I am pretty certain this "hawking index" meme must be a new-ish thing. I read the book as teenager and know also others who did. It is a fairly easily readable book imo, so I don't think this characterisation is warranted by the qualities of the book itself.

I suspect that a popsci book becoming a bestseller creates a larger-than-the-usual-nerds audience, a big part of which lacks the motivation to actually finish it. I expect that in places like this you will find higher frequency of people who have actually read it.

Moreover, when i read the book i did not have easy access to pop-sci sources as a (practically pre-internet) teenager in a small town of a small country, like i would have had today. I got upon a booklet of a small publishing house with the titles of translated pop-sci books and would order them from a local bookstore. Maybe if I was already familiar enough with the topic through youtube videos etc I would not have finished either.

I did read the book, and know enough people who did. Now I may have weird interests, but that describes basically half the inhabitants of this site.

BTW, as non-USAian, I never saw Cosmos and never heard of NDT.

From that list I've read three books: "A Brief History of Time", "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and "Capital in XXI Century". First two I've read from start to end. The last I didn't read to the end, I think I've read ~50% of it. My numbers correlate with that list, the least "readable" book in the list is the book I didn't read through.

However I still doubt the methodology. It is not obvious for me that if a book was read in full, then highlights from it would be distributed uniformly all over the book.

As an early teen I begged my parents for both A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design. Read both several times. ~15 years later, my parents are still holding on to them and my Dad has read them a couple of times too. It was great reading and played a significant role in my choice of research as a career.

Never heard of the "people don't actually read it" meme.

Interesting. I've been gifted that book at just the right time in my life as a teenager. It captured me. I read it the to end many times. Not understanding everything or course. But it created a spark which laid the groundwork for my entire career.

I've never seen cosmos.

I did read it and I'm sure a whole generation of people also did, it is a very clear and readable book. Don't underestimate or minimize the impact of Hawking's book when it was released.

i will never forget learning about Eratosthenes when i was very young and should have been playing Excitebike or something

I knew dozens of people in my high school who actually read it.

Maybe godel, escher, bach would be a better "book that people talked about but never read"