Residents of Boulder, Colo., were singled out a year ago by Amazon.com for ordering more cooking, food and wine books than people in any other city in the country.
This year, Amazon reports that the citizens of Boulder are buying more health, fitness and dieting books than people in any other city.
That’s one of the funnier tidbits to be gleaned from Amazon’s updated ranking of America’s most well-read cities, released this morning by the Seattle-based online retailer.
The new No. 1: Alexandria, Va., which traded places with last year’s winner, Cambridge, Mass., now in the No. 2 spot. Seattle slipped out of the top 10, to No. 13, while Bellevue fell one place to No. 16. Portland, Ore., which was No. 19 last year, fell out of the top 20 entirely this year.
Amazon says the ranking “was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.” Here’s the full top 20 for 2012.
- Alexandria, Va.
- Cambridge, Mass.
- Berkeley, Calif.
- Ann Arbor, Mich.
- Boulder, Colo.
- Miami
- Arlington, Va.
- Gainesville, Fla.
- Washington, D.C.
- Salt Lake City
- Pittsburgh
- Knoxville, Tenn.
- Seattle
- Orlando, Fla.
- Columbia, S.C.
- Bellevue, Wash.
- Cincinnati
- St. Louis
- Atlanta
- Richmond, Va.