1. In case you missed it yesterday, I'd like to point out that the Sunday New York Times featured an infographic-laden story called "What People Buy Where." It was an exploration of which parts of the country buy more (and less) of various products including coffee, soda, bikes, and so on. The number I'm most interested in, of course, is books. And Seattle is at the top of the national book-buying charts by a very large percentage. Seattle spends 68 percent more than the national average on books annually. Considering the fact that we have a great, vibrant library system loaning out books for free all over the city, this is an especially striking number. The next-highest city on the chart is San Francisco, which spends 44 percent more than the national average. (New York City, which is supposedly the center of the literary universe, spends 28 percent less than the national average.)

2. In other good book news, Nielsen released survey results about teenagers and e-book use last week. They found that though "younger readers are open to e-books as a format, teens continue to express a preference for print that may seem to be at odds with their perceived digital know-how." They buy e-books, but they generally prefer print books, by a fairly large margin. This is yet another sign that e-book market dominance is a long way off, if it's coming at all. E-book adoption rate, which used to be stratospheric, is leveling out, and the next generation of book buyers don't seem to be in any rush to give up physical media in favor of files that they don't really own. Physical booksellers don't seem to be in the same kind of peril from e-books that record stores suffered from the rise of the mp3.

(Thanks to Slog tipper Clinton for the New York Times link.)