Boston has fewer bookstores than San Diego. Worse tans, too.

According to the website LiteraryTraveler.net, Boston--home to millions of universities and untold book clubs operated by Jodi Piccoult-obsessed soccer moms--has fewer bookstores than San Diego.

This should sound devastating. Boston? Fewer bookstores than San Diego?? Shouldn't Harvard and MIT and Boston College and Suffolk and Simmons and any other whatchamacallit school single-handedly keep bookstores in business?

But let's look at some opinions I'll pretend are facts:

Odds that you read blogs? 1 in 1.

You're reading a blog. This would suggest you're literate. Either that, or you do a great job at bluffing people. That doesn't mean you necessarily read anything literature related. You know, reading reading.

You're not alone if you don't read read. According to the website Book of Odds, the National Endowment of the Arts says 50% of Americans actually read literature in a given year. That either sounds impressive or depressing, depending on how optimistic a person you are. If you're a natural pessimist, go ahead, wipe your tears. I'll wait.

See, the NEA only defines "reading literature" as reading any one book--novel, short stories, poems, maybe a play if you're so inclined--in a year. One. Now, listen, I know the last few Harry Potter books started closing in on a thousand pages, but this is a little ridiculous. Doing something only once a year doesn't make someone an avid participant. I probably flap my arms like I can fly at least once a year, but that doesn't make me out to be an entrepreneur in human flight avionics.

That 50% is heavily skewed to people reading fiction, with 47% reporting that was their preference. This is bad news for the poets of the world. Those reporting they read poetry dropped from 12.1% to 8.3%. Well, there are only so many rhymes someone can make about a man from Nantucket.

The NEA also says that the majority of people reading are between the ages of 55 to 64, but that's followed closely by college-aged people of 18-24. So, in reality, if you're retired or in school, you read. Once you have a job you cease reading for 30 years. I like to think this massive global recession has allowed more time for reading. Woo-hoo, financial crisis upside!! ((high five))

The odds a woman reads literature in a year are 1 in 1.72, versus 1 in 2.39 for a man. I have no excuses for my gender.

Lastly, the story mentions that the odds a person buys 11 or more books in a year are 1 in 3.7, which is better than buying no books at all (1 in 5) or buying only one to three books (1 in 4.35). Those "Tuesdays with Morrie" book clubs are single-handedly keeping Barnes & Noble in business it seems.

All of these facts are very disheartening. It's a downer for an English book geek like myself. It makes me want to get off this computer and go watch the Celtics game on tv and forget all this.