the great unread
March 13th, 2007 | Published in books, culture, publishing, reading | 4 Comments
Fifty-five per cent of those polled for the survey, commissioned by Teletext, said they buy books for decoration, and have no intention of actually reading them.
I wonder if that’s better or worse than buying a book with every intention of reading it but never getting to it. It must be worse, since I was catatonic for about a minute after reading that sentence.
March 14th, 2007at 10:54 am(#)
wait. No. I hate poorly written blogs. Actually, I hate all poorly-thought-out criticism, blog or otherwise.†Best Camille Paglia parody ever. In other, better words: “Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?†Now: misdiagnosis equals malpractice. Then: misdiagnosis equals… poetry? Orwell on how to make money writing. And for you Darwin obsessives out there
March 13th, 2007at 10:06 pm(#)
That is terrible! And kinda hard to believe.
I wonder if I can use that data to convince my bosses to spend a little more on their covers… “You just have to increase the photo budget, half the people out there are only buying the books to decorate with. So they have to look good.”
Ha ha!
March 15th, 2007at 9:52 am(#)
Pretty brilliant idea, if you ask me! And I wouldn’t be surprised if the US statistics are even more shocking.
March 20th, 2007at 8:49 am(#)
[...] and fun to look at. I know I enjoy my stacks around the house. But then I read this post over at fade theory about how “55% of people buying books do so just to decorate with them and have no intention [...]