2 in 5 Americans did not read a single book in 2025
mybooklist.clubI don't buy that anywhere near that many people read a book in 2025. People lie and say they read because they want to sound smarter and more cultured.
I read one book in 2025. Of course I read every day: news, documentation, emails and other messages, etc. It's probably the activity I spend more time doing than anything else.
You should fix that
Just to be clear you want OP to fix what?
The quality of books they are reading, or the quantity?
Both
1 in 5 Americans is functionally illiterate so.... yeah. There is no way this is true.
> don't buy that anywhere near that many people read a book in 2025
EDIT: Nvm
That's the opposite of what their age stats show
What’s the title for? Is it about “reading” or is it about “books” ?
A lot of people who say they “read books” really mean they bought one or checked it out from the library, then only dipped into it here and there, maybe a few paragraphs at a time.
I haven’t read a proper book cover to cover in years, probably not since high school. But I do read a lot every single day, either for my job or because I genuinely want to grow professionally. I’ll also read a few chapters from books friends or coworkers recommend, especially the parts that seem most relevant. I just don’t really see why I need to finish the whole thing if I’m already getting what I came for.
My parents, meanwhile, will read the same books over and over again, cover to cover, every year.
Replace "books" with "sustained reading for entertainment" and it's more clear what's meant. Reading a summary or occasional chapter isn't the same thing, nor is reading technical literature.
Note that this isn't an oblique way to frame your preferences as bad. They're simply a different kind of activity, like how writing commit messages is a different activity than writing a novel. There are different activities even within this definition of "reading". I primarily consume new books. My spouse usually re-reads old ones. One of us is better equipped for literary analysis while the other is better equipped for relatable conversations with normal people, but neither is a more "correct" way to read.
I've bookshelves full of obscure nonfiction but only dip into specific chapters when curiosity demands, which is most days. But every day it's a different book. I can't remember when I last read an entire book, it just seems inefficient. Get the info, appreciate the learning, move on.
"Sustained reading for entertainment" sounds like an ordeal rather than delight.
Well yeah, you're using them as reference books. You wouldn't necessarily approach a textbook the same way, since the point there is to guide you through a series of lessons that gradually build on each other. Similarly for narrative works. Jumping into the middle of a nonlinear narrative entirely misses the intentional choices behind the structure, for example.
You can read how you want, of course. The consequence is sometimes simply that you close yourself off from other aspects of the medium. There aren't many aspects bigger than narrative structure, but that's your choice to make.
The survey this is based on[1] counts listening to audiobooks as "reading", which can only inflate the numbers.
I have nothing against audiobooks, but they are not the same as reading. It is a passive consumption of the content. You can daydream or lose focus and the story keeps rolling on. If you lose focus while reading, the story stops. You may find that you've "read" a few sentences, but it's quickly self-correcting.
Additionally, reading forces you to parse tone, interpret context, and resolve syntactic ambiguity on your own. Listening to a narrator removes those tasks.
I think that this door was opened when we started accepting that reading graphic novels was the same as reading a book of text. Rather than elevating new(ish) media for storytelling for their own merit, we've lumped them into another medium that was already deemed "good".
All that said, listening to an audiobook or reading a graphic novel is still better than not reading a book at all.
1: https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/53804-most-a...
I used to think the same way as you about audiobooks but this year I had three weeks where I wasn't supposed to read a screen after eye surgery and so I tried some audiobooks. It took a few days but eventually I got to the point where it was indistinguishable from reading - where I could picture in my mind everything happening.
This is quite different from tv and film where you're just watching and not using your mind.
I think you are fairly unique in audiobook consumption though. I imagine most people (myself included when I do) consume audiobooks where they would have otherwise listened to podcasts or radio, meaning stochastically in the car, doing chores, generally during other activities.
If I were to sit down in my book corner chair, putting on an audiobook and leaning back, I can imagine I'd have the same experience as you, but that is when I would otherwise read a book the traditional way. Perhaps this will change when I get older and wish to rest my eyes and arms while taking in a book.
I'll double up here. For me, audiobooks are 'the same' as reading a book. Yes, I know they are not exactly the same, but the experience for me is pretty darn close enough.
Now, I use audiobooks because I can then take the dog for a walk and do other chores while listening to them. For me, it's a good way to get my mind working while my body is too. Plus, you can speed up the narration to some multiple so you're at the same pace as if you were reading anyway.
For me, it's no different than if I were a cigar roller with someone reading out a book to the lot of us.
Is it exactly the same? No, of course not. But if the alternatives to doing chores is 1) doing them with no auditory enjoyment 2) doing them with some podcast/radio station blaring topical news 3) doing them with a classic book
then, I'm going for 3. It's just the best use of time
I think you are fairly unique in your inability to listen to audiobooks. I talk with a lot of friends about books and have been in very long-running book clubs. Almost nothing differentiates book readers and book listeners. Mostly book readers don't know how to pronounce some character names.
The ability to picture the scene in your mind is not why listening to an audiobook is different from reading.
Put another way, reading involves:
1. Parsing and interpreting the words on the page.
2. Synthesizing the information in our heads (scenes, arguments, etc.)
3. Interpreting the synthesis (Does it work? Is there subtle or implied information in the synthesis? What comes next?)
My argument is that audiobooks drastically alter step 1.
Let's not denigrate any forms of media though. They all have their unique benefits. You can use your mind or not during the consumption of any of them.
I'm kind of shocked that 60% of all US adult citizens did report reading a book during the year. That seems much higher than I would have expected.
It is a self-reported measure, and it's phrased "read or listened to"--I don't normally think of "listening to audiobooks" when I think about reading, and I can imagine how that might broaden the pool. Other sources (e.g. the NEA survey at [0]) seem to put print book readership closer to 50%.
Though at least one survey [1] points out the wide range of genres that count as books for this purpose: manga, the Bible/Torah/Quran, cookbooks...
[0] https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-... [1] https://gitnux.org/readership-statistics/
3 in 5 actually seems pretty high, in particular if they really did read a complete book. I tend to only start and never finish them.
> 8 Books - Average number of books Americans read in 2025. However, the median American only read 2 books, showing that heavy readers significantly increase the overall average.
I don't know, my reaction is "wow, Americans truly love reading," or alternatively, "they really like to boast their numbers even in anonymous surveys."
Even if you only read fiction, 8 books are like 500k to 100k words. That's a lot of words!
Well, some of the words are duplicates.
I just scrolled through my Libby history to check. I checked out 25 books in 2025. Several of them I didn't finish, so the number is closer to 15 completed books, but that's only though Libby. I also finished an entire fiction series that wasn't available on Libby, which was an additional 7 books.
Series is really what makes the number so high IMO. I read a lot of fanasy/sci-fi which is often a lot of trilogies. Reading just one trilogy puts you above the median. I have several friends that read only 3-4 books last year, but several that also read as much or more than me. Discussing the books amongst friends helps, as we recommend books to each other. Book-tok and other book-centric social-media circles are huge.
And it may seem like a lot but that was spread across an entire year. I often read a few chapters before bed each night, but it often depends on how hooked I am on the book, I make more time for it when I'm more hooked on a book, or on a deadline to return the book to the library.
Audiobooks helps carry the number higher as well. Its a lot easier to "read" a book when you can do it while doing other things. Although I prefer to sit down and dedicate time for e-books, I do listen to some audiobooks as well, and many of my friends exclusively read via audiobooks.
I don't count in words but page numbers, but reader like me read ~100 page/hour (depending on the book it can be more or less). A 600 page book is 6 hours, which is roughly as long as the train ride to Paris (3 hours, both way) I take twice a month. ~24 books just to pass the time (in truth I also read non-fiction to sleep, and fiction during the weekend, so I'm probably above 40).
My wife and I are both "book a week minimum" readers. In 2025 she finished 80 novels. I was in the mid 70's. We've been doing this basically since middle school uninterrupted. Reading is just our preferred form of consumption based entertainment. Last year we watched maybe five movies and I finally got my wife to sit through the fourth season of The Wire. The only "modern" show we're actively watching is The Pitt.
It's starting to sound like reading books has a similar distribution as consuming cannabis. The "daily" users account for 3/4ths of the spending on cannabis despite being 1/3rd of overall users. The heavy consumers consume A LOT and skew the statistics.
I read a lot as well but I do find that my retention has slipped compared to some years ago.
What is going on with the quality of the comments on HN? I could have never predicted these comments here 10 years ago.
It’s almost like they’re bragging about not reading
What fraction of Americans are capable of reading a book (i.e. not functionally illiterate)?
4 in 5: https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-fac...
> 21% of U.S. adults are classified as functionally illiterate, unable to complete basic reading tasks.
Geez, that's a high number.
It includes the president
The definitions are a bit vague - does it have to be cover to cover or part of a book? I seldom read cover to cover these days because it's easy to just get the bits you are interested in.
I admit I have not properly read a single book in a couple of years.
These days when it comes to technical stuff I much more prefer to fill in gaps by reading articles or documentation. Technical books are so long it feels like authors are paid by words.
And when it comes to fiction I have really leaned into audiobooks. My eyes are too tired from computer work, and I can combine audio with other activities like jogging or cooking.
There are some "technical" audiobooks as well, but only a small category of technical books makes sense in the audio format.
Does reading to a toddler count? If it does, I'm bringing up the mean to say the least.
I think we should get double credit for every reading of Goodnight Moon.
I assume you know, by now, that everyone poops
I have never been more certain.
My family is doing our part to keep the average up (despite me being part of the family). I read one book last year, and it wasn't so much a single story as a collection of short non-fiction stories. I've read various chapters of some business books. But most of my reading is shorter form content like on here or articles.
But! We take our kids to the library every couple of weeks, and while we do let them check out Nintendo games, they also will each pick a stack of books. So my kids are going through 4-8 books a month. And my wife is part of a book club at the library so she's doing 8-10 in a year at least.
But for myself, I just have a hard time sitting down to do it. By the time I'm done with work and chores, it's late at night, and my brain barely has enough power to handle a TV show.
How do all y'all readers with young kids do it? How do you find the time?
The time is there; you just have to find the willpower :)
Take the TV time and trade it for reading a page or two before turning the TV on. I think it just requires some time to adapt to generating a second wave of energy. It won't be there most days.
The alternative is coffee. I did a two month stint of sleeping only 11pm-4a last year (had a single 1.5 yr kid at the time). It was tough and ultimately my body's mechanics started to fail, so I don't recommend that. Now that I have two under 3, I strive for more sleep and therefore only a chapter per week (or a section per week on math/science textbooks).
Read something simple and fun after kids go to bed while you're staring into the abyss before you go to bed.
Science fiction and fantasy work well. The Dungeon Crawler Carl books really help my brain take a break without actively disengaging the actual thinking parts.
> while you're staring into the abyss before you go to bed
I feel like I'm doing it wrong (or maybe right?), but I don't have that time. I'm asleep a minute after I lay down. In fact it's been an issue because the kids sometimes want me to lay down with them to fall asleep, and then I fall asleep in their bed!
I hear audiobooks work well
Unfortunately I can't stand them for fiction. I love podcasts of non-fiction, but I can't keep track of the characters in fiction audiobooks. :(
Your family and mine.
I retired last year, my wife and I count reading among our hobbies. Our library offers two services that loan ebooks.
I’ll read about 8 or 10 books a month, maybe finishing half. Wifey reads at a ferocious pace, completely reading a book every day or two.
It’s nice.
Out of curiosity I looked at my ios books app to see how many I read and it says I only read one book in 2025 and one book in 2026. This is completely wrong - I've read 4 books since Jan 1 and last year maybe 10 to 15 books (mostly trashy sci-fi and fantasy)
When I looked closer in the app it's because all of my books are 99% finished because I didn't click in every page until the end. Annoying.
I use my garmin connect app to track exercise, blood pressure, water consumption, etc. it would be cool to have something similar for the mind.
I still read a few books per year, but I wonder if this still matters as much as it used to. In the past, I used to read 10-20 books per year and now it's more like 3-5.
The reduction is from a lot more time spent on educational series on YouTube and other paid video sources. Is it intrinsically bad if I trade 1 book for 10 hours of instructional videos?
Somehow I thought it would have been lesss...
I am also surprised it's so low (the number who haven't read). I would have expected 3 in 5 or even 4 in 5 americans to have not read a single book in 2025. I wonder if these stats include "tried to finish a book (and failed)" rather than actual completion stats.
Maybe it's 1 readers, 2 honest people, and 2 people who preferred to lie than confess they didn't read a single book.
Parents reading books to kids, students reading books for classes, and people who end up reading at least one book a year for work (many teachers or professors, for instance) set a fairly-high lower bound on this.
Much of the rest is people who exclusively read very easy books from one or two genres (“romance”, true crime, airport thriller/mystery, young-adult fantasy, and self-help/business-guru, mostly). That’s especially going to dominate the shelves of the set of folks with books-read counts far higher than one per year. Whether that crowd counts much toward a measure of the exercise of quality, general literacy, is a judgement call, but those readers are the engine of what little remains of the market for new books.
(There’s a niche market that’s commercially viable that involves books laser-focused at being optioned for TV or movies, but it’s as cliquish as you’d expect and hard to break into, and of course other genres still support a tiny number of super-stars)
Aren't 1 out of 5 Americans functionally illiterate? [1] There is no way this is correct.
[1] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...
Yes they are very illiterate, especially in math; of which you are an excellent example.
? What's going on man? I... didn't use any math in my comment?
The commenter above is saying that your suggestion that there is some contradiction here indicates a mathematical error. The post claims 60% have read a book; you claim 20% can't read at all; both can be true.
Yeah… I didn’t say they both weren’t true due to a mathematical error… I was insinuating that the survey is probably flawed because if 20% of Americans can’t read… they likely aren’t even taking this survey.
It is also my uneducated guess that the actual percentage of Americans who haven’t read a single book in the past year is MUCH higher than 40%. Maybe a survey of HN commentators but not of the general population.
Non-fiction books tended to be padded with a bunch of fluff to get them to saleable book-length.
More surprised that 3 did
Who cares? So much books are just slop (pulp), or, these days, over 70% filler. Even if they are "decent" fiction or non-fiction, the majority still are almost entirely shallow entertainment, whether explicitly or implicitly as simplistic "edutainment" of some kind. There are blogs, articles, technical papers, heck, even user discussions that contain far greater depth and/or demand far greater attention and mental work than the vast majority of "books" out there today.
Just thinking "reading books" is something good or impressive borders on anti-intellectual in the world of the internet. A much better indicator of real intelligence is e.g., does a person read actual scientific papers or technical documents, or sites like ACX, HN, SeriousEats (or any other site which dives into any hobby or art with research and with long-form articles), do they know about e.g. SciHub and LibGen and Anna's Archive, do they know about people like James Hoffmann if they are into coffee, or Kenji Lopez if into home cooking, and I'm sure hundreds of other careful and obscure podcasts and individuals, discussion forums, and other digital textual sources.
Yes, please have read some serious books and works in your life, at some point (preferably some classic and modern literature and philosophy, but anything with real depth is good). But worship of "books" simpliciter is pure midwit in 2025 (and was so already in 2010, at bare minimum).
I find enjoyment in everything you mentioned (been reading since the Slate Star Codex days!) and I read a good mix of all book types, so I want to offer some gentle push-back. Reading fun fantasy books allows you to take your inner child and imagination out to play, not everything needs to be serious, intellectually challenging, or highly stimulating. Sometimes you have to let your imagination run free and just have fun. Holding space for your imagination to run free also opens yourself up to receiving inspiration or new unexpected ideas.
At the start of this year I read through Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. This book wasn't telling me anything new, but it reminded me of a lot of things that I had forgotten while making me hold space for those ideas related to creativity.
Sometimes I encounter criticism of Newton for having "wasted" time studying and learning alchemy, and people lament how much more he could've gotten done if it wasn't for those distractions. But we don't know if those alchemy-related detours are load-bearing for his achievements!
The sweetest of fruits is fertilized by mountains of shit.
> I want to offer some gentle push-back
Nothing you've said here is push-back or contradicts anything I've said, IMO.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying slop, junk food, fast food, camp, kitsch, low-brow entertainment, or any kind of mindless dreck or low-quality anything. The same goes for enjoying mediocrity. It would be hell to only ever spend time consuming tedious, difficult, challenging, or novel things.
What is wrong is pretending that a broad category like "books" is any kind of indicator of intelligence or meaningful cultural cachet. I.e. "'Americans are reading less books' is bad" suggests zero consideration of things like differences in value and depth, and that is what is anti-intellectual (or midwit) about such remarks.
I believe it would not be quite uſeleſs, to allow young ladies, according to their leiſure, and their capacity, the reading of ſome ſelect profane authors, that have nothing dangerous in them for the paſſions. This likewiſe is the means to give them a diſtaſte of moſt plays and romances: give them therefore into their hands Greek and Roman hiſtories, in the beſt tranſlations ...
Instructions for the education of daughters, 1750
Right. It's not that you read (or where you read it, or how much you read), but what you read that matters. Always has been the case.
Replace "read" with "consume" for contemporary relevance, or to make it particularly clear how dumb "Reading [consuming] lots is good".
EDIT - A contemporary bestselling book example: https://www.amazon.com/Morning-Glory-Milking-Cambric-Creek-e...
I am in the "did not read a single book" bucket, and have been for many years. I just don't like reading books, and never have.
To be pedantic, this means than 2/5 americans read more than a single book or no books at all. Which would mean that 3/5 of americans did read a single book.
I have hope in know that at least 40% of American's are still literate. I hope to read more books than last year (about 5 last year favorite being John Greens TB book)
That's actually better than I feared.
I highly doubt 60% have read book.
If you click the article it actually says "read or listened", so this includes also audiobooks, which is cheating, those 60% would shrink significantly without audiobooks.
And I don't think this is really US specific, it won't be much better elsewhere, most of the people just don't have energy/time to read book, they will rather watch content or read shorter articles.
Me as European also didn't read (or listened) book in years, I don't see the added value. After working and taking care of kids I will watch movie/TV show and maybe short time Youtube. I have to read lot of law documents and user guides as part of my work, those can be longer than some short books though, so not sure what this tells about me.
Meanwhile my kids are bookworms, they can easily read 5 books per week and I read book to them every evening (I didn't count these as my books, it's books for kids, I read to them for sure at least 20-30 books per year).
I read 29 books in 2025. I'm making up for all the young slackers.
A lot of effort has gone to comment without reading the stats. I'll read the survey for you all:
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...
Yes it includes audiobooks in "books".
physical books were around three times more popular than ebooks or audiobooks.
75% did not read anything to children (kind of surprising 25% of the population has access to pre-literate children)
15% don't read books they own, which is surprisingly high. A third borrowed their books from the library.
54% of the population inaccurately think they "own" an ebook as opposed to reality. 40% "a book you accessed for free online" Sure thats all project gutenberg LOL.
Mysteries and Crime are top of the charts. I have no idea if "computer books" count as 11% other non-fiction or academic or hobbies.
Only 51% have a library card. I know they are cracking down hard at my library, show up physically with proof of residence or it gets cancelled. Its harder to get a library card in my community than to vote, get a job, or register for school, your community may vary.
Most people go to the library less than once a month. This sounds about right.
Shockingly 20% of people never go to the library just to hang out. As a parent of older kids I do that a LOT, drop them off then go silently read or compute or whatever at the library. The attempt at turning libraries from book warehouses into makerspaces seems to not be working very well according to this survey.
People own a surprisingly small number of books. A "large full height bookcase" puts you in the elite. I'm kind of surprised at that.
Virtually no one hoards digital or audio books, I am apparently a far extreme outlier in that regard LOL. I'm easily five figures each. From, uh, totally legit sources.
Most people actually own about two dozen books and think most other people own about twice as many around fifty.
Since I was a little kid I always read a little before bedtime and it seems this is very popular.
Most people don't organize their books but think they have an easy time finding them (not unlike how people organize computer files...)
Surprisingly there is zero to very minimal demographic difference in every category among people who do not read, which I find very surprising and unlikely.
reading books these days is more akin to visiting the theatre. its a special cultural occasion that you might do once a year to remind yourself that this stuff is still out there, but for actual practical purposes reading books is probably the slowest method of ingesting information today.
The other 2 are lying.
this doesnt surprise me at all
i'm actually surprised it's only 2 in 5
What about audio books, magazines, news, websites, studies?
Reading is so much more than curated dead trees.
People that think "reading books" generically is anything to be impressed about have been woefully out of touch for well over a decade.
After you've done about 50 or so major classics, selected broadly from different thinkers and authors, it is clear the vast majority of most books have negligible additional value. This can all be done quickly in your late teens to early twenties, after that, there is no real need to read more than a book or two in a year, and even then, it is not usually worth reading those one or two in entirety.
Digital textual sources like the ones you mention have far more continued and sustained value at this point.
I'd say more like 500. There is no end to worthwhile books to read, you just won't find them in the NYT best sellers. The complete works of Shakespeare is like 35 "books" already.
Agreed to your larger point that reading is of itself not worthwhile. Reading great works of literature broadly is.
I waffled on choosing 100-250 initially, thinking similarly as you for authors like Shakespeare, Freud, Nietzsche, etc.
But then I kind of thought, for most people, that is probably overkill. If you stick with just one text from each great author, 50 is still a huge variety relative I think to what was available to people in the past. More is great, but not necessary: there are plenty of other sources of depth in life beyond texts, and text doesn't work well for everyone either.
Fair enough. I'd say there are over 500 "worth reading" but I agree with you too that with 50 or fewer you can have enough. People used to re-read texts dozens of times and that may actually be better in some ways than the constant novelty.
Yup, don't disagree with you at all here.
I'd count an audiobook as a book. I'd count something published online in the vague shape of a book as a book (e.g. if you read a story or a book-style non-fiction work published electronically). I would not count "news", though, for instance.
Whether you read on a paper book or on an e-reader, a full book is much deeper than just a magazine or news article.
But often NOT deeper than a proper long-form article, technical document(ation), scientific or academic article, autistic blog post, or even proper discussion (e.g. forum, or following a post). Most modern books are padded and loaded with filler, or just entertainment anyway, and have no significant depth to speak of.