A new Harris Poll ranks the 10 most popular books in the United States, and the Bible comes out way ahead. Here is the list of the top 10 most popular books of all time:
The Bible
Gone With the Wind
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
The Stand
The Da Vinci Code
To Kill a Mockingbird
Angels and Demons
Atlas Shrugged
Catcher in the Rye
Here is the full article by Reuters. Do you consider these 10 the best books of all time? Which book(s) would you add to this list and which would you remove from this list?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
What do you mean “do I agree with it?” Either these are the most popular books or they aren’t. (If they are, what methodology was used to determine this? A scientific poll, or some cheesy online poll?)
If they are the most popular, it’s unlikely that the list would exactly match the list of any one person.
I’m curious why Mao’s Little Red Book is not listed here. I believe it’s the #2 most popular book of all time.
– Enrique
The lack of methodology is what makes this question meaningless. We don’t know who pronounced these books the most popular, or what reasoning they based it on. We’re just assured that these are the books.
Notice also the fudge in naming “Harry Potter”. Harry Potter isn’t a book, it’s a series. No one book in the series really stands out that far above the others.
I wonder where Mein Kampf would stand. Surely a book that was owned by almost everyone in the country that it was published would be high on the list.
They’re probably judging by total copies produced, but who really knows?
That’s FUNNY, that the picture for a story about great books is a MOVIE poster for Gone With the Wind. Maybe not the best way to encourage people to read…
No list is complete without “Dune” near the top. Dostoyevsky’s work belongs in there too, namely “Crime and Punishment”.
I actually read the book because of the movie, one of the best of all time.
Stanislaus Lem is a mighty writer!
His work needs to be a top reader!
Ridiculous that the list doesn’t include “My System.”
was a poll:
“a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults”
Not to mention “popular books” not equal “good books”. Who else is popular, Britney Spears?
10 books about fiction isn’t my idear of the 10 best of all time.I think the best book ever written(unscientific opinion)is the dictionary.I did chuckle on reading
about “my system” being one of them.roger morin
The most popular book of the 19th century (worldwide, Bible of course excepted) was _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.
Without Ernesto Che Guevara’s book, “Guerrilla Warfare”, this list is incomplete!!
“Anonymous said…
Without Ernesto Che Guevara’s book, “Guerrilla Warfare”, this list is incomplete!!”
You forgot his blockbuster follow-up:
“Política de los putos que arden, completos imbéciles, la violación de los comunistas y de los animales.”
Che is all right in my book.
I thought “The Hungry Little Catepillar” should be in the Top 10.
“EJ said…
I’m curious why Mao’s Little Red Book is not listed here. I believe it’s the #2 most popular book of all time.”
It wasn’t popular, but rather required reading by coersion and threat of a horrible death. 200 Million people died under Mao’s regime. I don’t like those kinds of books!
Mao is smoking a turd in the lowest depths of Hell right now. Please leave a message after the beep.
Beep.
Questions about the methodology of this poll can be answered by going to the Harris Poll website:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=892
It seems it was just one of those polls where the question asked is open ended. The question they asked (of Americans):
“What is your favorite book of all time?”
It doesn’t surprise me that the Bible came in first, as it is probably the most widely distributed book in the US. In other words, it will likely be on more poeple’s lists than any other book. Also, I suspect that a great many people feel that the “ought” to say the Bible.
I probably wouldn’t put any of the books on this list near the top (even the Bible, which I, a bit of a lazy reader, find a tedious hodge-podge). I couldn’t make it to the end of the Harry Potter series as I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about what happens. “The Davinci Code” was downright bland to me- as is anything by Ayn Rand. I never understood what the big deal about “Gone With the Wind” was. It seems like a big soap opera to me with no “theme.” (I’d love to hear from a fan who can explain to me why it is more than just style and no substance.)
That said, I’m a voracious reader and it’s hard to pick a favorite book. Had Harris called “me” I’m afraid the poor pollster might have never gotten off the phone- as I wouldn’t be able to make up my mind.
Just off the top of my head, some of the books that I revisit over and over again, with great pleasure and enrichment, are:
“Howard’s End” – E. M. Forester
“Huckleberry Finn” – Twain
“The Great Gatsby” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Catch-22” – Joseph Heller
“Slaughterhouse Five” Kurt Vonnegut
“Cosmos” – Carl Sagan
“The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropolgist on Mars” – Oliver Sacks
“A supposedly fun thing that I’ll never do again” – David Foster Wallace
“High Fidelity” – Nick Hornby
“1984” – Orwell
Some new favorites:
“The Road” – Cormac McCarthy
“The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime”
… and that’s all I can think of right now.
Brad Hoehne
Here’s a working link to the Harris Poll:
http://tinyurl.com/4dwcfk
Brad Hoehne
Ahh. I forgot about:
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. Probably the funniest thing ever.
Brad H.
“Anonymous said…
Ahh. I forgot about:
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. Probably the funniest thing ever.”
DON’T PANIC!
and Thanks for all the fish…
😀
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No list is complete without “Dune” near the top.
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A list of the Top 10 Coffee Brands in the world would be complete without Dune.
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Dostoyevsky’s work belongs in there too, namely “Crime and Punishment”.
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Why? For that matter, why does Dune belong there? You act as though you understand what criteria is being used. If you do, could you explain it to the rest of us?
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“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. Probably the funniest thing ever.”
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I liked the Infocom computer game version better than the book. And Douglas Adams’ Bureaucracy was better than Hitchhiker’s.
>>Questions about the methodology of this poll can be answered by going to the Harris Poll website:
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Ah, thanks.
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It seems it was just one of those polls where the question asked is open ended.
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Okay, so this isn’t really a list of the most popular books of all time. It’s the favorite books of the American people in 2008.
And it still looks like the 7 Harry Potter books have been lumped into one answer, inflating its value.
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It doesn’t surprise me that the Bible came in first, as it is probably the most widely distributed book in the US.
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Still, the Bible, like Origin of Species, and Das Kapital, is one of those books where most people read the cover only, and pretend that they’ve read the rest.
Mein Kampf was another one like that. People gave it away at parties, and owned a copy (for, ahem, health reasons), but comparatively few people actually read it).
If you went by copies produced, the Bible is far and away the most popular book of all time. If you go by what people claim, it looks like it wins too. But if you went by how many people have read it from cover to cover, I think it would score rather low.
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I never understood what the big deal about “Gone With the Wind” was. It seems like a big soap opera to me with no “theme.”
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Yeah. Still, Gone With the Wind (the book) did win a Pulitzer. It’s not like MASH, the Godfather, or those Bond books, where the film adaptation was much better than the material it was adapting.
Some of my favorite books:
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez
Bonfire of the Vanities – Wolfe
The World According to Garp
The Three Musketeers – Dumas
Russian Silhouettes – Sosonko
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Mahatma Ghandi
Goldenrod
Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth” is probably going to be made into a movie.
Any move is an abridgement of a book. This will be a massive abridgement; but so be it.
What? No Reinfeld?
😉
Regarding: “… And Douglas Adams’ Bureaucracy was better than Hitchhiker’s.”
Thanks for the tip, I’ll be sure to check it out.
Regarding: “Gone With the Wind”, I tried reading the book, I really did, but I just couldn’t get into it. That was about 10 years ago, though, maybe the charms of Scarlet will be clearer to me on a second try.
Incidentally, a previous poster mentioned “M*A*S*H” which is both a favorite book and movie (and TV series) of mine. Perhaps my tastes are typically “Male”.
Brad Hoehne
Although it’s no favorite of mine, I’m surprised that Pilgrim’s Progress didn’t make it onto the list.
And what about Sherlock Holmes??
“Which are the top 10 most popular books” and “Which are the 10 best books” are two completely different questions.
My pick for the 10 best books, just because I think I got the most valuable learning are:
1. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Cervantes
2. The Devine Comedy. Dante
3. The Magic Mountain. Mann
4. Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky
5. Perfume. Suskind
6.The Clown. Boll
7. Faust. Goethe
8. The Glass Bead Game. Hesse
9. Hamlet. Shakespeare
10. Grat Dialogues. Plato
I have to say that literature and chess are both my greatest passions and it’s really sad to see Dan Brown’s or J.K.Rowling’s books on such list. Where is Dostoevsky? Shakespeare? Marquez? Proust? And many other great writers? In literature – unlike in chess – Grandmaster can easly loose with an intermediate player..
Restricting myself to 20th century fiction, a list of my favourite books would include:
Flann O’Brien – The Third Policeman
Jaroslav Hašek – The Good Soldier Švejk
Karel Čapek – War with the Newts
Halldor Laxness – Paradise Reclaimed
Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
Chinghiz Aitmatov – The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
Stanisław Lem – Solaris
Stephen Fry – Making History
Mario Vargas Llosa – The Feast of the Goat
Sinclair Lewis – Elmer Gantry
There are many more good books, but, in my eyes, most certainly not The Da Vinci Code, Gone With the Wind, and Angels and Demons. I’m not an American though.
Reinfeld? He was Sam Slaons great grand-daddy on his donkey-in-law’s side.
Sloan is a crazy book publisher.
Popular to whom? couple of popular chineese books would just simply climb up the list dumping other books behind. For example Rabindranath Tagore is very popular to the Bengali readers and they constitute the 9th largest in terms of world population! Again Russian books or ex soviet books would do the same thing. But most importantly as you have mentioned Bible at the top of your list – well what about “Al-Qura’n”. This holy book would certainly be number one in terms of popularity – because the muslims are one fifth in the world’s population and 99.99 percent of them would take Al-Qura’n as their most favorite book then it would also certainly be number one in terms of the time-read a single book = because this is not a mere book and it is read by the muslims five times a day (at least) and then is memorized by millions of them – word to word – intact – no scope of change a single letter even …. so you can understand Ms Susan your list needs a major revision.
1. Al-Qura’n
and way below would be the others….
Regarding Gone with the Wind, it can be read as a romance or as a study of a civilization long gone. Margaret Mitchel wrote the book as a young woman who grew up hearing the oldsters tell these stories about “The War” and “Reconstruction”. The philosophy of these people, with their prejudices and pains is very interesting to read, in between the lines of the romance. It deserved the Pulitzer and is a book everyone should read, along with War and Peace, which is also a romance novel set in wartime.
“. . . it is with a great relief and pleasure that we are hereby dutifully reporting that Book Two and Book(s) Three&Four of our new translation of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War are available for sale as paperbacks at http://zenny.com.
We hope this announcement finds you in good health and disposition and hungry for more adventures of the good soldier … after all these years.”
More information on the Svejk phenomenon at http://SvejkCentral.com
Also, Svejk is on FaceBook now: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Good-Soldier-Svejk/133349009873?ref=nf
Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather”