Amazon ranks the most well-read cities in the U.S., and the winner is…

[LanternWaste]

Texas has four (20%) of the Top 20 Well-Read cities in the U.S. Maybe we're not as illiterate as General Discussion makes us out to be!

1. Seattle, Wash.

2. Portland, Ore.

3. Washington, D.C.

4. San Francisco, Calif.

5. Austin, Texas

6. Las Vegas, Nev.

7. Tucson, Ariz.

8. Denver, Colo.

9. Albuquerque, N.M.

10. San Diego, Calif.

11. Baltimore, Md.

12. Charlotte, N.C.

13. Louisville, Ky.

14. San Jose, Calif.

15. Houston, Texas

16. Nashville, Tenn.

17. Chicago, Ill.

18. Indianapolis, Ind.

19. Dallas, Texas

20. San Antonio, Texas


http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-ranks-well-read-cities-u-s-winner/

[Warpy]

1. Could be a lot of repressed big hair Christian women reading dirty romance novels, too

Still, they're reading. I'll give them that.

Reading anything beats the hell out of never cracking a book once the ink is dry on the diploma.

[LanternWaste]

2. I'm the same way in regards to Harry Potter books

I'm the same way in regards to Harry Potter books. But, as reading is reading, and we all have various tastes...

[kentauros]

4. That's probably true of Dallas.

But San Antonio, Houston, and Austin are also college towns:

Austin - UT, ACC
Houston - Rice, UH, TSU, St. Thomas, HCC, Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health Sciences Center
San Antonio - Trinity, UTSA, CIA (Culinary Institute of America), Texas A&M SA

San Antonio also has BiblioTech, the nation's only all digital library. And despite the book-fetishists' complaints, it has been highly successful, with talk now of opening more all-digital branches. I asked my local Houston librarian the other day if we would get such a thing in Houston, and she did admit it was in the works. I hope San Antonio has started a trend

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. San Antonio has several Catholic colleges as well.

St. Mary's University (has a law school). Our Lady of the Lake. University of the Incarnate Word (Was Incarnate Word College when I was going to school in S.A.)

Secular junior colleges: Palo Alto College (junior college), Northwest Vista College (junior college), Northeast Lakeview College (junior college in Universal City), San Antonio College (junior college), Saint Philips College.



Austin has Huston-Tillotson University (Historically black).

Paul Quinn College in Dallas. (HBCC)

St. Philips College(junior college), San Antonio (HBCC-junior college)

[kentauros]

6. Thanks!

A lot of the colleges and universities I don't recognize, even when seeing them in a list, like on Wikipedia. Other than the mention of CIA in San Antonio, the rest were off the top of my head.

San Antonio also has three Air Force bases, one Army base, and plenty of defense industry personnel. And, it's part of the tech-corridor between it and Austin, while Houston has NASA and the Texas Medical Center. Lots of highly educated people in our cities

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. Yep! Proud Trinity graduate here.

Also attended 2 years at the University of Houston, 2 years of vocational school at Houston Community College, and 5 years at South Texas College of Law.

There are 3 law schools in Houston. The other two are University of Houston and Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. We don't need that many law schools.

South Texas was originally the terminal school of South Texas Junior College. STJC was in the M&M building at One Main Street. It was a feeder school for the law school, because after the war, you could take 60 hours of college and then go to law school which is 90 semester hours. So lots of people, like my dad, did that on the GI Bill.

The law degree was an LL.B. or Bachelor of Laws. Then in the 60s they changed the requirements so that you had to have a bachelor's degree in anything but P.E., I think, and they changed the standard law degree to Juris Doctor (Doctor of Jurisprudence in English).

South Texas Junior College was eaten by U of H and became U of H downtown. Back in the early 70s I knew people who had gone to STJC. South Texas College of Law started in the basement of the old YMCA on Louisiana in the late 1920s. My dad said the basement was really terrible, leaky roofs, but the professors were terrific. I took him to the new 4 story building on San Jacinto Street in the 80s and he said, "They got lights? They got desks? They got books?" LOL. STCL is still private and expensive as hell. I managed to get through and graduate shortly before the prices went through the roof and became insane.

The 5 junior colleges in S.A. are all expanded from SAC as we called it, on the North Side of SA. I didn't know they had expanded that much,

There used to be 5 bases in SA and I'm not sure which ones are still open. I remember Kelly, Lackland, Randolph and Fort Sam Houston.

Ellington Field, slightly north of NASA Mission Control, used to be a regular AFB, but has been decommissioned but is still used when ever the President comes to town. I'm not sure what they use it for.

[kentauros]

9. Yes, there is so much more than my mere memory could hold.

And yet, I forgot one community college that's rather extensive locally and where I earned my first degree: San Jacinto College. Got my degree in drafting there, and later learned baking and pastry arts

Ellington Field was decommissioned as an Air Force Base in the 1970s, but has since become a joint commercial and government field. UPS uses it as does Continental, for shipping. It's a base for Customs and Coast Guard as well as the Texas Air National Guard, and for astronaut training (The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool is located there.) NASA also uses it to fly one of their U2s from there, and I have seen the Super Guppy taking off from there, too (that plane is used for hauling equipment that's too large for a C-130!)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. My sister went to San Jac back many years ago, in the 1960s.

I went to a lot of concerts at Slocomb Auditorium, and my sister took Introductory Psych from Dr. Ann Zimmerer. Her family was the overachieving family of Pasadena. She was a psychologist, her husband was an engineer. Both were also lawyers. And their two sons both became lawyers. I went to law school with the older one.

I had to look up all the colleges except for SAC, Our Lady of the Lake and St. Mary's. I had no idea they expanded their junior college system so much. When I was in school there it was a sleepy, sunny town where you had big empty freeways, and you could see the sky. Now it's full of overgrown suburbia and the only way to pick up on the Mexican heritage is to go downtown. I was horrified that they put up big tall buildings next to Brackenridge Park!

And I went to the Armadillo in Austin on weekends for music, shortly before they tore down the intimacy of an aircraft hangar and put up another useless bank (((SNIFF))). All the classical music came through SA. I assume they destroyed the Austin I enjoyed as well.

I'd like to know more about pastry making. I make a pretty good banket, which is a dough thing with almond filling you roll up like an incompletely rolled enchilada (get the edges to meet on top) that is popular in Denmark. The Danes have a thing about almond stuff and marzipan.

[kentauros]

11. I had to stop looking at Google Earth earlier this evening.

I was having a look at where the NBL was located at Ellington Field, then started looking at the surrounding area. It's quite sad how the native forest around Armand Bayou Nature Center is being consumed by suburban sprawl. At least the chemical plants north of them understand about keeping a little bit of green space intact.

As for almond-paste desserts, this is what I want to try to make sometime: M’hanncha, or the Moroccan snake


This is a small version, presumably 1-2 servings:

Jamie Oliver's version is this episode from one of his series:

[TreasonousBastard]

3. From Amazon's own sales figures...

which are not nearly the total sales around the nation.

[LanternWaste]

8. No one has implied otherwise...

No one has implied otherwise...