Literate Locations: Amazon Announces The Most Well-Read Cities

Via Gallycat:

When people describe their hometown with superlatives, it always seems devoid of anything literary: best sports team, biggest meatball ever cooked, largest ball of yarn. Now book nerds finally have a way to tout their hometown hubris—Amazon announced its "Most Well-Read Cities in America" list this week.

At first, between all the online sales, bookstores, libraries, and bazillions of books already in circulation, qualifying something like this seems to border on impossible. Thankfully, Amazon just narrowed the scope to people who recently gave them money: their system was based on sales data of all books, magazines, and newspapers in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.

The winner? Why, the great city of Alexandria, Virginia, of course. Second and third went to Cambridge, MA, and Berkeley, CA, respectively. Maybe next year, your town could hold the "most literate" title—instead of being home to the biggest Chihuahua costume party. (And yes, that's a real thing. I'm looking at you, Kansas City.)

You can find the full press release and a breakdown of category winners here.

Photo via guardian.co.uk.