The list (check it out here) seems more driven by a city’s current ‘literary vibe.’ Washington, DC makes the list based more on the presence of the Library of Congress as a resource for the literary minded than on any history of literature within the city. Similarly, Portland gets in for its aura of cultural and literary hipness and for the presence of the sprawling, iconic Powell’s Books.

And I’m not arguing with those decisions. If you want to live in a literary city, surely you want to live in one where the culture of the written word is alive rather than mostly entombed in the past?