Facebook users have apparently been participating in a trending status update that asks readers to list the ten books that have stayed with them. Facebook compiled the data submitted and came up with 100 books that top the list. Holding the #1 spot is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. That's followed by To Kill A Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Facebook shared some data on how they compiled the list and a few notable technicalities about their findings. We'll get to that in a bit. First check out the impressive list of books below, which include classics like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The Holy Bible and George Orwell's 1984, and newer books and series, like The Hunger Games and The Fault in our Stars. Not to be left out are the works of popular authors Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon and Dan Brown.
Here's the top 100 books, including "a percentage of all lists (having at least one of the top 500 books) that contained them). Harry Potter holds the top spot:
21.08 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling14.48 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee13.86 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien7.48 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien7.28 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen7.21 The Holy Bible5.97 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams5.82 The Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins5.70 The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger5.63 The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis5.61 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald5.37 1984 - George Orwell5.26 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott5.23 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte5.11 The Stand - Stephen King4.95 Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell4.38 A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle4.27 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood4.05 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis4.01 The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho21 3.95 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery22 3.88 The Giver - Lois Lowry23 3.67 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini24 3.53 Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card25 3.39 The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver26 3.38 Lord of the Flies - William Golding27 3.38 The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan28 3.32 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak29 3.26 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte30 3.22 Hamlet - William Shakespeare31 3.21 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery32 3.15 Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle33 3.15 Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury34 3.12 Animal Farm - George Orwell35 3.08 The Book of Mormon36 3.05 The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank37 3.02 Dune - Frank Herbert38 2.98 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez39 2.83 The Autobiography of Malcolm X40 2.78 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck41 2.72 The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein42 2.68 The Fault in Our Stars - John Green43 2.68 On the Road - Jack Kerouac44 2.58 Lamb - Christopher Moore45 2.54 Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut46 2.53 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving47 2.52 Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett48 2.45 The Help - Kathryn Stockett49 2.44 The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton50 2.42 American Gods - Neil Gaiman51 2.41 Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls52 2.39 Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein53 2.38 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett54 2.35 Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder55 2.31 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas56 2.31 Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett57 2.29 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown58 2.24 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley59 2.21 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens60 2.21 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo61 2.16 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens62 2.12 Night - Elie Wiesel63 2.12 The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King64 2.07 Outlander - Diana Gabaldon65 1.92 The Color Purple - Alice Walker66 1.89 A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini67 1.88 The Art of War - Sun Tzu68 1.85 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller69 1.85 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath70 1.83 The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky71 1.78 The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway72 1.76 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden73 1.75 Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom74 1.73 The Road - Cormac McCarthy75 1.72 Watership Down - Richard Adams76 1.72 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith77 1.68 Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein78 1.65 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson79 1.65 A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin80 1.65 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume81 1.64 Charlotte's Web - E.B. White82 1.63 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger83 1.62 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy84 1.62 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky85 1.61 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain86 1.58 The Shack - William P. Young87 1.56 Watchmen - Alan Moore88 1.55 Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice89 1.54 The Odyssey - Homer90 1.54 The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende91 1.53 The Stranger - Albert Camus92 1.52 Call of the Wild - Jack London93 1.51 The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom94 1.51 Siddhartha - Herman Hesse95 1.50 East of Eden - John Steinbeck96 1.50 Matilda - Roald Dahl97 1.49 The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde98 1.47 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig99 1.45 Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez100 1.45 Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
Keep in mind, no one is stating that these are "the best" books in all of history or the greatest works of literature ever, simply the top books people listed in response to some version of the following Facebook status:
List 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes, and don't think too hard. They do not have to be the 'right' books or great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way.
These are the books that have stayed with people. That also explains the number of children's books on there -- hooray for Shel Silverstein! -- as many of us tend to have fond associations to books we read (or were read to us) as children. According to the data Facebook shared, along with this list, 63.7% of the people posting were in the US, followed by 9.3%in India, and 6.3% in the UK. Women who participated outnumbered men 3.1:1. The average age was 37. The list was compiled from data over a two-week stretch of time in August, though Facebook notes that the meme/trending status has been active for at least year.
It's also worth noting, as Facebook does explain in the post they did sharing the list, that list entries like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Stephen King's Dark Tower books and Chronicles of Narnia are series and therefore represent multiple books, as opposed to one book. Facebook says they clustered books that were part of series. So that presumably means if someone put Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on their list, and another person put Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, while a third person put Harry Potter, all three entries would fall under "Harry Potter series."
So it sounds like series had an advantage here, as it relates to their placement on the list. But with that said, I think it's worth noting that these series contain an ongoing story that moves from one book to the next and would therefore require a bigger time commitment and level of personal investment, which is a mark of just how beloved they actually are, especially when considering the high placement of some of them. That is, assuming those who included a series or a book from a series have actually read the full series. But if the book made their list, it seems like a fair bet that they read the complete series, right?
Which book or series listed is your favorite? Vote in our poll after the jump...
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