Harry Potter Tops List Of 100 Books That Have Stayed With Us
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:
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:
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?
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Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.
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