The most well-read cities in the U.S.? Cambridge, Mass., tops the list

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Who are the biggest bookworms in the country? According to Amazon.com, the residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts—home to Harvard University and MIT—live in the most well-read city in the United States.

“In anticipation of the summer reading season—one of our favorite times to catch up on pleasure reading and unwind with the new titles being published this season—we’re excited to reveal the Most Well-Read City list,” Mari Malcolm, Amazon.com's managing editor of Books, said in a statement.

The online bookseller took a look at its 2011 sales figures so far, crunching the numbers for books, magazines, and newspapers sold in both print and Kindle formats. And the online marketplace found that, on a per-capita basis and for cities with more than 100,000 residents, the people who live in these 20 places really, really love to read:

1. Cambridge, Massachusetts
2. Alexandria, Virginia
3. Berkeley, California
4. Ann Arbor, Michigan
5. Boulder, Colorado
6. Miami, Florida
7. Salt Lake City, Utah
8. Gainesville, Florida
9. Seattle, Washington
10. Arlington, Virginia
11. Knoxville, Tennessee
12. Orlando, Florida
13. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
14. Washington, D.C.
15. Bellevue, Washington
16. Columbia, South Carolina
17. Saint Louis, Missouri
18. Cincinnati, Ohio
19. Portland, Oregon
20. Atlanta, Georgia

Surprised to see a some of those names on the most well-read list? Don't be. Most of them are home to major universities, and even people who live in Disney's back yard still like to crack open a book and imagine their own Magic Kingdom from time to time.

What's surprising to us, though, is the fact that some of the most populated—and most traditionally bookish—cities didn't make the cut. New York City, the largest city in the U.S., isn't on the list, for example, and neither is Minneapolis, which was named the most-literate city in the country back in 2008. (Since this was the first year they compiled the list, Amazon representatives told me that they had no expectations about which cities would be on it.)

So, what are these well-read people reading? Cantabrigian go for the serious stuff, it seems; according to Amazon's analysis, Cambridge was also the city that ordered the most non-fiction books. The residents of Boulder ordered the most books in the cooking, food, and wine category. Kids are in control in Alexandria, which bought the most children's books. And the Sunshine State seems to take its summer reading seriously: Florida was the only state to have three cities in the top 20.
Post Source:http://shine.yahoo.com/