to read books that weren't of my choice and spent most of my time avoiding homework like that, I think it partially killed my love of reading. It's a shame because I would've enjoyed some of those books, but I got through school with cliff notes.
That time was also around 2005, when us young teenagers started getting phones for the first time. I am fairly convinced that my ADHD, dopamine hungry brain was more than happy to indulge in books when they were the only option, but once the shiny, cheap thrills of the internet were in the palm of my hand, it was all over.
I was really hoping that my love of reading would come back after I finally started treating the ADHD at age 29, but it hasn't. I think I've developed a sort of toxic idea of myself that I'm just not a reader. Not sure what's going to happen with that, but I miss reading.
Every time I pick up a book, I process the first 1-2 sentences in my mind, then my eyes keep reading the rest of the page, but my brain is somewhere else. I realize at the bottom of the page that I haven't processed what I was reading, so I go back up to the third sentence, read a few more sentences, and eventually my thoughts wander off again, so I go back up to the sixth sentence, lose track again, and eventually give up out of utter frustration.
I truly do not understand how I could read the entire LOTR trilogy as a twelve year old and now I can't get through more than a few pages of any book. It's honestly devastating.
I wonder if part of this is because my career for the past decade has largely involved reviewing complex legal documents, and so my job uses up the little energy for reading that I have. I suppose I'm at least glad that my little child self prepared the skills that I use to support myself financially.
Anyway, I would say about half of my friends enjoy reading frequently, the other half are a bit more scatterbrained/low attention span like me. I'm in the Midwest US.
Me and my partner are avid readers. I can't remember the exact figure but I think I read something like 34 books last year and she read 28.
This year has been significantly slower, I'm on 5 so far, other commitments and a newborn daughter becoming a boisterous toddler means I don't get the chance to pick up my book as often.
In regards to friends and family, my mum reads a couple of books a year, my dad is a fairly avid reader, getting through 5-10 a year. My sister-in-law is constantly reading books, like 30+ a year every year that I've known her.
We've got a few friends who are huge book readers as well. One is a historian and tends to just read non-fiction historical books (specifically around medieval Europe) and even fiction she reads tends to be fantasy set in medieval Europe or novels like the Song of Ice and Fire series or Lord of the Rings where the world is based on medieval European cultures (she really loves her medieval European history). Another friend is a high school English teacher so reads a lot for her job and for herself.
A message from someone coming out on the other side of a child based reading slump
My reading dropped off when I had kids too. But once our youngest was around 4-5 things got easier and I got back to around 30 books a year.
There hope!
I'm glad to hear that's the case haha, thanks for restoring hope that I'll get back to my regular reading schedule eventually. The giant pile of books I've got to read was starting to look a little daunting!
I live in a country that has the most books borrowed from the library, at least we used to have that record, dunno if it has changed.
Besides me, my cousin is the only one who I know reads daily. I have a few friends that read a book or two per year, my dad reads a lot but has years long pauses in between reading books.
Books do sell well here so I think the people do read quite a bit here, its just my personal cicrle of friends and family seems to be a bit lazy regarding reading. Its always "yeah but I can get the same info from a youtube video" or "yeah but I can just watch the movie/tv show", or my personal favourite "I just read the wikipedia plot section, that gives me enough info" -.-
Can you tell me which country that is? I understand if you care about privacy and won't, but you peaked my interest. I didn't know it was a known fact. :)
That would be Finland, I forgot to mention in the original comment. Sorry about that :)
A lot of people around me do read. But I live in a bubble of people who have the same interests and hobbies. So it might be skewed there.
People outside my bubble still do read. They don't read as much, but self-help and non-fiction books are pretty popular. Non fiction as in it's about some famous guy's life. Kind of non-fiction.
Romance is also still popular.
I consume a lot of books, more than other people. But I don't actually read as much anymore. I've been busy with work, so I've just been listening to audiobooks while I work to optimize my time.
I go through so many stories this way.
I do still read, but usually only if I don't like the audio book narration, or it doesn't exist, or it's a complicated-ish book that I need to pay a lot more attention to.
I think the desire to discuss a novel a book fades rather quickly with time. Maybe it’s just me, I have a poor memory for novels. This is why book clubs are great, most people cram it in by the next meeting so the conversation is good to go. I hope you can find one locally.