Tuesday, December 19, 2006
literate capital
Whenever I visit the Washington DC area, I am amazed at how many bookstores there are - both new and used - and how good they are - within a 15-20 mile radius of downtown. To my surprise, considering what most of us think of politicos, it feels like a highly literate city. For example, in one of the malls there's a 4-floor Borders with shelves crammed full of books from way far down the back lists, not just best sellers, and one of the Barnes & Noble stores has two entire walls of books in foreign languages. Just fantastic. Some friends have retorted that I'm just reacting to something quirky and am wrong about DC in general. Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear America's Most Literate Cities study wherein one finds that DC is ranked third out of all U.S. cities with populations over a quarter of a million. So there!! In terms of simply the number of bookstores, DC is 10th so that means 9 cities ahead of it. San Francisco and Seattle, not surprisingly, are at the top. I think I'll take a driving tour of the higher nine, soon, given how rewarding a book trip to DC always proves to be. Incidentally, Denver is famous for awesome bookstores and comes in at 12th. Boston and NYC, home of highly literate intelligensia, make it at 30th and NYC respectively. Is this a great country, or what?

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Permalink | | posted by jau at 12:52 PM


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Anonymous Anonymous — at 11:10 PM, December 19, 2006:
I see Cincinnati, where I work, is in the top ten. This doesn't surprise me much. Just like the "rank by" lists say, good libraries, lots of bookstores, etc. I love the Cincinnati Libraries. Anyone who lives in Ohio can check out books for free. The main library is only 5 blocks from where I work. It take up two entire city blocks and is several stories tall. They are also quite lax on over due fines. You don't have to pay until you owe more than $10 and then you just have to pay it down to below $10.
 

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