Tell us about you and reading - £100 voucher and bundle of books to be won

Done.

Done, but found it very difficult to do as, although it does not expressly say so, the questionnaire was entirely about novels. but, although I read a lot, I read very few novels, almost all my reading is factual and, for me, all the questions about preferred genre of novels and characters I like/do not like to see in them was entirely irrelevant.

Is there something sexist here - only men read non-fiction?

Yes I thought it was sexist too MOnica

Always read, always have. Sauce bottles, cereal packets at breakfast. I have my favourite authors but will try anything .I think reading a good book is deeply satisfying

I thought it was age -obsessed.

Well, the survey is aimed at women over 40. And that is over half a lifetime for many women and that means we are a substantial market and many of us are avid readers, used to sustained reading and reading whole books.

I think the publisher is seeing older woman, as not so much as a niche market but as a potential large and lucrative market if they can find out what sort of books attract us. In recent years the 'chick lit' market has boomed. Novels written about women under 30 or in the marrying/child rearing age group for readers in that age/life bracket have been a nice little earner for a lot of publishers, and they are now trying to find out whether older women would also get hooked onto books about their lives, people their age and living similar lives and it is good to see any industry, other than incontinence aids and stair lifts seeing us as a market to be targetted rather than ignored.

This strikes me as a sound business proposition. However if what they are really looking at is the fiction market, and why not? Then they should have presented the questionnaire as being about our fiction reading; what kind of novels we read etc. Instead they presented the survey as (we) would like to find out more about you and reading: how often you read, what you like and don't like reading, what makes you buy a book or puts you off altogether. which suggests a far wider survey of our reading habits.

If I had realised at the start that the survey was all about fiction, I wouldn't have spent time answering it, as I read so little modern fiction.

However, having presented it to us as a survey of our reading habits and then narrowly concentrated the survey on what fiction we read, the implicit assumption is that women only read novels, so all those non-fiction books must be for men and we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about those big tomes on subjects that will not interest us.

I gave up on this survey. I read mainly thrillers and non- fiction history so most of the questions don’t apply. I really don’t mind about the age and gender of the central character of a thriller eg Jack Reacher is a male and younger than me.

I totally agree Humbertbear I'm a Jack Reacher fan too, love books about the SAS (Andy McNab/Chris Ryan), most westerns and sea stories (Julian Stockwin/Douglas Reeman)
and many more...not regarded by whoever cobbled the survey together as women's books
And how could I enjoy them if I 'identified with the character'?

Just about the only things I don't read are chick lit and romance but even then, if it's recommended or a classic (Anya Seton's 'Katherine' or Jane Eyre) I'll give it a go.

I thought the survey was very biased , patronising and stereotyped women. I read anything, not just books about women like me. Thrillers, classics, historic novels to name a few. Not many old ladies in Shardlake or a good murder in Sweden.

The point of reading is to take you somewhere , with people you would never meet.

The book I am reading at present is about a very odd bunch of over dogmatic Catholics who are on an isolated retreat in Cumbria. It is fascinating and not a 70 year old woman to identify with.

What was the point of the survey?

I gave up on it too. Not much of it applies to the sort of fiction I read.

I also thought the survey very biased and patronising towards older women. I read many books and don't choose something just because there is an older women featuring in it.

I think the publisher should re-run the survey to find out what older women really read. I think they would get a big surprise.

Another case of institutionalised ageism. They just assumed older women just read run of the mill personal interest fiction. They should have done a pilot study to find out what women over 40 really read and then structured their survey around the results of this pilot.

It would have been a very different questionnaire.

We've been invited to complete a survey, taking part is optional. I read fiction, non-fiction, and everything in between. The survey is fairly straightforward, and anything I couldn't answer by ticking a box, I put in "Other".

But a number started the survey because we thought it was something else entirely and because there were a few brief questions about other reading at the start and thought a section on this would follow the fiction section - but it didn't.

Poor surveys give good research a bad name, but if people do not flag up the poor surveys how is anyone to learn?

I will admit I have an interest here. I worked in market research, mainly industrial, but some consumer, for part of my working life and specialised in questionnaire design.

All done.

I abandoned the survey. The further into it that I got, the less relevant (or answerable) the questions were.

Well, I did it, but some weird questions. Don’t think I’m the stereotype it’s aimed at. Also not sure if my questionnaire was received as there was no acknowledgment.

I finished the survey but found it quite unsatisfactory and unrepresentative of my tastes in books. I don't pick books, looking for the main characters to be women of "my age". I read a lot of YA fiction, both with my 8-year-old child and on my own. I read a lot of thrillers and historical fiction, and don't care if I can relate to any of the characters. For me books are often a pure escapism, and I mean it as a positive thing, not a criticism.
At the moment I'm reading The way of all flesh, set in 1840s Edinburgh. It's pretty gruesome, but gripping. And not a single woman of "my age" in sight (yet).

Tried but survey finishedj