My LINKcat AccountLast week I informed you that the Summer Reading Program had ended. This week -- thanks to electronic record keeping and the marvels of technology - I can give you the all of the amazing numbers about how many people read how many books! Every year, for more years than I care to remember, I have been reporting the number of pages read in concrete terms. I have been converting the number of pages read (or pages listened to, or time spent reading) into inches, then converted those inches into miles, and then plotted the number of miles on a map. Since I have been doing this annually for enough years for this to have become a tradition, and since I'm wise enough not to tamper with a fine tradition, here goes!
This year 521 people participated in the Summer Reading Program. Those 521 participants managed to read 1,748,834 pages. That's a whole lot of reading! On to the calculations which begin with this question: "If you laid all the pages of the books that were read end-to-end how many miles would they stretch?" Now, the average size of a page is 9 inches tall which gives us (1,748,834 times 9" - Always show your work if you want to receive full credit.) which is 15,739,506 inches divided by 12 to give us 1,311,625.5 feet divided by 5,280 to give us 248 miles which is 38 miles more than last year. If you laid all the pages read during the Summer Reading Program end to end and drove east on I-90, you would end up about 5 miles east of Benton Harbor, Michigan. Or heading north and west on I-90 you'd end up in Albert Lea, MN (Birthplace of my favorite cousin!). Anyway you look at it, a whole lot of reading was done this summer! Congratulations to all the Summer Reading participants.