How much do you read in your home?

Infographic courtesy of Russia Beyond the Headlines. The top shows the number of hours readers in various countries read per week, based on the World Culture Score Index. The bottom shows the results of a 2011 survey by Superjob.ru of 1,600 readers of the types of books they like to read.


I saw this on Tumblr and reblogged it. US is ranked here as 23rd. I added a note saying that they must not have surveyed very many book bloggers or my son who I have to take books away from sometimes to get him to do something else.

I was thinking, though, about how many hours my family really does read. My husband is not really into reading. He'll occasionally pick up a book, mostly religious in nature, or about Star Wars, or Nonfictional, but not very often. He might read two books a year, maybe. Then there's my kids. I read a couple books to my 2-year-old every day. My 4-year-old somehow misses being read to quite a bit (I need to correct that) and my 6-year-old fights reading because she has been struggling with it, but both of them still look at books all the time. Then there's the son I was talking about who is eight, almost nine, who reads a lot as long as he's interested in the book. He read The Hobbit in a couple of days and the Percy Jackson series in a week. We homeschooled this last year and so we read a lot, much more than if my kids were attending a school, mostly because we were studying Ancient History and because homeschooling doesn't take eight hours, but only about four, so we had plenty of time to do it.

This summer we've already been watching tv, been on the computer, and played video games too much. I was thinking that probably in most homes when kids are done doing homework or whatnot, they probably turn to those and not to a book. Something I don't want to happen in my house. I want my kids reading and actively playing with toys or outside more than the time they are sitting in front of a screen, but how do I get them to want to do that - to enjoy reading or being active as much, if not more, than other things.

I was talking to my husband about why he doesn't really read that much. He doesn't really view reading the same way I do with how good it is to always be reading something. We talked about our differences growing up. He was read to when he was really young, but then in grade school and later years they didn't read together as a family and his parents didn't read a lot, so that just wasn't his home environment. I'm sure that this is really common. He does have three brothers, though that read off and on. In my home growing up, we read books as a family all the time. We would sit and read a chapter of a book together almost every night almost all through high school. I don't know how we had time to do that, but for my dad it was a priority. There is something about reading a book aloud with your kids, even when they're older, and sharing the experience with them. We also went to bookstores and got to pick out a book or two once in a while for a date with my dad. My parents were always reading something and still do. So, that's the environment I grew up in and probably had a huge influence in why I love reading so much today. I have always been an avid reader, except when I was in college, but that was because I really didn't have time after reading all my assigned chapters for school.

What are your thoughts? Did you grow up in a reading home and do you do that in your own home, or is it basically just you who reads? Do you think the US should be reading more?