Is Minnesota Among The Least Book-Loving States In America?

The state of Minnesota is known for many things, ranging from its jaw-dropping scenery to the many sheets of ice that make up the area’s love of hockey. The one thing that the Paul Bunyan State isn’t known for, evidently, is its love of reading — with Minnesota ranking among the least book-loving states in America by our metrics.

MinnesotaBets.com took a break from Minnesota sportsbooks updates and utilized 2 combined data points to develop the ranking of the 50 US States in terms of loving books. We utilized WordsRated.com to get the average annual library visits per capita in 2023 and Google Trends to get the searches for “Amazon Kindle” over the past 12 months (August 2022-August 2023) Once acquiring that information, we averaged out the ranking of the states to get our final rankings.

States That Love Reading Books the Least

Here's some information you'll never find on Minnesota betting apps. Below you'll find where the Land of 10,000 Lakes ranked nationally by those metrics, compared with the rest of the country.

Rank, State	Library Visits Rank	Kindle Search Rank	Average Pts.
50. Mississippi	50	50	50
49. Texas	48	42	45
48. Louisiana	43	46	44.5
47. North Dakota	49	34	41.5
46. New Jersey	42	40	41
45. Georgia	37	42	39.5
44. Florida	41	37	39
T-43. New York	31	45	38
T-43. Nebraska	33	43	38
41. Nevada	26	48	37
40. West Virginia	36	37	36.5
39. New Mexico	25	46	35.5
38. Pennsylvania	46	24	35
37. Alabama	39	28	33.5
36. Minnesota	44	19	31.5

Minnesota Among Bottom Tier In U.S. When It Comes To Books

Minnesota wound up ranking 36th in the country by our two chosen metrics used to determine a state’s love of reading books. Between the state’s 24th “Kindles” search ranking and No. 10 spot for library visits per capita, Minnesota wound up in the bottom third nationally, with a total average ranking of 31.5. That ranking put Minnesota a spot ahead of Alabama, at 33.5, and ahead of other states like Pennsylvania (35), New Mexico (35.5) and West Virginia (36.5).

Nationally, Mississippi (50), Texas (45), Louisiana (44.5), North Dakota (41.5), and New Jersey (41) were the bottom states when it came to books, while Georgia (39.5), Florida (39), New York and Nebraska (38 each) rounded out the bottom 10. Locally, it seems like Minnesotans who share a love for literary arts should band together to right the state’s standing when it comes to books because the region is among the unenviable company at the moment when it comes to the written word.

Author

Christopher Boan

@cgboan

Christopher Boan is a lead writer at MinnesotaBets.com, specializing in covering state issues. He has covered sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.