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According to the stereotypes, Miami is supposed to be a bit of a shallow city and not exactly an intellectual hot spot. Yet, we’re apparently the sixth most book-looking city in America according to Amazon.com sales data. The book-selling super site totaled all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since the beginning of 2011, and then averaged that out per resident to come up with this list. What’s even more surprising is that Florida has the most cities on the list.
The list, which only ranks cities with more than 100,000 resident, is mostly dominated by college towns at the top. Here’s the complete top ten, with our annotations.
- Cambridge, Mass (home to Harvard)
- Alexandria, Va (a DC suburb dominated by the defense industry)
- Berkley, Cali (supposed liberal wonderland and home to University of California, Berkeley)
- Ann Arbor, Mich (home to University of Michigan)
- Boulder, Colo (home to University of Colorado)
- Miami, Fl (supposed home to cocaine, strippers and bottle service)
- Salt Lake City (Mormons)
- Gainesville, Fla (home to University of Florida)
- Seattle (rainy and flannely)
- Arlington, Va (DC suburb, home to many government offices)
Mashable has the full top 20 and Orlando also made the list at 12.
We’re not really sure what to make of this list, and once again we’re not sure whether this means just the City of Miami or all of Miami-Dade. Considering, though, this list is only based on Amazon sales and the City of Miami proper lacks a major bookstore, it kind of makes sense.
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