the uk is topping europe’s literary spending league:

Demand for books is also strong in the UK, with about 60% of British respondents to a Mintel poll saying they have bought a book in the last year compared with just 40% in Spain and Germany. About 21% of UK and French respondents said they bought 10 books a year, while the rest of Europe lagged behind with just 13%. my contribution:

mysql> select count(*) from books where 
    -> bought and bought_on >= '2001-11-08';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      121 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)

and that’s just the ones i’ve not begged, borrowed or stolen and bothered typing into my database…

i do think the “nation of bookworms” title would make more sense if they polled people on how many books they’ve read rather than just bought though. here’s my contribution to that and i’m surprised myself that it shows me reading faster than i buy!

mysql> select count(*) from books where
    -> readit AND date_read >= '2001-11-08';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      126 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)