Melville House Books

January 7, 2009

Where American readers are…..

by Dennis Johnson

The results of this year’s America’s Most Literate Cities poll have been announced. This year, according to Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, who conducted the poll, the cities that were one and two last year — Minneapolis and Seattle — have tied for first place this year. (See last year’s results here.) And while it seems a tad unfair to have separated the Twin Cities — was Brooklyn separated from Manhattan? — third place went to St. Paul. As for New York City, the country’s publishing capital, well, it came in a distant 23rd. In breakdown categories, Seattle also won for most bookstores per capita; Cleveland for most libraries; and Atlanta for being the most Internet literate city, a category partly determined by “number of Internet book orders per capita.”