St. Louis is again in the top 10 most "literate cities."

A survey has declared us tied for the No. 9 spot with Portland. Washington D.C. was first, followed by Seattle.

This year, we really gained ground in the bookseller category. Now, the survey by Central Connecticut State University says we are second to Seattle in number of bookstores per capita.

The survey tracks six categories, and St. Louis usually makes a good showing. See the university's website for all details.

Over the years (the survey started in 2003), I have questioned the methodology. The researchers count bookstores from the online Yellow Pages. But because St. Louis County isn't part of the city, it apparently looks like we have more booksellers  in the city itself than we do.

We do rank very low on educational attainment, which apparently only factors in the city. So the poor showing there is hurt by the fact that other metro areas include the county graduation rates, etc. 

Our ranking of No. 2 among library usage is probably accurate - and brag-worthy.

When I've pointed this out to the researchers in the past, they haven't seemed very worried about the fact that St. Louis County isn't part of St. Louis, noting that they use the same methods for all cities, so it sort of levels out.

I'm not so sure about that. But if we have to put up with the off-base surveys about our crime rate, we might as well accept the literate city rating. A USA Today story notes worrying declines in some indicators of literacy; there is some evidence that other cities are dropping in the survey's six literacy categories much faster than we are.

What do you think? Is St. Louis really among the most literate cities.

NOTE: Updated to fix some typos. Computer and mouse issues hampered editing of original post.