California Has the No. 1 City for Book Lovers in America, Study Says

There’s something special about curling up with a good book during the cold winter months. After all, it’s the perfect activity during a snowed in day or night.

So, if you’re a true book lover, where are the best cities to go in America?

The staff at Lawn Love have put together a new study to determine the best cities for book lovers in the U.S. in 2022. For the study, they looked at the 200 largest U.S. cities based on access to public libraries, bookstores, Little Free Libraries, book clubs, events and other book-friendly services.

They also looked for cities with the most books “in the wild,” meaning “random reads picked up by random bookworms who can track the books’ journey and engage with other bibliophiles on BookCrossing,” according to Lawn Love.

The No. 1 city in America for reading, according to the study, is Pasadena, California. The sunny spot took the top spot for a variety of reasons.

“Readers in Southern California must have a voracious (literary) appetite,” the study states. “Pasadena takes first place in our overall ranking, thanks to the city’s high marks in Books for Sale (No. 2) and Book Swaps (No. 9). With plenty of literary events, book lovers in Pasadena can take a break from perusing the city’s many independent and used bookstores and escape to annual events, such as LitFest and the Pasadena Loves YA teen book festival.”

Three other cities within an hour’s drive from Pasadena also made it into the top 20, including Garden Grove (No. 8), Torrance landed (No. 15) and Fullerton (No. 20). View the full list via Lawn Love here.

2022 Best Cities for Book Lovers in the U.S. (according to Lawn Love):

Pasadena, CA
Seattle, WA
Jersey City, NJ
Eugene, OR
New York, NY
Portland, OR
Alexandria, VA
Garden Grove, CA
Oakland, CA
Denver, CO