42% of US college graduates never read another book after college

Googling "How many Books do Average Americans Read"

Gave me the following link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...

Which states: "One in Four Read No Books Last Year"

Which suggests that 3/4 read at least one book _Last Year_. (that is, in 2006)

They also had the following factoid:

"Among those who said they had read books, the median figure _ with half reading more, half fewer _ was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger."

I consider this stat debunked.

Does anyone have evidence to back this up? I didn't look too hard, but the Wikipedia citation links to a page which links to pages that don't have any actual information on them.

The Wikipedia page has been changed, but the original listed:

* 33 percent of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

* 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

* 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

* 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

* 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

True, false, or Wikipedia?

But 52% of quoted statistics are false

As far as I can tell, aforementioned statistics are bogus. I've removed them from Wikipedia. Burden of proof, etc.

According to the page: 33 percent of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.[7][8]

So you're more likely to read a book if you graduate high school, but don't graduate from college than if you do graduate from college?

Also, 80% of families didn't read or buy a book in the last year? Almost all of my friends and family members are avid readers. Does this mean that my friends and family members are the only people in north America keeping the literature industry alive? Seems unlikely.

Informal poll: how fast do you read, in pages/min? Assume typical fiction paperback pages.

My girlfriend is an extremely fast reader, somewhere around 3 pages/min. E.g. she just read A Game of Thrones in a couple days.

I'm not a slow reader by any means, but even a two-fold speed boost would make it dramatically easier to finish books; I have too many competing interests to spend more than an hour on any given book per day, and if it's going to take me a week to finish a book, there are just too many opportunities to put it aside and start something else.

someone wiped the stats -- the direct link with the original statistics is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Literacy_in_the_Un...

I never read a book in college, but have read several (dozens?) after. Just fwiw.

Odd. My reading went way up after college.

The first time I heard this stat I followed up with the Jenkins Group, the group cited here. I couldn't find anything about it on their site: http://www.bookpublishing.com/ and I tried to contact them for more information but never heard back.

I think it's complete BS.