Washington ? When it comes to leisure time, Americans still would rather curl up with a good book than go online and surf the Web.

Soccer is more popular than softball these days, but bowling still beats golf. And U.S. families spend some $660 per year on their TVs, stereos and video games.

So says the Census Bureau’s annual compilation of facts and figures telling America about itself, from crops to crime, pollution to paychecks. The new Statistical Abstract of the United States, being released today, runs more than 1,000 pages and offers an estimated 800,000 or 900,000 numbers.

Aiming to please its core audience of students, librarians and researchers, the Census Bureau includes information ranging from oddball — the average cat owner visited the vet 1.9 times in 2001 — to somber. This year, it added information on the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Expect more information on the cost and effectiveness of anti-terrorism efforts, such as port security, next year as the 123-year-old abstract responds to changing times, said Glenn King, in charge of the book’s staff.

Still, he said, there is always room for fun facts alongside the mortality rates, poverty figures and other weighty stuff.

“You’re not going to find high school sports, NCAA football and pet ownership too many other places in federal documents,” King said. “We hope it to be a statistical portrait of America.”

Some examples:

• Women may worry more about looking fat, but men are more likely to be fat: Half of U.S. women are overweight, compared with two-thirds of men. Some might blame the 16 pounds of ice cream per person consumed each year.
• Greenland Ranch, Calif., is hot, Prospect Creek, Alaska, is not. Greenland Ranch hit a U.S. record of 134 degrees in 1913; Prospect Creek set the record on the other end of the scale: 80 degrees below zero in 1971.
• Almost 9 percent of students in grades nine through 12 reported being threatened or injured by a weapon at school in 2001.
• More than 71 million people say they walk for exercise and almost 55 million swim. One-fourth of adults reported no physical activity at all in the past month, according to a 2001 survey.
• Some 13.9 million people age 7 or older played soccer more than once a year in 2001, compared with 13.2 million softball players. There were 40 million bowlers and 27 million golfers.
• Forty percent of adults said they read books for leisure during 2002, compared with 27 percent who surfed the Internet for fun.

That’s reassuring to publishers worried about the state of reading as electronic amusements multiply.

“There’s something kind of comforting about a book — the texture of the paper, you can dog-ear the corners — it’s like a comfort food,” said Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers.

The Census Bureau gathers facts for the Statistical Abstract from its own research as well as other government agencies and private sources. For example, the leisure time survey was conducted by MediaMark Research Inc., which interviewed 26,000 adults to gather information for advertisers and magazine publishers.

The statistical abstract is available for free on the Internet and can be purchased ($49 for the hardback, $40 for the softcover) from the U.S. Government Printing Office by calling (202) 512-1800.