A scary statistic

[were_gopher]

The average British household has 138 volumes on its shelves, less than half of which have been read

I think that's the size of the stack of 'read then chuck back in the charity box' stack by my bed. This is apart from the 'read and keep stack' across the room (5 of the large cloth bags with stick handles + 3 folding crates).

Comments

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

That is a very sad statistic. What is the point of buying a book and then not reading it. I must admit my purchase of actual physical books has gone down since getting my Kindle, But at the last count you'd have to add a nought to that figure.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I have lots of books I don't 'read' - mostly reference works- so if they're including dictionaries and encyclopedias in the 'unread' statitsics (and I suspect they are) it's not surprising that they're 'uread'.

[aunty_marion]

Dictionaries - both languages (French, German, Latin, Welsh, Japanese as well as English) and things like thesauruses, dictionaries of quotations, etc; encyclopaedias - health, gardening, home maintenance, birds, etc; atlases, and other maps; books of collections of poetry, Collected Shakespeare, G&S... And then there's the FICTIONAL equivalents! Klingon dictionary, Star Fleet Manuals/Star Atlases ... I could go on. Yes, many of them partially or occasionally mostly 'read', but certainly not all of them.