Seattle tops Amazon’s ‘Most Well-Read Cities’ list

Seattle is filled with tech geeks — and bookworms.

According to Amazon, our fair city tops their list of the Most Well-Read Cities in America. Not so surprising, really. Several factors help boost our reading status, including our highly educated population, bookish community that includes fantastic public libraries and local bookstores that support authors and events, and long, dark months of dreary weather that lend themselves to, well, reading.

It also helps that we have one of the world’s most famous book fans in town. Bill Gates is often posting his picks on Gates Notes, including his list of the seven books you must read this summer.

Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas round out the top three. Amazon developed the list by compiling sales data from books, magazines and newspaper sales from both print and Kindle, dating from April 2014 to 2015 on a per capita basis with cities with populations over 500,000.

Other interesting factoids? Seattle readers read everything — Amazon found that we not only buy the most books, but the most magazines and newspapers, too. Californians also love to read, with San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose all making the top 20. And just what are they reading in Las Vegas? The genre that puts all other genres to shame in terms of sales: romance.

Oh, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl continues to dominate the charts.

Need some inspiration? Visit Amazon’s recommendations for summer reading, or hey, drop into a bookstore or library, and strike up a conversation about what you absolutely must read this summer.

You can view Amazon’s top 20 in the chart below: