This showed up in my email this morning thanks to Google and I couldn’t not comment. 1 in 4 adults in America didn’t read a book last year. How can you go an entire year without reading a single book? Maybe it’s jsut the book worm in me, but I couldn’t go an entire week without picking up a book at least once. And as a parent I can’t go an entire day without reading a kid’s book.

I searched for the actual poll and found this article from MSNBC that says women are more avid readers than men. Here are some interesting statistics:

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

Yet the poll also says

Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn’t read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

I found that comparison interesting as the general stereotype for Democrats and Liberals is that they are mostly minorities and less religious. The areas with the highest readers was also interesting, as the midwest and South tend to have higher populations of Republicans and Conservatives.

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions.

What does it all mean? Maybe that more Americans should turn off the TV and the computer and pick up a good book. I’ve got a short list of books I recommend picking up. Feel free to suggest more and I’ll add them to the list.