Vancouver ranked most well-read city in Canada

Vancouver has been named the most well-read city in Canada for the third time, in Amazon’s Canadian City That Loves to Read ranking.

Our city of bookworms also ranked top in more than half the categories, with Vancouverites buying the most business, cooking, travel, self-help and health books.

In Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, it was a different story, with those cities lagging behind, ranking only 11th, 12th and 15th in the list.

In terms of how we read, the West has definitely gone digital; Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton bought the most Kindle books over the past year. The best-selling Kindle title was the psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train by British author Paula Hawkins.

Also, in a (worrying?) new trend, it turns out Canadians love adult colouring books, many of which were among the bestselling titles in the country this year.

The list is based on data from all Amazon.ca book sales – in print and on Kindle – from May 2015 to May 2016, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.