I see a distinct pattern here. Image: guardian.co.uk
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful has come up with a must-read book infographic that has a definite sci-fi/fantasy/futuristic slant. From what I can see, the top picks (after To Kill a Mockingbird) include:
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- The Lord of the Rings
- 1984
- Fahrenheit 451
- Animal Farm
- Brave New World
- Slaughterhouse-Five
- A Clockwork Orange
What’s more, many of them are considered children’s fare.
- His Dark Materials
- The Hobbit
- Harry Potter
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
I was particularly pleased to see a few of my current favorites in the large type:
Here’s what McCandless says in the Guardian:
I scraped the results of over 15 notable book polls, readers surveys and top 100′s. Both popular and high-brow. They included all Pulitzer Prize winners, Desert Island Discs choices from recent years, Oprah’s Bookclub list, and, of course, The Guardian’s Top 100 Books of All Time. A simple frequency analysis on the gathered titles gives us a neat ‘consensus cloud’ visualisation of the most mentioned books titles across the polls.
And here’s a spreadsheet of the lists he combined.
Are most bibliophiles into geeky literature? Or just the folks who compile the must-read lists? How many of these have you read? (I find it both heartwarming and scary that my teens have probably read as many, if not more, of the “big titles” as me.)
