Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Las Vegas plummets on literate cities list

Las Vegas' literate behavior is in decline, according to a new analysis of various big cities' love for reading.

But the finding is arbitrary, an academic who recently coined the term "rankism" said.

Tied last year as the 13th best city with Boston, Las Vegas slipped 34 spots in the latest study by Jack Miller, a researcher and chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who recently released his ranking of "America's most literate cities" for the second consecutive year.

Las Vegas now rings in at 47, just behind Philadelphia and two notches above New York City, on Miller's overall ranking of the country's most literate cities, which graded burgs with populations greater than 200,000.

Boston jumped to eighth in the nation.

Like last year, these latest rankings are based on a number of variables chosen by the study's author, including the ratio of booksellers to residents, library resources, educational levels, the number of magazines published in a given city and newspaper circulation.

Excepting Las Vegas' precipitous drop, the two lists are remarkably similar, Miller noted.

"Las Vegas is the single biggest change far and away," Miller said from his office in Wisconsin. About 50 miles away, Madison, the state's capital, ranked fourth on his list.

Las Vegas' drop appears to reflect a seismic shift in the city's attitude toward reading. But Miller admitted that, among other changes, last year's rankings used older population figures that had the effect of reducing the ratio of the number of Las Vegas bookstores and libraries per resident.

Even after taking into account the more current population count, Miller admitted his study was somewhat "arbitrary."

Robert W. Fuller, a former president of Oberlin College and a Berkeley, Calif., author of "Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank," said the literacy study is not just arbitrary -- it's also meaningless.

Fuller has nothing against rank as a concept, he said. Ranking runners crossing the finish line in a marathon is perfectly acceptable, he said.

But ranking cities in an effort to compare them borders on abusive, and the results mostly serve to embarrass those who come off second-best, he said.

"When we rank cities or universities or women on their looks or men on their wealth, this is abusive," Fuller said. "It is tremendously inaccurate. The results you got would depend strictly on the algorithm you chose to measure literacy by."

Reacting to word that Las Vegas' ranking had plummeted, Linda Piediscalzi, an owner of the Dead Poet Bookstore at 3874 W. Sahara Ave., said she felt distressed.

Last year, when Las Vegas garnered a higher ranking, she said she thought the results were "wonderful."

"Visitors come in and say 'Look -- a bookstore,' like that was unusual," Piediscalzi said. "Typically Las Vegas is not thought of as a book town like Berkeley, but there are plenty of people who read here."

Take, for example, the Fogenay family.

At least once a month, Althea Fogenay, a program support assistant for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, who is originally from Guyana, takes her three children to the library to load up on new reading materials.

"Books are a big part of our lives," Fogenay said, standing outside the Clark County Library on East Flamingo Road Wednesday. "When I was growing up we didn't have TV, so we read a lot." Among her favorite books are those by Danielle Steel and religious titles.

Her 17-year-old daughter, Kenthea, said she enjoyed mysteries. But on Wednesday she went for something different: she checked out Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" and Dante's "The Divine Comedy" for a school project at Chaparral High School.

Las Vegans checked out more than 10 million items from 24 branches of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District last year, almost double the number checked out four years before, according to Pat Marvel, the director of marketing for the library district. Spending at the library also grew during the same period from about $30 million to $42 million, Marvel said.

Eric Hill, a clerk at 7-Eleven, and his mother, Sharon Knoell, a registered nurse, said they also loved to read. Standing outside a Barnes and Noble bookstore on Maryland Avenue near Flamingo Road, they said they especially enjoyed reading science fiction. The two book lovers also had a bit of a competition going.

Knoell boasted she had 5,000 books in her garage at home. But her son had only 600 at his, he said.

"But he's half my age," Knoell noted, suggesting her son may have time to catch up.

Other Las Vegans were not as enthusiastic about reading.

"It's not really that interesting," said Eric Gant, a baker for Einstein Bros. Bagels and a business student at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

Still, regardless of their interest in reading several Las Vegans were eager to offer their opinions on how the city fared and were curious to know the reasons for its drop from last year.

Why, according to Fuller, does the public care about these rankings?

"Because we're lazy," Fuller said without pause. "It's a shortcut to thinking."

The library's Marvel wasn't so sure.

"It's hard to know what those surveys mean when there are 35 people standing in line at the library," she said. "We know we're busy."

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