Monday, October 15, 2007

World champion readers

According to a survey conducted by the Academy of Sciences' Czech Literature Institute and the National Library, 88% of Czech women and 77% of men read one or more books a year or, on average 83% of Czechs read at least one book every year. An average Czech reads 16 books a year.

39% of Czechs read one to six books a year, 16% of the population read seven to twelve books a year while 14% devour 13 to 24 books a year. These are called stable readers.

9% read up to 50 books a year and 6%, known as 'passionate readers', read over 50 books a year. Wahhhh!!!

At the other end of the spectrum, 17% of Czechs do not read a single book in a year (here we call them Malaysians) compared to the European Union where the average is 42 % (who do not read).

These are some figures for some other European countries (ie., percentage of people who don't read any book at all): Sweden -- 19%, Finland ­-- 24%, Britain -- 25% and Portugal -- 67%. (Poor Jose Saramago, but then Portugal has a Nobel Literature laureate.)

Here is a brief of how an average Czech spends his leisure time each day: 41 minutes a day reading books, 30 minutes a day reading newspapers and magazines, 111 minutes a day watching TV, 113 minutes on the radio, and 86 minutes a day on the internet. That is over six hours of leisure (but I guess they would probably do other things while they are listening to the radio.) And 95% of university graduates are readers. (I wonder if the ratio is reversed in Malaysia?)

The survey is quite comprehensive. You can read it all at the Radio Praha website: http://www.radio.cz/en/article/96006

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