What are You Reading?

I've been doing a lot of networking lately on LinkedIn and Facebook. What cool tools those are! I don't even have to have real friends anymore because I can spend large chunks of time meeting, greeting and interacting with virtual ones!

Being the strictly scientific, dry and quantitative person that I am, I submitted a question on LinkedIn regarding book buying habits. I wanted to know what makes people buy books, and I wanted to know where they're making those purchases. The results have been interesting.

It seems the majority of those who answered are buying their books online, which is no surprise, since they are obviously internet users (being on LinkedIn and all). But many, many people said that, although they are purchasing online, they really like to go into bookstores and browse. "Every now and then I'll go in to a local bookstore out of guilt and buy my books there," wrote one person.

What was really neat, though, was the wide scope of folks who are still reading actual books that they can actually hold. Whether they buy them from Amazon or from a corner store, there seems to be nothing that compares to reading something in print. Not the computer, not Kindle ... nothing. I thought that was cool. One guy said he buys and reads five a week ("See the list of my 4000 favorite books at scribd link below and the 12 books I have recently written ..." he wrote); another says he reads about 15 a week. So, see, I'm normal. (I had to stick that in there for my husband.)

One of my new virtual friends suggested that we overreaders start a support group. "BAA, book addicts anonymous," He said. "Nice little sheep character as the logo. Done."

There was also a really wide variety of genres represented. People who answered (and there are 70+ at this time) were reading everything from textbooks to self-help to Planet of the Apes (I'm not even making that up). There were lots of business-related books in their hands, and also an occasional classic.

It's so fantastic to see that people are still buying books. I truly hope our children and grandchildren will always know the thrill of the smell and feel of opening up a brand new book.