A new study shows that women are more patient readers than men. U.K. startup Jellybooks acquired the data from recipients of its advanced reader copies (ARCs), as part of its mission to study "book discoverability and reader analytics." But Jellybooks isn't quite sure what to do with this information.
The news doesn't surprise me. Twilight, The Hunger Games, A Game of Thrones: this is a short list of wildly popular books I just could not get into. Unless I've received a review copy for a book, I'm pretty quick to throw it out for something else as soon as it loses my attention. But I'm generally willing to give a book a second, third, or even fourth chance to wow me, because, hey, tastes change.
Men may give up on books quicker than women do — at around 20 to 50 pages in — but age, not gender, is the ultimate factor in determining whether or not a person will complete a book. Participants between the ages of 35 and 45 were less likely to finish a book than older and younger readers were. Jellybooks chalks this statistic up to the pressures of work and parenting.
Jellybooks founder Andrew Rhomberg says:
[M]en give up on a book much sooner than women do. Given the identical completion rates, we take this to mean that men either have more foresight in this regard or that women continue reading even if they already know that the book is not to their liking. We suspect the latter, but cannot prove it at this point. [emphasis mine]
Hate reading is real, folks, and it might have just been scientifically proven.
Images: Fotolia; Giphy
