A year ago Facebook started to ask their users to share 10 books that have stayed with them in some way. “Don’t take more than a few minutes, and don’t think too hard,” the goal was not to name great works of literature, but books straight from the heart.
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During this summer the action has become a true Facebook meme. Hundreds of thousands of users were sharing lists of their favorite books. You’ve most probably seen them already, maybe took part.
The trend has become so huge that Facebook Data Science decided to analyze the data, and come back with the results in a post Books that have stayed with us.
They gathered 130,000 status updates matching “10 books” or “ten books”, appearing in the second half of August 2014. Three times more women than men took part in the action at that time.
Obviously, the list includes only the books collected from English language status updates. 63.7% come from the US, 9.3% from India, and 6.3% from the UK.
You’ll find the entire list at the end of the post, but before, have a look at a very interesting visualization (click or tap on it to enlarge). It shows how the books were connected with each other. The simple rule applied: people who listed X also listed Y.
I wish this data chart was interactive, like some of the wonderful book visualizations we shared some time ago.
So, what are 10 books that have stayed with you in some way? Don’t think too much, just write them down, straight from the heart.
Top 100 books loved by Facebook users
With a percentage of all lists that contained them.
- 21.08 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
- 14.48 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- 13.86 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
- 7.48 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
- 7.28 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- 7.21 The Holy Bible
- 5.97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
- 5.82 The Hunger Games Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
- 5.70 The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
- 5.63 The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
- 5.61 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 5.37 1984 – George Orwell
- 5.26 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
- 5.23 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
- 5.11 The Stand – Stephen King
- 4.95 Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
- 4.38 A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
- 4.27 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- 4.05 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
- 4.01 The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
- 3.95 Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
- 3.88 The Giver – Lois Lowry
- 3.67 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- 3.53 Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
- 3.39 The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
- 3.38 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
- 3.38 The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan
- 3.32 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- 3.26 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- 3.22 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
- 3.21 The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- 3.15 Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- 3.15 Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
- 3.12 Animal Farm – George Orwell
- 3.08 The Book of Mormon
- 3.05 The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank
- 3.02 Dune – Frank Herbert
- 2.98 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- 2.83 The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- 2.78 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
- 2.72 The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
- 2.68 The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
- 2.68 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
- 2.58 Lamb – Christopher Moore
- 2.54 Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- 2.53 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
- 2.52 Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
- 2.45 The Help – Kathryn Stockett
- 2.44 The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton
- 2.42 American Gods – Neil Gaiman
- 2.41 Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
- 2.39 Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
- 2.38 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
- 2.35 Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
- 2.31 The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
- 2.31 Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
- 2.29 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
- 2.24 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
- 2.21 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
- 2.21 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
- 2.16 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
- 2.12 Night – Elie Wiesel
- 2.12 The Dark Tower Series – Stephen King
- 2.07 Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
- 1.92 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- 1.89 A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
- 1.88 The Art of War – Sun Tzu
- 1.85 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
- 1.85 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- 1.83 The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
- 1.78 The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
- 1.76 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
- 1.75 Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
- 1.73 The Road – Cormac McCarthy
- 1.72 Watership Down – Richard Adams
- 1.72 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
- 1.68 Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
- 1.65 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
- 1.65 A Song of Ice and Fire – George R. R. Martin
- 1.65 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume
- 1.64 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
- 1.63 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
- 1.62 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
- 1.62 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 1.61 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
- 1.58 The Shack – William P. Young
- 1.56 Watchmen – Alan Moore
- 1.55 Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
- 1.54 The Odyssey – Homer
- 1.54 The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
- 1.53 The Stranger – Albert Camus
- 1.52 Call of the Wild – Jack London
- 1.51 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
- 1.51 Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
- 1.50 East of Eden – John Steinbeck
- 1.50 Matilda – Roald Dahl
- 1.49 The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- 1.47 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Pirsig
- 1.45 Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- 1.45 Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
More lists to explore:
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