Today's Tuesday Thingers question is:What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?
Can we just skip the Harry Potter books? There are so many of those on the lists that it's just no fun.
Harry Potter aside, the most popular book in my library is The Hobbit, with 21,347 copies. Oddly enough, the second most popular is The Lord of the Rings (15,497), a "book" which doesn't actually exist - that's the name of the series, not one of the books!
I have read The Hobbit and all of the Lord of the Rings books many, many times. They were constant friends in my childhood, the beginnings of my love of fantasy and adventure and travel. They were also the source of some great frustration, as there was a distinct shortage of interesting female characters to pretend to be as I was reading. (When I got a little older, that was mitigated by the wealth of interesting male characters to fall in love with.)
The most popular book I don't have is The DaVinci Code. I read it when it came out, thought it was a fairly fun mystery/thriller, but I never really got what all the fuss was about. It was a good read, certainly nothing to form a cult over!
Popularity probably has something to do with whether or not a book comes to my attention, but I won't generally read something just because it's popular. There are so many interesting books waiting for my attention that I just don't have the time to spare.
8 comments:
you know, almost as soon as i posted the question i started to worry everyone would say "harry potter" for their most popular book. i like your idea of skipping over it! :-)
It's funny though how popular The Hobbit is. I mean, I agree, I have multiple copies and it was one of my children's favorite read-alouds over the years, it's just that I don't know I could have predicted that in all of LT, The Hobbit would be the most commonly-held volume after HP which is of course a more modern phenomenon, bred to some degree of modern marketing (though I am a Potter fan myself).
I see your point on the most popular "non"book being the LOTR trilogy. However, I have the three-in-one movie tie-in edition, so it actually is "The Lord of the Rings" book. :-D
Lisa, thank you so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment! It's always nice to see a new name. I am very much impressed that you've read LOTR several times. It's a book I own and hope to read before I die, but it may end up in my N(ever)TBR pile. I love the movies and that should have been enough, but alas...
Most popular in my library (as currently loaded into LT)?
Moneyball
Not a surprise as it appeals to statheads and baseball historians as well as casual fans.
Mine's "The Hobbit" too. Technically LOTR *is* one book. Publishers have just split it up because they didn't want people to get overwhelmed :) I have a few Fellowship/Tower/King books, but also copies of LOTR in one book.
That said, I totally love LOTR, and agree about the lack of female characters. What were there..? Arwen, Galadriel, Eowyn, and Rosie? The movies feature more females and when I saw them I was like... um was Arwen even in this part?? Speaking of which... I may just have to go reread LOTR now!
I think part of the chatter about The DaVinci Code was in regard to the religious contraversy (the film makers of _Angels and Demons_ have been banned from filming inside two churches in Rome recently).
I thought the book was well done, but didn't deserve cult status! It spurred a lot of "copy cat" books which didn't have the same heft of plot or mystery (the coding)
I really enjoyed The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books as well. I didn't get around to reading them until I saw the first movie of the LOTR trilogy, however. I'm so glad I did read them.
I'm with you on The Da Vinci Code. It was a fun read, but got way more attention than it deserved. I find the whole controversy amusing, frankly.
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