The Most ‘Abandoned’ Books on GoodReads
Which books on GoodReads are most difficult to finish? Estimating proportions in December 2019 gives an entirely different result than absolute counts.
What books are hardest for a reader who starts them to finish, and most likely to be abandoned? I scrape a crowdsourced tag,
abandoned, from the GoodReads book social network on 2019-12-09 to estimate conditional probability of being abandoned.The default GoodReads tag interface presents only raw counts of tags, not counts divided by total ratings (=reads). This conflates popularity with probability of being abandoned: a popular but rarely-abandoned book may have more
abandonedtags than a less popular but often-abandoned book. There is also residual error from the winner’s curse where books with fewer ratings are more mis-estimated than popular books. I fix that to see what more correct rankings look like.Correcting for both changes the top-5 ranking completely, from (raw counts):
to (shrunken posterior proportions):
I also consider a model adjusting for covariates (author/average-rating/year), to see what books are most surprisingly often-abandoned given their pedigrees & rating etc. Abandon rates increase the newer a book is, and the lower the average rating.
Adjusting for those, the top-5 are:
The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling
Books at the top of the adjusted list appear to reflect a mix of highly-popular authors changing genres, and ‘prestige’ books which are highly-rated but a slog to read.
These results are interesting for how they highlight how people read books for many reasons (such as marketing campaigns, literary prestige, or following a popular author), and this is reflected in their decision whether to continue reading or to abandon a book.
The book review website/social network GoodReads (2006–) is probably the single largest book-focused website in the Anglosphere—it is almost as widely used by authors, who as much as they may despise it, can’t live without it. (I was surprised when, reading writer interviews to learn about preferred writing times, how many have given interviews to GoodReads over the years.) I do not recommend GoodReads as it is extremely slow, largely unmaintained post-acquisition, and user-hostile (eg. eliminating the API access which allowed users to escape to better book websites like LibraryThing); nevertheless, it remains the largest book website and some interesting data can be extracted from it. Fixing GoodReads. Its functionality is limited, but GoodReads does support user-set tags on books in the form of ‘bookshelves’; one such tag is the GR “abandoned” bookshelf1, which lets people record which books they couldn’t finish reading. A (former) GoodReads user myself, I came across that tag and thought to myself that the results were amusing—take that, both highschool English class & J. K. Rowling!—but also totally misleading, since the bookshelf page only shows books sorted by total tags per book.
Little recent data. There aren’t many similar sources for people dropping books. Amazon’s Kindle has allowed for similar inferences by indirectly gauging reader attrition through the distribution of ‘highlights’ (user-made excerpts/notes), under the assumption that highlight-worthy material is uniformly distributed & thus absence of evidence (of highlighting) is evidence of absence (of reading), which Jordan Ellenberg in 2014 to facetiously estimate that Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century was the most abandoned book of 201411ya. That hasn’t seemed to be updated recently, even though Amazon surely has detailed analytics and knows exactly what books have highest abandonment rates (to address Kindle Unlimited fraud & cabals if nothing else), so GoodReads offers a useful alternative despite all the flaws of haphazardly-collected social media data.
Problems in Ranking by Raw Count
Popularity ≠ Unreadability. It’s no surprise that J. K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy or Catch-22 are at the top of the list, because they are read so often. A really abandonable-book probably would never become popular enough to get enough abandoned-tags to crack the list. (There are only two kinds of books: those people complain about reading, and those people don’t read.)
So as it is, a simple sort-by-count tells us nothing more than a lot of people have read these books. It’d be more interesting to look at something like what books have the highest percentage of abandoned tags versus total reads. GoodReads, as it happens, provides the number of ‘reads’ as recorded by GR users, so that’s good.
Low counts mean sampling error. However, the abandoned counts are also low in an absolute sense: GR displays only the top 25 pages (so we can’t look at least abandoned books), and to make the cutoff requires just 40 tags. In comparison, the most-read book on the list has 6,238,667 reads. The average percentage abandoned of reads is ~0.13%, which is extremely rare (1 in 769); I am certain that books are abandoned at a much higher rate than that, because I know I abandon books more frequently than 1 in every 769 books despite finishing books being a point of pride for me2, implying that the tags are not necessarily unbiased either.
Bayesian correction for flukes. So we have potentially unstable estimates of percentages: we have a lot (n = 1250) of entries, which we know ought to be similar, but with highly noisy estimates as we try to estimate what is a tiny & rare event (read → abandoned), which will exaggerate differences & mislead us due to winner’s curse/regression to the mean, particularly when we look at the extremes like top/bottom. This makes it a good fit for Bayesian multilevel modeling: we can treat each book as a random effect, and get shrinkage back to a common mean, reducing the damage done by the sampling error.
From a Bayesian multi-level model, we can then extract reasonably stable proportions, rank, and get out a more meaningful list of books by ‘abandon’ rates. Sounds good to me, and the result should be amusing.
Data
Scraping
No API or CLI, so manual extraction. Despite the GoodReads API (which has since been removed), scraping the data turned out to be a nuisance. The GoodReads API appears to only support exporting your particular data, and not scraping arbitrary tags or lists: it doesn’t even hint at the necessary functionality, and searching didn’t turn up any hints. (Perhaps unsurprisingly given GR’s neglect by Amazon since its acquisition.) The data appears on the web interface in HTML form, so I settled for scraping that. (If I wanted the reviews themselves, I would encounter even more horrifying limitations: GoodReads restricts every reader to seeing a maximum of 300 reviews for a book, no matter how many there actually are—one can see additional sets of 300 by choosing different sorting options, but one can never browse anything close to all of them. This means that a review which falls below the top 300 becomes invisible, and the top reviews become a self-reinforcing echo chamber.)
GR sits on a throne of lies. GR lies to bots.
At first, I thought I could simply use my usual elinks -dump trick and iterate through the 25 pages GR allows.3 This failed because GR only shows you the other pages when you are logged in; if you are logged out, every page request returns the first page (!) and it’s no good. If there were more pages than 25, I’d look further into exporting cookies from Firefox to elinks or using a TagSoup-like library to parse it, but it’s not worth it for so little.
Instead, I copy-pasted each page’s text by hand, and did Emacs macro & regexp search-and-replaces to turn it into a usable CSV. I kept the provided metadata of author/average-GR-rating (1–5 Likert scale)/publication-year.
Preprocessing
Transforming to normality. Reads/Abandoned are highly right-skewed, as one would expect, and a log-transform helps. Year is tricky, because it ranges from 750BC to 2019, but is so left-skewed to books published in the 20th & especially 21st century that the usual transforms like square/cube-rooting do nothing (which will be a problem if we want to use it as a covariate to look at temporal trends in abandon-rates); I settled for transforming years into percentiles. And we’ll want an Abandon rate in addition to the raw Abandoned count.
Reading the CSV of tag data in & transforming:
gr <- read.csv("https://myweightloss42.com/doc/culture/2019-12-09-goodreads-bookshelf-abandoned.csv%22%3C/span%3E,%3C/span%3E
colClasses=c("factor", "factor", "integer", "numeric", "integer", "integer"))
## Raw data:
head(gr)
# Title Author Abandoned Rating Reads Year
# 1 The Casual Vacancy J. K. Rowling 763 3.30 288511 2012
# 2 Catch-22 (Catch-22, #1) Joseph Heller 685 3.98 679887 1961
# 3 American Gods (American Gods, #1) Neil Gaiman 663 4.11 693316 2001
# 4 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) George R. R. Martin 655 4.45 1833563 1996
# 5 The Book Thief Markus Zusak 608 4.37 1644846 2005
# 6 Outlander (Outlander, #1) Diana Gabaldon 572 4.22 744288 1991
## Transforms:
gr$Reads.log <- log(gr$Reads)
gr$Abandoned.log <- log(gr$Abandoned)
perc.rank <- function(x) trunc(rank(x))/length(x)
gr$Year.percentile <- perc.rank(gr$Year)
gr$Abandoned.rate <- gr$Abandoned / gr$Reads
gr$Abandoned.rate.log <- log(gr$Abandoned.rate)Description
Describing basic statistics:
library(skimr)
skim(gr) ## n = 50 books per page * 25 pages = 1250
# Skim summary statistics
# n obs: 1250
# n variables: 11
#
# ── Variable type:factor ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n n_unique top_counts ordered
# Author 0 1250 1250 835 Ste: 12, Nei: 9, Nea: 8, Chu: 6 FALSE
# Title 0 1250 1250 1248 Lie: 2, The: 2, 'Su: 1, 10%: 1 FALSE
#
# ── Variable type:integer ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n mean sd p0 p25 p50 p75 p100 hist
# Abandoned 0 1250 1250 104.95 84.51 43 53 74 124.75 763 ▇▂▁▁▁▁▁▁
# Reads 0 1250 1250 264410.29 491210.21 4837 48771.25 108093.5 263805.75 6238667 ▇▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
# Year 0 1250 1250 1982.6 162.45 -750 1995 2009 2013 2019 ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▇
#
# ── Variable type:numeric ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n mean sd p0 p25 p50 p75 p100 hist
# Abandoned.log 0 1250 1250 4.45 0.58 3.76 3.97 4.3 4.83 6.64 ▇▅▃▂▂▁▁▁
# Abandoned.rate 0 1250 1250 0.0013 0.0015 1.7e-05 0.00035 0.00079 0.0016 0.02 ▇▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
# Abandoned.rate.log 0 1250 1250 -7.21 1.09 -10.97 -7.95 -7.14 -6.43 -3.89 ▁▁▃▆▇▅▂▁
# Rating 0 1250 1250 3.92 0.28 2.69 3.76 3.94 4.11 4.65 ▁▁▁▃▆▇▃▁
# Reads.log 0 1250 1250 11.66 1.25 8.48 10.79 11.59 12.48 15.65 ▁▃▆▇▆▃▁▁
# Year.percentile 0 1250 1250 0.5 0.29 8e-04 0.25 0.51 0.72 1 ▇▇▆▇▇▇▆▇
round(digits=2, cor(subset(gr, select=c("Abandoned.log", "Reads.log", "Rating", "Year.percentile", "Abandoned.rate.log"))))
# Abandoned.log Reads.log Rating Year.percentile Abandoned.rate.log
# Abandoned.log 1.00
# Reads.log 0.49 1.00
# Rating 0.08 0.42 1.00
# Year.percentile -0.09 -0.36 -0.18 1.00
# Abandoned.rate.log -0.03 -0.89 -0.44 0.36 1.00Newer/lower-rated = worse. As expected, read count correlates strongly with abandon count, and also as makes sense, being a more recent book correlates with fewer reads (less time for people to have read it). Abandoned rates mechanically correlate with abandoned/read counts, of course, since it’s derived from them; more interesting is that higher ratings predict much lower abandon rates, and being older also predicts lower abandon rates. The further correlation of average rating with year percentile is interesting, as it suggests more recent books both have worse ratings and are otherwise more likely to be abandoned—you’d think people would avoid new books with lower ratings, but I guess novelty & marketing are enough to convince people to waste their time.
Analysis
Simple Proportions
So the data looks sensible. What do the raw abandon rates look like when we look at the worst (largest) abandon rates?
gr$Rank.raw <- 1:nrow(gr)
gr <- gr[order(gr$Abandoned.rate, decreasing=TRUE),]
gr$Rank.proportion <- 1:nrow(gr)
cor(gr$Rank.raw, gr$Rank.proportion, method = "spearman")
# [1] -0.0406028435
gr[1:30,c(13, 12, 1, 2, 10)]
# Rank.proportion Rank.raw Title Author Abandoned.rate
# 1 117 Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1) Marlon James 0.0204
# 2 482 Space Opera Catherynne M. Valente 0.0114
# 3 411 Little, Big John Crowley 0.0106
# 4 256 The Witches: Salem, 1692 Stacy Schiff 0.0099
# 5 982 Tender Morsels Margo Lanagan 0.0096
# 6 663 Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) Ada Palmer 0.0093
# 7 1212 The Flame Alphabet Ben Marcus 0.0091
# 8 592 New York 2140 Kim Stanley Robinson 0.0090
# 9 690 Hild Nicola Griffith 0.0085
# 10 1039 Gingerbread Helen Oyeyemi 0.0084
# 11 701 Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany 0.0083
# 12 114 Winter's Tale Mark Helprin 0.0078
# 13 134 A Brief History of Seven Killings Marlon James 0.0078
# 14 10 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 0.0075
# 15 184 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness Arundhati Roy 0.0072
# 16 962 Gold Fame Citrus Claire Vaye Watkins 0.0071
# 17 1007 I Am a Cat Natsume Sōseki 0.0070
# 18 159 Milkman Anna Burns 0.0066
# 19 689 Avenue of Mysteries John Irving 0.0064
# 20 718 The Years of Rice and Salt Kim Stanley Robinson 0.0064
# 21 371 Zone One Colson Whitehead 0.0063
# 22 522 To Rise Again at a Decent Hour Joshua Ferris 0.0063
# 23 565 City on Fire Garth Risk Hallberg 0.0062
# 24 330 Telegraph Avenue Michael Chabon 0.0061
# 25 576 It Can’t Happen Here Sinclair Lewis 0.0061
# 26 568 The Finkler Question Howard Jacobson 0.0059
# 27 1128 Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own Kate Bolick 0.0058
# 28 771 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1) Ken Liu 0.0058
# 29 645 Barkskins Annie Proulx 0.0057
# 30 1134 A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing Eimear McBride 0.0057The ranking by rate looks completely different from ranking by count: The Casual Vacancy, Catch-22, American Gods, A Game of Thrones4 etc have all vanished and been replaced by an almost disjoint set. (In fact, the two rankings are uncorrelated: ρ = −0.04.)
Proportion rankings look right. These rankings look much more sensible to me as estimates of most-likely-to-be-abandoned: I did in fact abandon Dhalgren in disgust, and while I enjoyed Natsume Sōseki’s satires of post-Meiji Japan & academia in I Am a Cat, I understand why readers might drop it. I’m unfamiliar with Black Leopard, Red Wolf which tops the ranking, but on looking into it further, that makes sense: it is set in Africa & attempts to Africanize American superhero pop culture, has been hailed by the literary press & given awards, somewhat politicized, is over 600 pages long, and even its fans concede that it is difficult to read5. So Black Leopard, Red Wolf topping the ranking may not be flattering, but may be fair.
Bayesian Modeling
Implementing Bayesian correction… However—that brings us back to sampling error. Black Leopard, Red Wolf just came out in 2019 and hardly anyone has read it. In several cases, a member of the top 50 approaches the cut-off for not being in the list at all by having <40 abandon count (eg. Spinster or The Flame Alphabet). Is it really plausible that they have the highest abandon rates? This smacks of the winner’s curse, where measurement error/small noisy datapoints dominate the extremes of an analysis without actually being extreme (just numerous & poorly estimated).
So the next step is Bayesian modeling to account for the uncertainty caused by small n for these most-abandonable books. Using brms, we estimate a simple Bayesian binomial model, with a random effect for a given book’s abandon rate, and add a semi-informative prior expressing our opinion that all books are somewhat similar in abandon rate & there are not wacky huge differences in log odds.
Results:
library(brms)
gbSimple <- brm(Abandoned|trials(Reads) ~ (1|Title), family=binomial,
prior=c(prior(student_t(3,0,0.5), class="sd", group="Title")), data=gr, chains=30)
gbSimple
# Formula: Abandoned | trials(Reads) ~ (1 | Title)
# Data: gr (Number of observations: 1250)
# Samples: 30 chains, each with iter = 2000; warmup = 1000; thin = 1;
# total post-warmup samples = 30000
#
# Group-Level Effects:
# ~Title (Number of levels: 1248)
# Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Eff.Sample Rhat
# sd(Intercept) 1.08 0.02 1.04 1.13 751 1.04
#
# Population-Level Effects:
# Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Eff.Sample Rhat
# Intercept -7.21 0.03 -7.27 -7.15 363 1.09
rgbs <- as.data.frame(ranef(gbSimple)$Title)
rgbs <- rgbs[order(rgbs$Estimate.Intercept, decreasing=TRUE),]
## Combine with original GR dataset to examine full rankings at leisure:
rgbs$Title <- rownames(rgbs)
grShrunk <- merge(rgbs, gr, all=TRUE)
grShrunk <- grShrunk[order(grShrunk$Estimate.Intercept, decreasing=TRUE),]
write.csv(grShrunk, row.names=FALSE,
file="2020-01-05-goodreads-bookshelf-abandoned-posteriorproportions.csv")
## https://myweightloss42.com/doc/culture/2020-01-05-goodreads-bookshelf-abandoned-posteriorproportions.csv%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/code%3E%3C/pre%3E%3C/div%3E
head(rgbs, n=30)
Estimate.Intercept Est.Error.Intercept Q2.5.Intercept Q97.5.Intercept
# Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1) 3.32379864 0.0790607148 3.16589591 3.47735486
# Space Opera 2.71627444 0.1112760421 2.49346320 2.92865256
# Little, Big 2.64442569 0.1059941782 2.43214091 2.84849322
# The Witches: Salem, 1692 2.58375600 0.0899676079 2.40497914 2.75670092
# Tender Morsels 2.52059267 0.1430103435 2.23171890 2.79277487
# Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) 2.51037552 0.1248071384 2.26078544 2.74843195
# New York 2140 2.47210718 0.1191486878 2.23275007 2.69988279
# The Flame Alphabet 2.46184114 0.1554327209 2.15012868 2.75649392
# Hild 2.41661420 0.1280633539 2.15894924 2.66063531
# Dhalgren 2.39653706 0.1279221591 2.14009601 2.64025458
# Gingerbread 2.39249509 0.1477781116 2.09432888 2.67215550
# Winter's Tale 2.35943852 0.0792310629 2.20259365 2.51172500
# A Brief History of Seven Killings 2.34778502 0.0787129413 2.19104704 2.49958076
# Infinite Jest 2.31906968 0.0539429921 2.21314673 2.42519239
# The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 2.27664588 0.0827673701 2.11245754 2.43835817
# Gold Fame Citrus 2.23087746 0.1436343235 1.94186387 2.50264489
# I Am a Cat 2.21057738 0.1455388602 1.91550434 2.48521722
# Milkman 2.18260216 0.0814159601 2.01950559 2.33876916
# Avenue of Mysteries 2.13978963 0.1272281207 1.88351811 2.38285098
# Zone One 2.13680900 0.1028742023 1.93089374 2.33295611
# The Years of Rice and Salt 2.12679705 0.1265444209 1.87263437 2.36955658
# To Rise Again at a Decent Hour 2.11845577 0.1129727195 1.89144903 2.33461408
# City on Fire 2.11101764 0.1169914835 1.87395603 2.33317581
# Telegraph Avenue 2.10574358 0.0969163720 1.91411544 2.29259053
# It Can’t Happen Here 2.08954687 0.1167404830 1.85544344 2.31284728
# The Finkler Question 2.06326071 0.1174026491 1.82910415 2.28826845
# Barkskins 2.02841842 0.1217175555 1.78412138 2.26053102
# The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1) 2.02389635 0.1315723831 1.75779024 2.27784518
# Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own 2.01611353 0.1538652622 1.70673329 2.30803729
# A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing 2.00585364 0.1538617892 1.69349463 2.29740124
titles <- sapply(gsub(" ", ".", row.names(rgbs)[1:30]),
function(t) { paste0("r_Title[", t, ",Intercept]") } )
stanplot(gbSimple, pars=titles, exact_match=TRUE) + scale_y_discrete(labels =row.names(rgbs)[1:30]) +
labs(title="GoodReads book abandon ratings, top 30")
Top 30 GoodReads popular books by abandonment rate (Bayesian posteriors)
Black Leopard, Red Wolf does not enjoy any reprieve here, and to my annoyance, the top ranking changes little from raw proportion to shrunken proportion:
raw <- as.character(gr[order(gr$Abandoned.rate, decreasing=TRUE),]$Title)[1:30]
adjusted <- rownames(rgbs)[1:30]
rawDf <- data.frame(Title=raw, Ranking.raw=1:30)
adjustedDf <- data.frame(Title=adjusted, Ranking.adjusted=1:30)
comparisonDf <- merge(adjustedDf, rawDf, all=TRUE)
comparisonDf$Difference <- comparisonDf$Ranking.raw - comparisonDf$Ranking.adjusted
comparisonDf <- comparisonDf[order(comparisonDf$Ranking.raw),]; comparisonDf
# Title Ranking.adjusted Ranking.raw Difference
# 5 Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1) 1 1 0
# 17 Space Opera 2 2 0
# 14 Little, Big 3 3 0
# 25 The Witches: Salem, 1692 4 4 0
# 20 Tender Morsels 5 5 0
# 28 Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) 6 6 0
# 22 The Flame Alphabet 8 7 -1
# 16 New York 2140 7 8 1
# 10 Hild 9 9 0
# 8 Gingerbread 11 10 -1
# 7 Dhalgren 10 11 1
# 29 Winter's Tale 12 12 0
# 1 A Brief History of Seven Killings 13 13 0
# 12 Infinite Jest 14 14 0
# 24 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 15 15 0
# 9 Gold Fame Citrus 16 16 0
# 11 I Am a Cat 17 17 0
# 15 Milkman 18 18 0
# 3 Avenue of Mysteries 19 19 0
# 26 The Years of Rice and Salt 21 20 -1
# 30 Zone One 20 21 1
# 27 To Rise Again at a Decent Hour 22 22 0
# 6 City on Fire 23 23 0
# 19 Telegraph Avenue 24 24 0
# 13 It Can’t Happen Here 25 25 0
# 21 The Finkler Question 26 26 0
# 18 Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own 29 27 -2
# 23 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1) 28 28 0
# 4 Barkskins 27 29 2
# 2 A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing 30 30 0
…turns out to be unnecessary. Ah well! Apparently the restriction to >40 “abandoned” counts, while unfortunate for many reasons, actually does take care of much of the winner’s-curse bias in looking at raw proportions: the Bayesian model can’t adjust it much based on the available data.
Least Abandoned
Top-30 addictive books. On a more positive note, of the books which are included in the dataset, which 30 have the lowest abandon rates? I find the results entirely plausible6:
grShrunk[1220:1250,c(1, 6)]
# Title Author
# The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
# The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3) J. R. R. Tolkien
# The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
# The Stranger Albert Camus
# The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) Dan Brown
# The Help Kathryn Stockett
# Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3) Suzanne Collins
# The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) Rick Riordan
# Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom
# A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
# Twilight (Twilight, #1) Stephenie Meyer
# Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones, #1) Helen Fielding
# The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
# Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
# The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
# The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd
# My Sister's Keeper Jodi Picoult
# The Fault in Our Stars John Green
# The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank
# The Notebook (The Notebook, #1) Nicholas Sparks
# Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2) Suzanne Collins
# New Moon (Twilight, #2) Stephenie Meyer
# Eclipse (Twilight, #3) Stephenie Meyer
# To Kill a Mockingbird (To Kill a Mockingbird, #1) Harper Lee
# Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1) Dan Brown
# The Giver (The Giver, #1) Lois Lowry
# Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) J. K. Rowling
# The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) Suzanne Collins
# Animal Farm George Orwell
# Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) J. K. Rowling
# Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) J. K. Rowling
After all, whatever else you might think of books like The Da Vinci Code or Twilight, they did hook their readers; and before Harry Potter was a movie franchise juggernaut, it was the delight & despair of school/public librarians attempting to cater to suddenly-ravenous children.
Full Rankings
The full n = 1,250 posterior proportion rankings in descending order as a table (click to uncollapse):
GoodReads books sorted by Bayesian estimate of probability of being tagged ‘abandoned’ by someone who tries to read them.
Rank
Title
Author
Year
Rating
Abandonment
1
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)
Marlon James
2019
3.49
3.323
2
Space Opera
Catherynne M. Valente
2018
3.50
2.714
3
Little, Big
John Crowley
1981
3.83
2.643
4
The Witches: Salem, 1692
Stacy Schiff
2015
3.17
2.582
5
Tender Morsels
Margo Lanagan
2007
3.56
2.520
6
Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)
Ada Palmer
2016
3.82
2.508
7
New York 2140
Kim Stanley Robinson
2017
3.55
2.472
8
The Flame Alphabet
Ben Marcus
2012
2.88
2.459
9
Hild
Nicola Griffith
2013
3.78
2.415
10
Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany
1975
3.78
2.394
11
Gingerbread
Helen Oyeyemi
2019
3.07
2.391
12
Winter’s Tale
Mark Helprin
1983
3.50
2.359
13
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James
2014
3.87
2.347
14
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
1996
4.29
2.317
15
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy
2017
3.47
2.275
16
Gold Fame Citrus
Claire Vaye Watkins
2015
3.30
2.228
17
I Am a Cat
Natsume Sōseki
1905
3.71
2.208
18
Milkman
Anna Burns
2018
3.60
2.181
19
Avenue of Mysteries
John Irving
2015
3.23
2.139
20
Zone One
Colson Whitehead
2011
3.26
2.135
21
The Years of Rice and Salt
Kim Stanley Robinson
2002
3.73
2.125
22
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Joshua Ferris
2014
3.08
2.118
23
City on Fire
Garth Risk Hallberg
2015
3.41
2.109
24
Telegraph Avenue
Michael Chabon
2012
3.38
2.104
25
It Can’t Happen Here
Sinclair Lewis
1935
3.76
2.089
26
The Finkler Question
Howard Jacobson
2010
2.78
2.062
27
Barkskins
Annie Proulx
2016
3.77
2.026
28
The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
Ken Liu
2015
3.73
2.022
29
Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own
Kate Bolick
2015
3.45
2.014
30
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
Eimear McBride
2013
3.47
2.003
31
Jane, Unlimited
Kristin Cashore
2017
3.36
1.990
32
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Madeleine Thien
2016
3.90
1.942
33
The Map of Time
Félix J. Palma
2008
3.38
1.936
34
The Quick
Lauren Owen
2014
3.24
1.922
35
The Queen of the Night
Alexander Chee
2016
3.43
1.912
36
What is Not Yours is Not Yours
Helen Oyeyemi
2016
3.64
1.902
37
Frog Music
Emma Donoghue
2014
3.15
1.897
38
Bridge of Clay
Markus Zusak
2018
3.80
1.890
39
The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers
Maxwell King
2018
4.01
1.875
40
The Prague Cemetery
Umberto Eco
2010
3.43
1.874
41
4 3 2 1
Paul Auster
2017
3.84
1.869
42
The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton
2013
3.72
1.864
43
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Salman Rushdie
2015
3.38
1.853
44
The Children’s Book
A. S. Byatt
2009
3.67
1.848
45
The Unconsoled
Kazuo Ishiguro
1995
3.53
1.827
46
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Charles Yu
2010
3.38
1.819
47
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
1962
3.76
1.816
48
The Gone-Away World
Nick Harkaway
2008
4.12
1.812
49
The Wangs versus the World
Jade Chang
2016
3.31
1.811
50
The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
Imogen Hermes Gowar
2018
3.61
1.811
51
Reservoir 13
Jon McGregor
2017
3.59
1.810
52
Bleeding Edge
Thomas Pynchon
2013
3.57
1.800
53
After Alice
Gregory Maguire
2015
2.79
1.797
54
Deathless (Leningrad Diptych, #1)
Catherynne M. Valente
2011
4.01
1.785
55
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Nancy Isenberg
2016
3.74
1.775
56
2312
Kim Stanley Robinson
2012
3.45
1.771
57
On Such a Full Sea
Chang-rae Lee
2014
3.48
1.766
58
Open City
Teju Cole
2011
3.50
1.754
59
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Eliezer Yudkowsky
2015
4.39
1.754
60
Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)
Mervyn Peake
1946
3.91
1.736
61
Kraken
China Miéville
2010
3.60
1.728
62
Moonglow
Michael Chabon
2016
3.81
1.727
63
Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles, #1)
Colin Meloy
2011
3.65
1.706
64
Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon
1973
4.01
1.698
65
Flat Broke with Two Goats: A Memoir of Appalachia
Jennifer McGaha
2018
3.24
1.695
66
Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
2010
3.72
1.695
67
Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)
Neal Stephenson
2003
3.93
1.693
68
The Sellout
Paul Beatty
2015
3.77
1.683
69
Super Sad True Love Story
Gary Shteyngart
2010
3.45
1.681
70
2666
Roberto Bolaño
2004
4.21
1.680
71
The Secret Chord
Geraldine Brooks
2015
3.58
1.679
72
Swamplandia!
Karen Russell
2011
3.23
1.673
73
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
2017
3.76
1.670
74
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
Lucia Berlin
2015
4.18
1.658
75
S.
J. J. Abrams
2013
3.84
1.646
76
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
Karen Abbott
2014
3.75
1.641
77
The Empathy Exams
Leslie Jamison
2014
3.64
1.640
78
The Red House
Mark Haddon
2012
2.94
1.636
79
The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1)
M. T. Anderson
2006
3.50
1.635
80
Uncommon Type
Tom Hanks
2017
3.44
1.631
81
Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)
Joseph Fink
2015
3.84
1.622
82
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)
Catherynne M. Valente
2011
3.96
1.584
83
How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking
Jordan Ellenberg
2014
3.96
1.573
84
The Favorite Sister
Jessica Knoll
2018
3.09
1.569
85
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Neal Stephenson
2017
3.87
1.551
86
Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977–25200223ya
David Sedaris
2015
3.93
1.549
87
Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1)
Hilary Mantel
2009
3.86
1.545
88
The Good Lord Bird
James McBride
2013
3.77
1.542
89
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño
1998
4.12
1.534
90
Unsheltered
Barbara Kingsolver (Author, Narrator)
2018
3.61
1.527
91
How to Be Both
Ali Smith
2014
3.65
1.518
92
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty
2013
4.04
1.516
93
NW
Zadie Smith
2012
3.44
1.501
94
The Post-Birthday World
Lionel Shriver
2007
3.54
1.500
95
My Absolute Darling
Gabriel Tallent
2017
3.63
1.496
96
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Mortimer J. Adler
1940
4.01
1.492
97
A Murder in Time (Kendra Donovan, #1)
Julie McElwain
2016
3.75
1.490
98
The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi
2009
3.75
1.488
99
The Lonely Polygamist
Brady Udall
2010
3.51
1.484
100
We Are Never Meeting In Real Life
Samantha Irby
2017
3.92
1.479
101
The High Mountains of Portugal
Yann Martel
2016
3.38
1.472
102
The Bees
Laline Paull
2014
3.70
1.469
103
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker
2010
4.18
1.463
104
The People in the Trees
Hanya Yanagihara
2013
3.69
1.458
105
H is for Hawk
Helen Macdonald
2014
3.73
1.458
106
The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner
2013
3.48
1.457
107
Then We Came to the End
Joshua Ferris
2007
3.46
1.442
108
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace
2011
3.95
1.438
109
The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro
2015
3.49
1.434
110
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas R. Hofstadter
1979
4.29
1.432
111
The Peripheral
William Gibson
2014
3.94
1.432
112
The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry
2016
3.60
1.428
113
The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1)
Rick Yancey
2009
3.88
1.421
114
Imagine Me Gone
Adam Haslett
2016
3.69
1.410
115
The Little Paris Bookshop
Nina George
2013
3.50
1.410
116
Idaho
Emily Ruskovich
2017
3.52
1.402
117
Descent
Tim Johnston
2015
3.60
1.397
118
James Potter and the Hall of Elders’ Crossing (James Potter, #1)
G. Norman Lippert
2007
3.77
1.396
119
American War
Omar El Akkad
2017
3.79
1.385
120
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt
2002
3.46
1.381
121
Some Luck (Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga, #1)
Jane Smiley
2014
3.61
1.369
122
Underworld
Don DeLillo
1997
3.92
1.359
123
All the Birds in the Sky
Charlie Jane Anders
2016
3.58
1.354
124
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff
2018
3.44
1.351
125
The Water Knife
Paolo Bacigalupi
2015
3.83
1.350
126
Accelerando
Charles Stross
2005
3.88
1.346
127
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke
2004
3.82
1.341
128
Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1)
China Miéville
2000
3.97
1.333
129
The Road to Character
David Brooks
2015
3.66
1.327
130
The Zookeeper’s Wife
Diane Ackerman
2007
3.46
1.320
131
Meddling Kids
Edgar Cantero
2017
3.56
1.319
132
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2015
4.00
1.319
133
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer
2016
4.34
1.317
134
Night Train to Lisbon
Pascal Mercier
2004
3.72
1.307
135
Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff
2015
3.57
1.304
136
Ulysses
James Joyce
1922
3.73
1.304
137
Nexus (Nexus, #1)
Ramez Naam
2012
4.05
1.293
138
John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1)
David Wong
2007
3.90
1.290
139
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje
2018
3.64
1.286
140
Once Upon a River
Diane Setterfield
2018
3.99
1.284
141
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Michael Chabon
2007
3.71
1.279
142
The Library at Mount Char
Scott Hawkins
2015
4.09
1.279
143
The Casual Vacancy
J. K. Rowling
2012
3.30
1.276
144
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Karen Russell
2013
3.68
1.275
145
The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie
1988
3.71
1.273
146
California
Edan Lepucki
2014
3.23
1.264
147
Snow
Orhan Pamuk
2002
3.58
1.258
148
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World
Peter Wohlleben
2015
4.06
1.256
149
We Are Not Ourselves
Matthew Thomas
2014
3.70
1.253
150
Here I Am
Jonathan Safran Foer
2016
3.64
1.253
151
The Paying Guests
Sarah Waters
2014
3.41
1.241
152
Gilead (Gilead, #1)
Marilynne Robinson
2004
3.85
1.239
153
The Bone Clocks
David Mitchell
2014
3.83
1.233
154
Lab Girl
Hope Jahren
2016
4.02
1.230
155
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
Christopher Ryan
2010
4.02
1.226
156
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2012
4.09
1.225
157
The Overstory
Richard Powers
2018
4.19
1.225
158
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Katarina Bivald
2013
3.55
1.224
159
Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)
Ann Leckie
2013
3.98
1.219
160
LaRose
Louise Erdrich
2016
3.87
1.217
161
Time and Again (Time, #1)
Jack Finney
1970
3.96
1.211
162
The Almost Moon
Alice Sebold
2007
2.69
1.209
163
The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
Fernando Pessoa
1982
4.46
1.207
164
Hidden Figures
Margot Lee Shetterly
2016
3.97
1.206
165
Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead
2012
3.03
1.205
166
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra
2013
4.13
1.201
167
The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy, #1)
S. A. Chakraborty
2017
4.15
1.198
168
Outline
Rachel Cusk
2014
3.62
1.197
169
In the Unlikely Event
Judy Blume
2015
3.52
1.192
170
Min kamp 1 (Min kamp #1)
Karl Ove Knausgård
2009
4.08
1.189
171
Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century, #1)
Cherie Priest
2009
3.50
1.184
172
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk
1998
3.85
1.184
173
The Gathering
Anne Enright
2007
3.07
1.178
174
The Lacuna
Barbara Kingsolver
2009
3.79
1.178
175
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Claire North
2014
4.04
1.171
176
Going Bovine
Libba Bray
2009
3.65
1.170
177
In One Person
John Irving
2012
3.67
1.170
178
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
2006
3.76
1.168
179
Dear Life
Alice Munro
2012
3.75
1.167
180
Challenger Deep
Neal Shusterman
2015
4.14
1.157
181
Swing Time
Zadie Smith
2016
3.56
1.157
182
Less
Andrew Sean Greer
2017
3.71
1.157
183
Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living
Nick Offerman
2013
3.68
1.152
184
Er ist wieder da
Timur Vermes
2012
3.44
1.147
185
Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
2015
3.99
1.144
186
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
2019
3.77
1.143
187
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl
2006
3.71
1.140
188
Blackout (All Clear, #1)
Connie Willis
2010
3.83
1.132
189
The Emperor’s Children
Claire Messud
2006
2.95
1.126
190
Arcadia
Lauren Groff
2012
3.67
1.124
191
Tinkers
Paul Harding
2008
3.38
1.122
192
Afterworlds (Afterworlds #1)
Scott Westerfeld
2014
3.73
1.120
193
Tangerine
Christine Mangan
2018
3.21
1.118
194
Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk
2009
2.97
1.117
195
The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library, #1)
Genevieve Cogman
2015
3.73
1.114
196
Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
Marcel Proust
1913
4.14
1.108
197
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
Bill Bryson
2015
3.71
1.106
198
The Summer Before the War
Helen Simonson
2016
3.78
1.099
199
Sweetbitter
Stephanie Danler
2016
3.28
1.091
200
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
1992
4.15
1.087
201
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
2000
4.10
1.086
202
Possession
A. S. Byatt
1990
3.89
1.079
203
Fear: Trump in the White House
Bob Woodward
2018
3.91
1.078
204
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan
2013
3.68
1.068
205
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan
2013
4.01
1.066
206
Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
Kim Stanley Robinson
1992
3.85
1.054
207
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink
2013
3.90
1.053
208
An Instance of the Fingerpost
Iain Pears
1997
3.94
1.053
209
My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels, #1)
2011
3.94
1.048
210
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Jordan B. Peterson
2018
3.96
1.040
211
Transcription
Kate Atkinson
2018
3.50
1.034
212
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
B. J. Novak
2014
3.67
1.027
213
The Library Book
Susan Orlean
2018
3.95
1.018
214
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Stuart Turton
2018
3.92
1.017
215
1Q84
Haruki Murakami
2009
3.92
1.016
216
The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse
1943
4.11
1.011
217
The Book of Strange New Things
Michel Faber
2014
3.66
1.008
218
The Terror
Dan Simmons
2007
4.06
1.008
219
Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)
Amitav Ghosh
2008
3.95
1.003
220
Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
Peter Watts
2006
4.01
1.002
221
The Valley of Amazement
Amy Tan
2013
3.63
0.997
222
Code Name Verity
Elizabeth E. Wein
2012
4.05
0.997
223
The Slap
Christos Tsiolkas
2008
3.19
0.995
224
The Goblin Emperor (The Goblin Emperor, #1)
Katherine Addison
2014
4.04
0.995
225
Purity
Jonathan Franzen
2015
3.61
0.994
226
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie
1981
3.98
0.990
227
The Mars Room
Rachel Kushner
2018
3.49
0.986
228
Inherent Vice
Thomas Pynchon
2009
3.74
0.983
229
A God in Ruins (Todd Family, #2)
Kate Atkinson
2015
3.94
0.981
230
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker
Jennifer Chiaverini
2013
3.46
0.975
231
Boy, Snow, Bird
Helen Oyeyemi
2013
3.35
0.972
232
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
1999
4.25
0.964
233
The Witch Elm
Tana French
2018
3.54
0.963
234
Beauty Queens
Libba Bray
2011
3.62
0.959
235
To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2)
Connie Willis
1998
4.13
0.957
236
The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman
1988
4.18
0.956
237
Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)
Kate Atkinson
2013
3.76
0.954
238
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
Elaine N. Aron
1996
3.87
0.949
239
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Cormac McCarthy
1985
4.17
0.944
240
Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History, #1)
George R. R. Martin
2018
3.89
0.940
241
The Cat’s Table
Michael Ondaatje
2011
3.60
0.936
242
Embassytown
China Miéville
2011
3.88
0.935
243
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
1925
3.16
0.926
244
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
2004
4.01
0.924
245
The Known World
Edward P. Jones
2003
3.83
0.917
246
The Tiger’s Wife
Téa Obreht
2011
3.39
0.911
247
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Jenny Lawson
2015
3.92
0.911
248
A Place for Us
Fatima Farheen Mirza
2018
4.15
0.910
249
Pure (Pure, #1)
Julianna Baggott
2012
3.74
0.907
250
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
1949
4.20
0.907
251
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Mary Beard
2015
4.07
0.905
252
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
1924
4.14
0.903
253
A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki
2013
4.00
0.900
254
The Rook (The Checquy Files, #1)
Daniel O’Malley
2012
4.12
0.896
255
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
2008
4.18
0.893
256
Girl Waits with Gun (Kopp Sisters, #1)
Amy Stewart
2015
3.76
0.892
257
The Gene: An Intimate History
Siddhartha Mukherjee
2016
4.37
0.892
258
Today Will Be Different
Maria Semple
2016
3.18
0.892
259
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt
2012
4.22
0.888
260
Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath, #1)
Chuck Wendig
2015
3.21
0.887
261
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Robert M. Pirsig
1974
3.77
0.884
262
Lily and the Octopus
Steven Rowley
2016
3.71
0.883
263
Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
Gretchen Rubin
2015
3.84
0.881
264
The Nix
Nathan Hill
2016
4.09
0.879
265
The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
Lev Grossman
2009
3.51
0.879
266
Hopscotch
Julio Cortázar
1963
4.24
0.876
267
The Waves
Virginia Woolf
1931
4.14
0.874
268
Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)
Steven Erikson
1999
3.88
0.872
269
Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)
Tomi Adeyemi
2018
4.16
0.870
270
The Orphan Master’s Son
Adam Johnson
2012
4.07
0.867
271
Salt: A World History
Mark Kurlansky
2002
3.74
0.867
272
Kushiel’s Dart (Phèdre’s Trilogy, #1)
Jacqueline Carey
2001
4.03
0.863
273
Everyone Brave is Forgiven
Chris Cleave
2016
3.78
0.861
274
The Wolf of Wall Street (The Wolf of Wall Street, #1)
Jordan Belfort
2007
3.71
0.857
275
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino
1979
4.05
0.856
276
Feed (Newsflesh Trilogy, #1)
Mira Grant
2010
3.85
0.855
277
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
Lawrence Wright
2013
4.04
0.854
278
Why We Broke Up
Daniel Handler
2011
3.48
0.852
279
The Other Einstein
Marie Benedict
2016
3.74
0.852
280
Foucault’s Pendulum
Umberto Eco
1988
3.89
0.851
281
Sweet Tooth
Ian McEwan
2012
3.41
0.848
282
Longbourn
Jo Baker
2013
3.63
0.847
283
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara
2015
4.30
0.846
284
Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die, #1)
Danielle Paige
2014
3.83
0.844
285
The Interestings
Meg Wolitzer
2013
3.57
0.844
286
The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
Matthew Pearl
2003
3.38
0.831
287
The Clockmaker’s Daughter
Kate Morton
2018
3.73
0.831
288
The Happiness Project
Gretchen Rubin
2009
3.61
0.827
289
The Female Persuasion
Meg Wolitzer
2018
3.60
0.827
290
The Reality Dysfunction (Night’s Dawn, #1)
Peter F. Hamilton
1996
4.14
0.824
291
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
Michael Pollan
2018
4.28
0.821
292
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss
Edmund de Waal
2009
3.87
0.820
293
Eileen
Ottessa Moshfegh
2015
3.49
0.819
294
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1)
Seth Grahame-Smith
2009
3.29
0.817
295
The Marriage Plot
Jeffrey Eugenides
2011
3.44
0.814
296
The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
2007
3.80
0.814
297
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
N. K. Jemisin
2015
4.31
0.813
298
The Shining Girls
Lauren Beukes
2013
3.50
0.812
299
The Passage (The Passage, #1)
Justin Cronin
2010
4.04
0.809
300
Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1)
Jasper Fforde
2009
4.14
0.801
301
The Fireman
Joe Hill
2016
3.89
0.799
302
Flight Behavior
Barbara Kingsolver
2012
3.78
0.798
303
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward
2011
3.92
0.797
304
Her Body and Other Parties
Carmen Maria Machado
2017
3.91
0.794
305
The Dog Stars
Peter Heller
2012
3.92
0.793
306
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay
2014
3.94
0.784
307
Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold
Stephen Fry
2017
4.24
0.783
308
And I Darken (The Conqueror’s Saga, #1)
Kiersten White
2016
3.87
0.782
309
The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai
2005
3.42
0.781
310
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi
2003
3.60
0.781
311
Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)
Connie Willis
1992
4.03
0.768
312
Master and Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1)
Patrick O’Brian
1970
4.10
0.766
313
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell
2010
4.03
0.759
314
A Suitable Boy (A Suitable Boy, #1)
Vikram Seth
1993
4.11
0.749
315
The City & the City
China Miéville
2009
3.91
0.747
316
Death Comes to Pemberley
P. D. James
2011
3.25
0.746
317
Labyrinth (Languedoc, #1)
Kate Mosse
2005
3.57
0.743
318
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
Sam Kean
2010
3.91
0.737
319
The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)
Samantha Shannon
2013
3.76
0.737
320
The Dovekeepers
Alice Hoffman
2011
4.04
0.735
321
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t
Nate Silver
2012
3.98
0.734
322
The Book of Speculation
Erika Swyler
2015
3.60
0.732
323
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
1980
3.82
0.727
324
The Long Earth (The Long Earth, #1)
Terry Pratchett
2012
3.76
0.725
325
Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks
1987
3.86
0.724
326
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Neil Gaiman
2015
3.93
0.724
327
The Leavers
Lisa Ko
2017
3.87
0.722
328
How to Build a Girl
Caitlin Moran
2014
3.71
0.719
329
Sacré Bleu
Christopher Moore
2012
3.78
0.715
330
Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)
Richard K. Morgan
2002
4.05
0.709
331
The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)
Liu Cixin
2008
4.06
0.704
332
White Teeth
Zadie Smith
2000
3.76
0.700
333
Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
2017
3.62
0.699
334
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs
1959
3.46
0.699
335
The Hangman’s Daughter (The Hangman’s Daughter, #1)
Oliver Pötzsch
2008
3.73
0.693
336
Reamde
Neal Stephenson
2011
3.97
0.691
337
On the Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta
2006
4.13
0.690
338
Serena
Ron Rash
2008
3.53
0.687
339
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
2016
4.36
0.682
340
The Power
Naomi Alderman
2016
3.84
0.682
341
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
Fredrik Backman
2013
4.05
0.678
342
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
Robert M. Edsel
2009
3.76
0.673
343
Finnikin of the Rock (Lumatere Chronicles, #1)
Melina Marchetta
2008
3.91
0.669
344
Authority (Southern Reach, #2)
Jeff VanderMeer
2014
3.51
0.667
345
The End of Your Life Book Club
Will Schwalbe
2012
3.81
0.664
346
The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)
Helene Wecker
2013
4.11
0.664
347
Rabbit, Run
John Updike
1960
3.58
0.661
348
Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living
Shauna Niequist
2016
3.85
0.660
349
The Crimson Petal and the White
Michel Faber
2002
3.88
0.646
350
The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)
Katherine Arden
2017
4.12
0.643
351
Lord Foul’s Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #1)
Stephen R. Donaldson
1977
3.72
0.640
352
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin A. Abbott
1884
3.82
0.639
353
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance, #1)
N. K. Jemisin
2010
3.85
0.637
354
A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
2015
3.41
0.636
355
Eligible (The Austen Project, #4)
Curtis Sittenfeld
2016
3.61
0.635
356
The Chemist
Stephenie Meyer
2016
3.71
0.634
357
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
2011
4.14
0.632
358
Tenth of December
George Saunders
2013
3.97
0.632
359
The Sword of Shannara (The Original Shannara Trilogy, #1)
Terry Brooks
1977
3.76
0.632
360
Incarceron (Incarceron, #1)
Catherine Fisher
2007
3.64
0.630
361
Metro 2033 (Metro,
Dmitry Glukhovsky
2005
3.99
0.629
362
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller
1934
3.68
0.627
363
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
David Foster Wallace
2005
4.24
0.624
364
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Mary Roach
2013
3.93
0.624
365
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters
2009
3.54
0.621
366
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
1980
3.88
0.614
367
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (The Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1)
Jonas Jonasson
2009
3.83
0.613
368
The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4)
Ursula K. Le Guin
1969
4.06
0.613
369
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
2003
4.27
0.613
370
The Idiot
Elif Batuman
2017
3.63
0.606
371
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1869
4.18
0.606
372
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Bill Bryson
2010
3.97
0.606
373
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
Jenny Lawson
2012
3.90
0.601
374
The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood
2015
3.37
0.601
375
The Postmistress
Sarah Blake
2009
3.33
0.595
376
Cleopatra: A Life
Stacy Schiff
2010
3.66
0.594
377
Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
Jason Matthews
2013
3.95
0.594
378
Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School, #1)
Gail Carriger
2013
3.81
0.592
379
How to Be a Woman
Caitlin Moran
2011
3.73
0.589
380
The Royal We
Heather Cocks
2015
3.80
0.589
381
The Diviners (The Diviners, #1)
Libba Bray
2012
3.97
0.588
382
The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman
2014
3.74
0.586
383
The Black Company (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #1)
Glen Cook
1984
3.94
0.583
384
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil deGrasse Tyson
2017
4.10
0.583
385
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
Becky Chambers
2014
4.16
0.582
386
The Wedding Date (The Wedding Date, #1)
Jasmine Guillory
2018
3.54
0.581
387
Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow
2004
4.23
0.570
388
The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery, #1)
A. G. Riddle
2013
3.72
0.566
389
American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)
Philip Roth
1997
3.92
0.566
390
Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)
Susan Dennard
2016
3.89
0.565
391
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Katherine Boo
2012
3.98
0.564
392
Night Film
Marisha Pessl
2013
3.78
0.564
393
The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1)
Scott Lynch
2006
4.30
0.563
394
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
2010
3.66
0.557
395
Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky
2004
3.84
0.555
396
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Ayana Mathis
2012
3.48
0.554
397
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
2010
4.36
0.554
398
The Weird Sisters
Eleanor Brown
2011
3.36
0.553
399
The Aeronaut’s Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1)
Jim Butcher
2015
4.18
0.549
400
The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)
Jasper Fforde
2001
3.91
0.542
401
Tigana
Guy Gavriel Kay
1990
4.10
0.542
402
Armada
Ernest Cline
2015
3.52
0.534
403
Red Rising (Red Rising, #1)
Pierce Brown
2014
4.27
0.526
404
The Burgess Boys
Elizabeth Strout
2013
3.57
0.523
405
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Holly Black
2013
3.85
0.522
406
The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)
Patrick Ness
2008
3.98
0.520
407
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
David Wroblewski
2008
3.62
0.520
408
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee
2010
4.31
0.517
409
Geek Love
Katherine Dunn
1989
3.97
0.517
410
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Aimee Bender
2010
3.21
0.515
411
The Leftovers
Tom Perrotta
2011
3.40
0.511
412
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2007
3.92
0.511
413
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1615
3.87
0.508
414
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers
2000
3.68
0.505
415
Damned (Damned, #1)
Chuck Palahniuk
2011
3.38
0.503
416
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh
2018
3.67
0.496
417
Sleeping Beauties
Stephen King
2017
3.73
0.492
418
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen
2001
3.79
0.491
419
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
1959
3.96
0.490
420
The Girls
Emma Cline
2016
3.47
0.489
421
The Wonder
Emma Donoghue
2016
3.62
0.486
422
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
1927
3.77
0.482
423
Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
2009
3.95
0.475
424
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
John Boyne
2017
4.47
0.472
425
The Orchardist
Amanda Coplin
2012
3.77
0.471
426
Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)
Jeff VanderMeer
2014
3.57
0.470
427
A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)
Vernor Vinge
1992
4.14
0.468
428
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Michael A. Singer
2007
4.25
0.467
429
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Kate Moore
2017
4.16
0.466
430
Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)
Jerome K. Jerome
1889
3.89
0.464
431
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
1971
4.27
0.463
432
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
2010
4.50
0.459
433
The Imperfectionists
Tom Rachman
2010
3.54
0.457
434
What Happened
Hillary Rodham Clinton
2017
3.97
0.456
435
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Michael Lewis
2016
3.99
0.447
436
A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy, #1)
Deborah Harkness
2011
4.00
0.445
437
The Gargoyle
Andrew Davidson
2008
3.96
0.440
438
Mad About the Boy (Bridget Jones, #3)
Helen Fielding
2013
3.35
0.440
439
Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be
Rachel Hollis
2018
3.76
0.439
440
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
1962
4.15
0.433
441
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Kelly Barnhill
2016
4.18
0.428
442
Splintered (Splintered, #1)
A. G. Howard
2013
3.94
0.425
443
Revelation Space (Revelation Space, #1)
Alastair Reynolds
2000
3.98
0.421
444
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward
2017
4.02
0.418
445
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
Alan Bradley
2009
3.81
0.416
446
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond
2016
4.48
0.415
447
The Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin
2018
3.72
0.414
448
There There
Tommy Orange
2018
3.98
0.412
449
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz
2007
3.90
0.410
450
The Nest
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
2016
3.42
0.408
451
Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)
Veronica Roth
2017
3.78
0.404
452
Pandora’s Star
Peter F. Hamilton
2004
4.24
0.404
453
Middlemarch
George Eliot
1871
3.96
0.402
454
Tiger’s Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1)
Colleen Houck
2011
4.06
0.398
455
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Susan Cain
2012
4.06
0.395
456
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
Jonas Jonasson
2013
3.76
0.395
457
Feed
M. T. Anderson
2002
3.54
0.393
458
Leviathan (Leviathan, #1)
Scott Westerfeld
2009
3.91
0.388
459
The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood, #1)
Melissa Albert
2018
3.59
0.387
460
The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon
1966
3.69
0.385
461
The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood
2000
3.95
0.383
462
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver
2003
4.07
0.382
463
The Man in the High Castle
1962
3.62
0.376
464
Autobiography of a Yogi
Paramahansa Yogananda
1946
4.23
0.375
465
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
2004
3.93
0.373
466
Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
1957
4.09
0.371
467
Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)
Cory Doctorow
2008
3.93
0.370
468
The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1–4)
T. H. White
1958
4.08
0.369
469
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
Robin Sloan
2012
3.75
0.367
470
Orlando
Virginia Woolf
1928
3.87
0.355
471
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
Amy Schumer
2016
3.73
0.355
472
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
1957
3.63
0.353
473
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
John le Carré
1974
4.05
0.352
474
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
1854
3.79
0.350
475
Uprooted
Naomi Novik
2015
4.09
0.349
476
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen
2001
3.99
0.347
477
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
2011
4.03
0.344
478
The Magus
John Fowles
1965
4.05
0.344
479
Seraphina (Seraphina, #1)
Rachel Hartman
2012
3.96
0.343
480
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Timothy Egan
2005
4.04
0.338
481
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Cheryl Strayed
2012
4.31
0.336
482
The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova
2005
3.78
0.333
483
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
Erik Larson
2011
3.83
0.330
484
Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Elizabeth Gilbert
2009
3.41
0.326
485
On Beauty
Zadie Smith
2005
3.72
0.324
486
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks
2007
3.91
0.322
487
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert
2013
3.84
0.317
488
Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire, #1)
Mark Lawrence
2011
3.86
0.317
489
The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)
Helen Hoang
2018
3.90
0.316
490
Partials (Partials Sequence, #1)
Dan Wells
2012
3.94
0.312
491
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Marie Kondō
2011
3.83
0.311
492
Catch-22 (Catch-22, #1)
Joseph Heller
1961
3.98
0.310
493
NOS4A2
Joe Hill
2013
4.07
0.310
494
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen
1995
3.97
0.309
495
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
2002
3.90
0.307
496
The Women in the Castle
Jessica Shattuck
2017
3.86
0.307
497
Someday, Someday, Maybe
Lauren Graham
2013
3.51
0.306
498
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
2000
4.18
0.305
499
Dad Is Fat
Jim Gaffigan
2013
3.78
0.304
500
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Brené Brown
2012
4.27
0.304
501
The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
Liu Cixin
2008
4.41
0.302
502
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann
2017
4.09
0.301
503
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson
2015
4.08
0.299
504
Next Year in Havana
Chanel Cleeton
2018
3.95
0.299
505
A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)
V. E. Schwab (pseudonym)
2015
4.09
0.298
506
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
180
4.23
0.297
507
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, #1)
Hank Green
2018
4.03
0.294
508
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
Dee Brown
1970
4.23
0.294
509
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
D. H. Lawrence
1928
3.50
0.290
510
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
Jen Sincero
2013
3.96
0.290
511
How to Stop Time
Matt Haig
2017
3.85
0.287
512
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Mary Roach
2008
3.84
0.285
513
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
1883
4.06
0.283
514
March
Geraldine Brooks
2005
3.75
0.278
515
Falling Kingdoms (Falling Kingdoms, #1)
Morgan Rhodes
2012
3.80
0.272
516
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1920
3.67
0.267
517
Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1)
Laini Taylor
2017
4.33
0.267
518
The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987
3.89
0.261
519
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Christopher Moore
2002
4.25
0.261
520
The Book of Lost Things
John Connolly
2006
3.98
0.260
521
Modern Romance
Aziz Ansari
2015
3.83
0.260
522
The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #1)
Tad Williams
1988
3.95
0.259
523
American Gods (American Gods, #1)
Neil Gaiman
2001
4.11
0.258
524
Freedom
Jonathan Franzen
2010
3.75
0.254
525
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Tom Robbins
1976
3.76
0.250
526
Artemis
Andy Weir
2017
3.67
0.247
527
Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang
2002
4.26
0.242
528
Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
William Gibson
1984
3.89
0.240
529
Beautiful Ruins
Jess Walter
2012
3.68
0.235
530
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)
Ray Bradbury
1962
3.94
0.232
531
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Joshua Foer
2011
3.87
0.229
532
Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1)
Kevin Kwan
2013
3.84
0.227
533
A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1)
Walter M. Miller Junior
1959
3.98
0.226
534
Year One (Chronicles of The One, #1)
Nora Roberts
2017
4.04
0.224
535
Sophie’s World
Jostein Gaarder
1991
3.92
0.223
536
Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
Hilary Mantel
2012
4.28
0.222
537
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
1925
3.79
0.217
538
The Red and the Black
Stendhal
1830
3.87
0.216
539
Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
Brené Brown
2017
4.16
0.215
540
The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic, #0)
Alice Hoffman
2017
3.96
0.215
541
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
1957
3.69
0.215
542
Spinning Silver
Naomi Novik
2018
4.25
0.211
543
Villette
Charlotte Brontë
1853
3.76
0.210
544
The One & Only
Emily Giffin
2014
3.15
0.209
545
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt
2013
3.91
0.207
546
The Circle
Dave Eggers
2013
3.43
0.205
547
The Distant Hours
Kate Morton
2010
3.88
0.204
548
Britt-Marie Was Here
Fredrik Backman
2014
4.07
0.203
549
The Queen of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling, #1)
Erika Johansen
2014
4.01
0.201
550
The Liars’ Club
Mary Karr
1995
3.93
0.200
551
The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin
1974
4.21
0.193
552
Blood Red Road (Dust Lands, #1)
Moira Young
2011
3.92
0.190
553
Beartown (Beartown, #1)
Fredrik Backman
2016
4.26
0.190
554
The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1)
Mary Doria Russell
1996
4.16
0.190
555
You (You, #1)
Caroline Kepnes
2014
3.90
0.190
556
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
1967
4.30
0.188
557
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull
2009
4.20
0.184
558
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers
1940
3.98
0.182
559
Saturday
Ian McEwan
2005
3.63
0.181
560
The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1)
Marion Zimmer Bradley
1982
4.12
0.177
561
Blindness
José Saramago
1995
4.11
0.177
562
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan
2013
3.84
0.175
563
Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, #1)
Sylvain Neuvel
2016
3.84
0.170
564
The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman
1962
4.18
0.170
565
Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird, #2)
Harper Lee
2015
3.31
0.165
566
A Spark of Light
Jodi Picoult
2018
3.68
0.163
567
The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene
1998
4.18
0.163
568
The Hour I First Believed
Wally Lamb
2007
3.81
0.161
569
The Paper Magician
Charlie N. Holmberg
2014
3.65
0.152
570
The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)
M. R. Carey
2014
3.94
0.152
571
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
2007
3.83
0.151
572
Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)
Amie Kaufman
2015
4.30
0.151
573
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
1994
4.17
0.151
574
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
1881
3.77
0.150
575
Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns, #1)
Kendare Blake
2016
3.86
0.148
576
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
Neal Stephenson
1995
4.19
0.144
577
The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy Fowler
2004
3.08
0.140
578
Haunted
Chuck Palahniuk
2005
3.59
0.137
579
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck
2006
4.07
0.133
580
Tender Is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1934
3.82
0.132
581
The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
2011
3.85
0.129
582
The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)
Joe Abercrombie
2006
4.16
0.127
583
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
1997
3.93
0.125
584
Notes from a Small Island
Bill Bryson
1995
3.92
0.124
585
The Secret History
Donna Tartt
1992
4.09
0.118
586
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver
2007
4.04
0.114
587
Burial Rites
Hannah Kent
2013
4.03
0.114
588
This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Díaz
2010
3.75
0.113
589
The Silmarillion (Middle-Earth Universe)
J. R. R. Tolkien
1977
3.92
0.111
590
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann
2005
4.02
0.106
591
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Neil Gaiman
2006
4.00
0.105
592
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
2016
4.02
0.105
593
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1)
Laurie R. King
1994
4.07
0.104
594
The Slow Regard of Silent Things (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2.5)
Patrick Rothfuss
2014
3.91
0.103
595
The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #1)
Carrie Ryan
2009
3.59
0.099
596
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1879
4.32
0.099
597
Heartless
Marissa Meyer
2016
4.05
0.098
598
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond
1997
4.03
0.098
599
The Japanese Lover
Isabel Allende
2015
3.81
0.096
600
The History of Love
Nicole Krauss
2005
3.92
0.091
601
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez
1967
4.06
0.087
602
Her Fearful Symmetry
Audrey Niffenegger
2009
3.24
0.087
603
The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman, #2)
Graeme Simsion
2014
3.59
0.085
604
The Vegetarian
Han Kang
2007
3.58
0.082
605
Soulless (Parasol Protectorate, #1)
Gail Carriger
2009
3.91
0.082
606
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann
2009
3.87
0.081
607
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works
Dan Harris
2014
3.92
0.080
608
Circe
Madeline Miller
2018
4.28
0.080
609
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
1957
4.03
0.078
610
City of Girls
Elizabeth Gilbert
2019
4.07
0.077
611
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
1847
3.78
0.076
612
Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)
Margaret Atwood
2003
4.01
0.073
613
The Scorpio Races
Maggie Stiefvater
2011
4.09
0.073
614
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
1916
3.61
0.073
615
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
1992
4.03
0.072
616
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
Gregory Maguire
1995
3.53
0.070
617
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner
1929
3.86
0.069
618
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Karen Joy Fowler
2013
3.72
0.067
619
Commonwealth
Ann Patchett
2016
3.81
0.067
620
Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned
Lena Dunham
2014
3.30
0.067
621
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anne Lamott
1994
4.24
0.066
622
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, #1)
Seth Grahame-Smith
2010
3.70
0.064
623
Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs, #1)
Jacqueline Winspear
2003
3.91
0.062
624
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
2006
3.90
0.059
625
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
2006
4.18
0.057
626
The Thief (The Queen’s Thief, #1)
Megan Whalen Turner
1996
3.88
0.057
627
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
Yuval Noah Harari
2015
4.27
0.055
628
Love Letters to the Dead
Ava Dellaira
2014
3.81
0.055
629
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle
1997
4.13
0.053
630
Practical Magic (Practical Magic #1)
Alice Hoffman
1995
3.78
0.051
631
Caleb’s Crossing
Geraldine Brooks
2011
3.82
0.050
632
Luckiest Girl Alive
Jessica Knoll
2015
3.49
0.048
633
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
1853
4.01
0.047
634
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
1980
4.12
0.046
635
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri
1320
4.07
0.042
636
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2006
4.31
0.042
637
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
2011
4.04
0.042
638
Outlander (Outlander, #1)
Diana Gabaldon
1991
4.22
0.040
639
Into the Water
Paula Hawkins
2017
3.56
0.036
640
The Magician King (The Magicians, #2)
Lev Grossman
2011
3.92
0.034
641
Moby-Dick, or, the Whale
Herman Melville
1851
3.49
0.025
642
White Noise
Don DeLillo
1985
3.86
0.023
643
Lisey’s Story
Stephen King
2006
3.67
0.022
644
A Reliable Wife
Robert Goolrick
2009
3.26
0.022
645
What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures
Malcolm Gladwell
2009
3.85
0.016
646
The President Is Missing
Bill Clinton
2018
3.83
0.015
647
Eating Animals
Jonathan Safran Foer
2009
4.20
0.015
648
A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn
1980
4.08
0.014
649
All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)
Cormac McCarthy
1992
3.99
0.013
650
The Alchemyst (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, #1)
Michael Scott
2007
3.84
0.012
651
What Is the What
Dave Eggers
2006
4.16
0.012
652
The Mysterious Benedict Society (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #1)
Trenton Lee Stewart
2007
4.16
0.012
653
The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller
2011
4.33
0.004
654
Rivers of London (Peter Grant, #1)
Ben Aaronovitch
2011
3.91
−0.002
655
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
1867
4.11
−0.005
656
The Black Prism (Lightbringer, #1)
Brent Weeks
2010
4.24
−0.006
657
Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)
Elizabeth Strout
2008
3.82
−0.010
658
The Round House
Louise Erdrich
2012
3.93
−0.013
659
The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Fire and Thorns, #1)
Rae Carson
2011
3.79
−0.014
660
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Elizabeth Gilbert
2015
3.92
−0.017
661
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
2016
4.42
−0.018
662
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
2003
4.21
−0.018
663
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2013
4.30
−0.020
664
The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
2001
4.26
−0.021
665
Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
1996
4.03
−0.022
666
The Dinner
Herman Koch
2009
3.22
−0.022
667
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Michelle McNamara
2018
4.15
−0.023
668
The Artist’s Way
Julia Cameron
1992
3.91
−0.025
669
Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
Dan Simmons
1989
4.24
−0.025
670
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Oliver Sacks
1985
4.06
−0.026
671
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton
2014
3.59
−0.027
672
First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson, #1)
Darynda Jones
2011
4.05
−0.027
673
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson
2003
3.99
−0.030
674
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
1921
3.94
−0.031
675
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving
1989
4.23
−0.032
676
Wool Omnibus (Silo, #1)
Hugh Howey
2012
4.23
−0.032
677
The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, #1)
Caleb Carr
1994
4.06
−0.032
678
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje
1992
3.88
−0.037
679
Gone (Gone, #1)
Michael Grant
2008
3.86
−0.041
680
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
1991
3.82
−0.044
681
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster
1924
3.68
−0.046
682
I Am Pilgrim
Terry Hayes
2013
4.24
−0.054
683
Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin, #1)
Robin LaFevers
2012
3.90
−0.058
684
Jitterbug Perfume
Tom Robbins
1984
4.25
−0.060
685
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1)
Mackenzi Lee
2017
4.14
−0.060
686
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez
1985
3.91
−0.061
687
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
2005
3.89
−0.061
688
Exit West
Mohsin Hamid
2017
3.79
−0.065
689
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls
David Sedaris
2013
3.82
−0.065
690
Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
Jeff VanderMeer
2014
3.68
−0.069
691
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
2011
4.44
−0.070
692
At the Water’s Edge
Sara Gruen
2015
3.66
−0.071
693
Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)
Deborah Harkness
2012
4.06
−0.078
694
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Helen Simonson
2010
3.89
−0.092
695
The Keeper of Lost Things
Ruth Hogan
2017
3.82
−0.096
696
Landline
Rainbow Rowell
2014
3.55
−0.097
697
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel
2014
4.03
−0.099
698
Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese
2009
4.29
−0.102
699
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe
2014
4.16
−0.107
700
Truly Madly Guilty
Liane Moriarty
2016
3.57
−0.111
701
Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #1)
Kevin Hearne
2011
4.11
−0.111
702
_The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life_
Mark Manson
2016
3.97
−0.115
703
Flaggermusmannen (Harry Hole, #1)
Jo Nesbø
1997
3.54
−0.117
704
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach
2003
4.06
−0.119
705
Before the Fall
Noah Hawley
2016
3.73
−0.122
706
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
J. D. Vance
2016
3.93
−0.122
707
The Strain (The Strain Trilogy, #1)
Guillermo del Toro
2009
3.78
−0.122
708
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
1877
4.04
−0.124
709
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Jon Krakauer
2003
4.00
−0.126
710
I Capture the Castle
Dodie Smith
1948
4.00
−0.127
711
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
1859
3.98
−0.132
712
People of the Book
Geraldine Brooks
2008
4.02
−0.136
713
Loving Frank
Nancy Horan
2007
3.75
−0.137
714
Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1)
Martha Hall Kelly
2016
4.29
−0.140
715
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks
2006
4.01
−0.142
716
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Terry Pratchett
1990
4.25
−0.142
717
The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)
Maggie Stiefvater
2012
4.06
−0.143
718
The Shipping News
Annie Proulx
1993
3.86
−0.144
719
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein
1961
3.92
−0.145
720
The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1)
Marie Lu
2014
3.90
−0.145
721
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
1955
3.89
−0.161
722
The Girl in the Spider’s Web (Millennium, #4)
David Lagercrantz
2015
3.76
−0.165
723
The Twelve (The Passage, #2)
Justin Cronin
2012
4.00
−0.167
724
Bel Canto
Ann Patchett
2001
3.93
−0.168
725
The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1)
Anne Rice
1990
4.11
−0.168
726
The 4-Hour Workweek
Timothy Ferriss
2007
3.87
−0.169
727
La Vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert
Joël Dicker
2012
4.03
−0.170
728
The Paris Wife
Paula McLain
2011
3.81
−0.172
729
Life
Keith Richards
2010
3.86
−0.173
730
The Snow Child
Eowyn Ivey
2012
3.97
−0.174
731
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Christopher Hitchens
2007
3.97
−0.175
732
Carry On (Simon Snow, #1)
Rainbow Rowell
2015
4.24
−0.175
733
A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick
1977
4.02
−0.180
734
The Lake House
Kate Morton
2015
4.05
−0.186
735
Vicious (Villains, #1)
V. E. Schwab
2013
4.24
−0.187
736
Peace Like a River
Leif Enger
2001
4.00
−0.189
737
Nausea
Jean-Paul Sartre
1938
3.92
−0.191
738
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates
1961
3.91
−0.193
739
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert A. Heinlein
1966
4.17
−0.193
740
The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1)
Mary E. Pearson
2014
4.02
−0.193
741
Ishmael
Daniel Quinn
1992
3.99
−0.199
742
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safran Foer
2005
3.98
−0.199
743
A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)
Libba Bray
2003
3.79
−0.201
744
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
1898
3.43
−0.208
745
The Wishing Spell (The Land of Stories, #1)
Chris Colfer
2012
4.23
−0.209
746
Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1)
Jim Butcher
2004
4.12
−0.210
747
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner
1930
3.71
−0.211
748
The Gifts of Imperfection
Brené Brown
2010
4.21
−0.212
749
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
1985
4.15
−0.213
750
The Wrath and the Dawn (The Wrath and the Dawn, #1)
Renée Ahdieh
2015
4.15
−0.214
751
Horns
Joe Hill
2009
3.92
−0.214
752
The Cuckoo’s Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)
Robert Galbraith (Pseudonym)
2013
3.86
−0.216
753
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
2011
3.99
−0.221
754
Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult
2016
4.34
−0.224
755
Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2)
Victoria Aveyard
2016
3.91
−0.227
756
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)
Rachel Joyce
2012
3.91
−0.231
757
Case Histories (Jackson Brodie #1)
Kate Atkinson
2004
3.83
−0.240
758
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
1856
3.66
−0.241
759
Corelli’s Mandolin
Louis de Bernières
1994
3.98
−0.243
760
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
1952
3.86
−0.245
761
Under the Dome
Stephen King
2009
3.90
−0.249
762
My Name Is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout
2016
3.51
−0.249
763
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Ruth Ware
2018
3.81
−0.257
764
Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1)
Ilona Andrews
2007
4.07
−0.260
765
Paradise Lost
John Milton
1667
3.81
−0.267
766
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
1905
3.95
−0.270
767
Neverwhere (London Below, #1)
Neil Gaiman
1996
4.17
−0.271
768
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
1998
3.84
−0.272
769
Orange Is the New Black
Piper Kerman
2010
3.71
−0.272
770
Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
Leigh Bardugo
2015
4.46
−0.276
771
We Were the Mulvaneys
Joyce Carol Oates
1996
3.72
−0.277
772
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
1976
4.13
−0.278
773
Nine Perfect Strangers
Liane Moriarty
2018
3.50
−0.280
774
Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)
Louise Penny
2005
3.88
−0.285
775
The Trial
Franz Kafka
1925
3.97
−0.289
776
Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman
2017
4.09
−0.292
777
Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)
James S. A. Corey
2011
4.25
−0.294
778
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
1859
3.99
−0.295
779
Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1)
Beth Revis
2011
3.77
−0.296
780
The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1)
Alexandra Bracken
2012
4.20
−0.298
781
Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows, #1)
Kim Harrison
2004
4.04
−0.301
782
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Thomas L. Friedman
2005
3.68
−0.303
783
Ringworld (Ringworld, #1)
Larry Niven
1970
3.96
−0.305
784
The Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker
2012
3.65
−0.308
785
The Last of the Mohicans (The Leatherstocking Tales #2)
James Fenimore Cooper
1826
3.70
−0.310
786
Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1)
Garth Nix
1995
4.17
−0.312
787
Let the Right One In
John Ajvide Lindqvist
2004
4.06
−0.313
788
Normal People
Sally Rooney
2018
3.89
−0.313
789
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Mark Twain
1889
3.77
−0.319
790
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Simon Sinek
2009
4.07
−0.320
791
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson
2006
3.65
−0.321
792
The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)
Margaret Atwood
2009
4.07
−0.325
793
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
Chris Kyle
2012
4.00
−0.326
794
Bitten (Otherworld, #1)
Kelley Armstrong
2001
4.05
−0.330
795
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
1945
4.00
−0.332
796
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
2012
4.36
−0.333
797
Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)
André Aciman
2007
4.27
−0.336
798
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
2015
4.40
−0.342
799
Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1)
Maggie Stiefvater
2009
3.77
−0.348
800
Tell the Wolves I’m Home
Carol Rifka Brunt
2012
4.04
−0.348
801
The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1)
Rick Yancey
2013
4.06
−0.353
802
Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)
Tahereh Mafi
2011
3.97
−0.356
803
Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
1874
3.94
−0.358
804
The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1; Rincewind, #1)
Terry Pratchett
1983
3.99
−0.367
805
11/22/63
Stephen King
2011
4.31
−0.368
806
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
2017
4.26
−0.369
807
A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1)
Christopher Moore
2006
4.07
−0.372
808
Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1)
Laini Taylor
2011
4.03
−0.373
809
Magyk (Septimus Heap, #1)
Angie Sage
2005
3.82
−0.378
810
The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5)
Andrzej Sapkowski
1993
4.19
−0.379
811
The Way of Shadows (Night Angel, #1)
Brent Weeks
2008
4.15
−0.380
812
Caraval (Caraval, #1)
Stephanie Garber
2017
3.95
−0.383
813
The Winner’s Curse (The Winner’s Trilogy, #1)
Marie Rutkoski
2014
4.00
−0.385
814
The Alice Network
Kate Quinn
2017
4.26
−0.392
815
Yes Please
Amy Poehler
2014
3.82
−0.393
816
An American Marriage
Tayari Jones
2018
3.97
−0.394
817
The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
Ken Follett
1989
4.31
−0.394
818
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera
1984
4.10
−0.399
819
Since You’ve Been Gone
Morgan Matson
2014
4.14
−0.401
820
The Secret Keeper
Kate Morton
2012
4.14
−0.401
821
Atonement
Ian McEwan
2001
3.90
−0.402
822
Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2)
Diana Gabaldon
1992
4.32
−0.402
823
The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
Patrick Rothfuss
2007
4.54
−0.406
824
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews
2012
3.56
−0.408
825
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss
2003
3.87
−0.408
826
An Abundance of Katherines
John Green
2006
3.59
−0.410
827
Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna, #1)
Kendare Blake
2011
3.94
−0.412
828
‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’: Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard P. Feynman
1985
4.28
−0.417
829
Daisy Jones & The Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid
2019
4.22
−0.423
830
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse
1927
4.12
−0.437
831
Under the Never Sky (Under the Never Sky, #1)
Veronica Rossi
2011
4.00
−0.438
832
The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, #1)
Robert Jordan
1990
4.19
−0.440
833
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
2014
4.33
−0.441
834
One Day
David Nicholls
2009
3.78
−0.443
835
Dubliners
James Joyce
1914
3.85
−0.446
836
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
1920
3.94
−0.450
837
Three Wishes
Liane Moriarty
2003
3.78
−0.452
838
The Plague
Albert Camus
1947
3.98
−0.459
839
The House at Riverton
Kate Morton
2006
3.95
−0.461
840
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
2005
3.82
−0.461
841
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro
1989
4.12
−0.462
842
One Day in December
Josie Silver
2018
4.00
−0.463
843
The Angel’s Game (El cementerio de los libros olvidados #2)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
2008
3.91
−0.465
844
The Kill Order (The Maze Runner, #0.5)
James Dashner
2012
3.72
−0.465
845
A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry
1995
4.36
−0.467
846
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 193689ya Berlin Olympics
Daniel James Brown
2013
4.35
−0.475
847
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift
1726
3.56
−0.476
848
The Iron King (The Iron Fey, #1)
Julie Kagawa
2010
3.91
−0.479
849
Moloka’i (Moloka’i #1)
Alan Brennert
2003
4.17
−0.482
850
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Michael Pollan
2008
4.08
−0.488
851
Rules of Civility
Amor Towles
2011
4.04
−0.498
852
Attachments
Rainbow Rowell
2011
3.92
−0.504
853
Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles, #2)
Kami Garcia
2010
3.84
−0.507
854
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sandberg
2013
3.95
−0.508
855
The Shack
William Paul Young
2007
3.76
−0.509
856
Life As We Knew It (Last Survivors, #1)
Susan Beth Pfeffer
2006
3.89
−0.514
857
The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)
Raymond Chandler
1939
4.01
−0.516
858
The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
2006
3.96
−0.516
859
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
2016
4.10
−0.517
860
I Am the Messenger
Markus Zusak
2002
4.07
−0.521
861
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Julie Powell
2005
3.70
−0.521
862
Crossed (Matched, #2)
Ally Condie
2011
3.52
−0.525
863
The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)
Tana French
2008
4.06
−0.525
864
Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)
Richard Adams
1972
4.05
−0.525
865
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
Christopher McDougall
2009
4.29
−0.526
866
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
1906
3.74
−0.527
867
Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #2)
Ransom Riggs
2014
4.07
−0.530
868
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)
Jim Fergus
1998
3.88
−0.532
869
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga
2008
3.73
−0.541
870
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Extraordinary Voyages, #6)
Jules Verne
1869
3.88
−0.541
871
The Light Between Oceans
M. L. Stedman
2012
4.02
−0.544
872
State of Wonder
Ann Patchett
2011
3.87
−0.546
873
Beloved
Toni Morrison
1987
3.82
−0.552
874
Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2)
Laini Taylor
2012
4.18
−0.555
875
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Charles Duhigg
2012
4.09
−0.556
876
Unwind (Unwind, #1)
Neal Shusterman
2007
4.18
−0.561
877
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)
Brandon Sanderson
2010
4.65
−0.561
878
In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)
Tana French
2007
3.76
−0.567
879
Inkheart (Inkworld, #1)
Cornelia Funke
2003
3.88
−0.570
880
The Martian
Andy Weir
2012
4.40
−0.578
881
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
1988
4.17
−0.578
882
The Forgotten Garden
Kate Morton
2008
4.14
−0.581
883
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
1943
3.86
−0.582
884
Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1)
Ken Follett
2010
4.29
−0.585
885
The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)
Joe Haldeman
1974
4.15
−0.586
886
I’ll Give You the Sun
Jandy Nelson
2014
4.13
−0.590
887
Invisible Monsters
Chuck Palahniuk
1999
4.00
−0.599
888
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
1985
4.49
−0.604
889
The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1)
Holly Black
2018
4.16
−0.605
890
The Stand
Stephen King
1978
4.34
−0.606
891
Dune (Dune, #1)
Frank Herbert
1965
4.22
−0.606
892
Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1)
James Clavell
1975
4.39
−0.607
893
Everything I Never Told You
Celeste Ng
2014
3.85
−0.609
894
Reached (Matched, #3)
Ally Condie
2012
3.56
−0.612
895
Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
Ernest Cline
2011
4.27
−0.612
896
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
1940
3.96
−0.614
897
Steelheart (The Reckoners, #1)
Brandon Sanderson
2013
4.16
−0.625
898
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
2018
4.45
−0.629
899
Delirium (Delirium, #1)
Lauren Oliver
2011
3.98
−0.629
900
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed
2012
4.00
−0.631
901
Darkfever (Fever, #1)
Karen Marie Moning
2006
4.11
−0.640
902
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
1854
4.14
−0.644
903
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
2013
4.00
−0.648
904
The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)
Stephen King
1982
3.96
−0.656
905
Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1)
Kristin Cashore
2008
4.09
−0.662
906
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
1902
3.42
−0.662
907
An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)
Sabaa Tahir
2015
4.30
−0.668
908
All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven
2015
4.17
−0.670
909
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
2002
4.13
−0.682
910
Why Not Me?
Mindy Kaling
2015
3.90
−0.683
911
This is Where I Leave You
Jonathan Tropper
2009
3.89
−0.684
912
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Doris Kearns Goodwin
2005
4.28
−0.686
913
The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)
Brandon Sanderson
2006
4.45
−0.686
914
Uglies (Uglies, #1)
Scott Westerfeld
2005
3.86
−0.687
915
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
2005
4.37
−0.691
916
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
2002
4.00
−0.695
917
The White Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #2; The Cousins War #1)
Philippa Gregory
2009
3.92
−0.695
918
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #1)
Ransom Riggs
2011
3.91
−0.696
919
Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1)
Kami Garcia
2009
3.76
−0.697
920
Gabriel’s Inferno (Gabriel’s Inferno, #1)
Sylvain Reynard
2011
4.01
−0.699
921
Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1)
Jim Butcher
2000
4.01
−0.702
922
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
1998
3.93
−0.704
923
Inferno (The Divine Comedy #1)
Dante Alighieri
1320
4.00
−0.707
924
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1866
4.21
−0.709
925
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls, #1)
Ally Carter
2006
3.83
−0.709
926
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Malala Yousafzai
2012
4.11
−0.712
927
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
John Berendt
1994
3.92
−0.713
928
The Woman in Cabin 10
Ruth Ware
2016
3.69
−0.713
929
The Three Musketeers (The D’Artagnan Romances, #1)
Alexandre Dumas
1844
4.07
−0.718
930
A Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin
1968
4.00
−0.718
931
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Eckhart Tolle
2005
4.07
−0.721
932
Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
1937
4.18
−0.721
933
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
1959
3.84
−0.722
934
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
1891
3.79
−0.722
935
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
George R. R. Martin
1996
4.45
−0.726
936
Little Bee
Chris Cleave
2008
3.71
−0.731
937
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid
2017
4.32
−0.733
938
The Cider House Rules
John Irving
1985
4.12
−0.734
939
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
2017
4.31
−0.740
940
The Fiery Cross (Outlander, #5)
Diana Gabaldon
2001
4.27
−0.742
941
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
1852
3.86
−0.744
942
Fire (Graceling Realm, #2)
Kristin Cashore
2009
4.11
−0.745
943
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell
2009
3.94
−0.745
944
Just Kids
Patti Smith
2010
4.14
−0.755
945
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
1908
3.99
−0.762
946
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
1849
3.98
−0.768
947
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Stephen R. Covey
1989
4.10
−0.768
948
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple
2012
3.90
−0.770
949
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
John Gray
1992
3.55
−0.770
950
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony Bourdain
2000
4.07
−0.775
951
Red Queen (Red Queen, #1)
Victoria Aveyard
2015
4.06
−0.775
952
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
2010
4.06
−0.781
953
Matched (Matched, #1)
Ally Condie
2010
3.67
−0.783
954
A Room with a View
E. M. Forster
1908
3.91
−0.785
955
Wizard’s First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1)
Terry Goodkind
1994
4.13
−0.785
956
And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini
2012
4.05
−0.785
957
Grey (Fifty Shades as Told by Christian, #1)
E. L. James
2015
3.78
−0.785
958
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
2008
4.16
−0.787
959
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
1513
3.81
−0.799
960
Wicked Lovely (Wicked Lovely, #1)
Melissa Marr
2007
3.69
−0.799
961
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford
2009
4.01
−0.807
962
The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
1978
4.02
−0.807
963
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
1962
3.99
−0.814
964
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
1929
3.80
−0.815
965
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides
1993
3.84
−0.816
966
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth’s Children, #1)
Jean M. Auel
1980
4.04
−0.826
967
Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman
2005
4.02
−0.829
968
Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
Anne Rice
1976
3.99
−0.832
969
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #1–5)
Douglas Adams
1996
4.38
−0.835
970
Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1)
E. L. James
2011
3.67
−0.836
971
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
1982
4.22
−0.837
972
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
1862
4.16
−0.839
973
Life of Pi
Yann Martel
2001
3.90
−0.840
974
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith
1943
4.26
−0.844
975
Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)
Stephen King
2014
3.96
−0.846
976
The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah
2015
4.57
−0.849
977
Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4)
Dan Brown
2013
3.84
−0.850
978
The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1)
Rick Riordan
2010
4.08
−0.850
979
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
1719
3.67
−0.852
980
The Sun Is Also a Star
Nicola Yoon
2016
4.09
−0.854
981
Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
2006
3.55
−0.855
982
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency #1)
Alexander McCall Smith
1998
3.78
−0.857
983
The Host (The Host, #1)
Stephenie Meyer
2008
3.84
−0.858
984
A Million Little Pieces
James Frey
2003
3.64
−0.863
985
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
1987
4.03
−0.864
986
Choke
Chuck Palahniuk
2001
3.69
−0.872
987
After You (Me Before You, #2)
Jojo Moyes
2015
3.72
−0.874
988
Pretty Girls
Karin Slaughter
2015
3.99
−0.876
989
Becoming
Michelle Obama
2018
4.58
−0.884
990
I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies, #1)
Pittacus Lore
2010
3.94
−0.885
991
Turtles All the Way Down
John Green
2017
3.98
−0.885
992
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1)
Michelle Hodkin
2011
4.07
−0.886
993
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
John Green
2010
3.79
−0.887
994
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Mark T. Sullivan
2017
4.42
−0.892
995
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
2006
3.96
−0.895
996
The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
2017
4.52
−0.897
997
Foundation (Foundation #1)
Isaac Asimov
1951
4.16
−0.901
998
Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)
Stephen King
2013
4.12
−0.903
999
Veronika Decides to Die
Paulo Coelho
1998
3.70
−0.904
1000
Allegiant (Divergent, #3)
Veronica Roth
2013
3.63
−0.906
1001
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Ashlee Vance
2015
4.23
−0.909
1002
The Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom
2010
4.19
−0.917
1003
The Republic
Plato
−380
3.93
−0.920
1004
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
2008
4.13
−0.927
1005
The World According to Garp
John Irving
1978
4.08
−0.929
1006
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
2012
4.34
−0.931
1007
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
1937
3.91
−0.931
1008
Before We Were Yours
Lisa Wingate
2017
4.37
−0.931
1009
The Storyteller
Jodi Picoult
2013
4.28
−0.935
1010
A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)
George R. R. Martin
2011
4.33
−0.935
1011
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
1890
4.07
−0.942
1012
A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)
Sarah J. Maas
2015
4.25
−0.944
1013
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo
1831
3.99
−0.945
1014
Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
2017
4.11
−0.946
1015
Firefly Lane (Firefly Lane, #1)
Kristin Hannah
2008
4.07
−0.947
1016
It
Stephen King
1986
4.24
−0.951
1017
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barack Obama
1995
3.87
−0.953
1018
Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)
Sarah J. Maas
2012
4.22
−0.955
1019
Before I Fall
Lauren Oliver
2010
3.91
−0.955
1020
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
1861
3.77
−0.955
1021
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
George R. R. Martin
1998
4.41
−0.957
1022
The Good Girl
Mary Kubica
2014
3.81
−0.957
1023
The Great Alone
Kristin Hannah
2018
4.32
−0.960
1024
Wallbanger (Cocktail, #1)
Alice Clayton
2012
4.07
−0.971
1025
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
1926
3.82
−0.974
1026
Assassin’s Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1)
Robin Hobb
1995
4.15
−0.977
1027
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
1847
3.85
−0.979
1028
The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes)
Arthur Conan Doyle
1927
4.51
−0.982
1029
The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)
Robert Galbraith (Pseudonym)
2014
4.04
−0.984
1030
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
1897
3.82
−0.984
1031
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
Allie Brosh
2013
4.18
−0.986
1032
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3)
Arthur Conan Doyle
1892
4.31
−0.986
1033
Specials (Uglies, #3)
Scott Westerfeld
2006
3.77
−0.991
1034
Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
2002
3.72
−0.994
1035
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut
1973
4.07
−1.000
1036
Room
Emma Donoghue
2010
4.05
−1.005
1037
The Woman in the Window
A. J. Finn
2018
3.93
−1.016
1038
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling
2011
3.85
−1.026
1039
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
1965
4.07
−1.028
1040
The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, #1)
James Patterson
2005
4.08
−1.028
1041
Cold Mountain
Charles Frazier
1997
3.85
−1.033
1042
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
David Sedaris
2008
4.06
−1.041
1043
The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid’s Tale, #1)
Margaret Atwood
1985
4.10
−1.057
1044
The Iliad
Homer
−750
3.85
−1.058
1045
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
1844
4.24
−1.065
1046
Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
Chinua Achebe
1959
3.65
−1.069
1047
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
1838
3.86
−1.072
1048
Cell
Stephen King
2006
3.65
−1.072
1049
The Heir (The Selection, #4)
Kiera Cass
2015
3.81
−1.081
1050
Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
1963
4.16
−1.089
1051
The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)
Brandon Sanderson
2007
4.37
−1.090
1052
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
1952
4.37
−1.092
1053
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King
2000
4.33
−1.092
1054
World Without End (Kingsbridge, #2)
Ken Follett
2007
4.26
−1.093
1055
The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2)
James Dashner
2010
3.92
−1.098
1056
The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd
2014
4.24
−1.103
1057
The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1)
James Dashner
2009
4.02
−1.109
1058
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson
1972
4.08
−1.109
1059
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
1859
3.83
−1.110
1060
The Art of War
Sun Tzu
−500
3.97
−1.114
1061
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
1949
4.14
−1.116
1062
The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien
1990
4.13
−1.116
1063
Speaker for the Dead (Ender’s Saga, #2)
Orson Scott Card
1986
4.07
−1.121
1064
Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #1)
J. R. Ward
2005
4.20
−1.122
1065
The Secret (The Secret, #1)
Rhonda Byrne
2006
3.66
−1.123
1066
Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)
Leigh Bardugo
2012
4.03
−1.137
1067
Fallen (Fallen, #1)
Lauren Kate
2009
3.73
−1.140
1068
Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl #1)
Eoin Colfer
2001
3.84
−1.145
1069
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
1963
4.00
−1.148
1070
Stardust
Neil Gaiman
1998
4.08
−1.150
1071
The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)
Graeme Simsion
2013
4.02
−1.151
1072
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Süskind
1985
4.02
−1.157
1073
Fangirl
Rainbow Rowell
2013
4.08
−1.164
1074
Bossypants
Tina Fey
2011
3.95
−1.171
1075
Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, #1)
Lee Child
1997
4.05
−1.171
1076
The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster
1961
4.21
−1.172
1077
Emma
Jane Austen
1815
4.00
−1.189
1078
The Red Tent
Anita Diamant
1997
4.17
−1.189
1079
Origin (Robert Langdon, #5)
Dan Brown
2015
3.85
−1.191
1080
Legend (Legend, #1)
Marie Lu
2011
4.18
−1.191
1081
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Bill Bryson
1997
4.06
−1.216
1082
Behind Closed Doors
B. A. Paris
2016
3.95
−1.218
1083
The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1–3)
J. R. R. Tolkien
1955
4.49
−1.223
1084
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris
2000
3.98
−1.226
1085
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
2003
3.97
−1.234
1086
The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)
Patrick Rothfuss
2011
4.57
−1.236
1087
We Were Liars
E. Lockhart
2014
3.84
−1.238
1088
City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)
Cassandra Clare
2007
4.11
−1.239
1089
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
2012
4.08
−1.240
1090
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
1998
4.05
−1.243
1091
The City of Ember
Jeanne DuPrau
2003
3.86
−1.247
1092
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier
1938
4.22
−1.251
1093
Insurgent (Divergent, #2)
Veronica Roth
2012
4.04
−1.254
1094
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two (Harry Potter, #8)
John Tiffany (Adaptation)
2016
3.66
−1.254
1095
Dracula
Bram Stoker
1897
3.99
−1.266
1096
Eldest (The Inheritance Cycle, #2)
Christopher Paolini
2005
3.98
−1.271
1097
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
2005
3.92
−1.272
1098
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein
2008
4.21
−1.285
1099
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Kim Edwards
2005
3.66
−1.293
1100
Educated
Tara Westover
2018
4.48
−1.293
1101
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
Douglas Adams
1979
4.22
−1.297
1102
Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)
Marissa Meyer
2012
4.15
−1.298
1103
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, #1)
Jenny Han
2014
4.16
−1.299
1104
The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis
1942
4.22
−1.301
1105
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens
2018
4.50
−1.302
1106
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
1814
3.85
−1.315
1107
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
1936
4.19
−1.333
1108
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
1968
4.08
−1.338
1109
Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
1818
3.81
−1.339
1110
A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)
George R. R. Martin
2005
4.13
−1.339
1111
The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1)
Heather Morris
2018
4.27
−1.344
1112
Under the Tuscan Sun
Frances Mayes
1996
3.75
−1.352
1113
The Husband’s Secret
Liane Moriarty
2013
3.94
−1.360
1114
Evermore (The Immortals, #1)
Alyson Noel
2009
3.59
−1.362
1115
Milk and Honey
Rupi Kaur
2014
4.11
−1.367
1116
Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle, #3)
Christopher Paolini
2008
4.05
−1.368
1117
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand
2010
4.38
−1.371
1118
Dark Places
Gillian Flynn
2009
3.93
−1.377
1119
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)
Stieg Larsson
2005
4.13
−1.403
1120
She’s Come Undone
Wally Lamb
1992
3.87
−1.404
1121
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
1969
4.07
−1.406
1122
The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)
Philip Pullman
2000
4.09
−1.408
1123
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1850
3.40
−1.415
1124
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
2012
4.06
−1.419
1125
The Bourne Identity (Jason Bourne, #1)
Robert Ludlum
1980
4.01
−1.424
1126
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey
1962
4.19
−1.425
1127
I, Robot (Robot, #0.1)
Isaac Asimov
1950
4.19
−1.426
1128
A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)
Madeleine L’Engle
1962
4.00
−1.437
1129
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
2015
3.91
−1.444
1130
Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2)
Sarah J. Maas
2013
4.45
−1.448
1131
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
1939
3.96
−1.449
1132
Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis
1952
4.32
−1.451
1133
Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1)
Jamie McGuire
2011
4.12
−1.467
1134
Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)
Agatha Christie
1934
4.17
−1.477
1135
Paper Towns
John Green
2008
3.83
−1.500
1136
Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1)
Richelle Mead
2007
4.13
−1.502
1137
Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)
Frank McCourt
1996
4.10
−1.509
1138
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)
Stieg Larsson
2007
4.22
−1.521
1139
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
2011
4.13
−1.526
1140
I Know This Much Is True
Wally Lamb
1998
4.18
−1.526
1141
Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1)
Charlaine Harris
2001
3.96
−1.529
1142
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou’s Autobiography, #1)
Maya Angelou
1969
4.23
−1.529
1143
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
1882
3.83
−1.530
1144
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher
2007
3.95
−1.533
1145
Looking for Alaska
John Green
2005
4.04
−1.534
1146
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
1996
4.19
−1.541
1147
Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles, #2)
Marissa Meyer
2013
4.29
−1.543
1148
Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2)
E. L. James
2011
3.85
−1.545
1149
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
1946
4.36
−1.551
1150
Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1818
3.79
−1.559
1151
The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)
Dan Brown
2009
3.70
−1.564
1152
Marked (House of Night, #1)
P. C. Cast
2007
3.80
−1.568
1153
Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1)
Stephanie Perkins
2010
4.02
−1.569
1154
Sarah’s Key
Tatiana de Rosnay
2006
4.16
−1.572
1155
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
2014
4.26
−1.573
1156
The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3)
James Dashner
2011
3.77
−1.584
1157
Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle, #1)
Christopher Paolini
2002
3.89
−1.585
1158
The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough
1977
4.23
−1.587
1159
If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)
Gayle Forman
2009
3.95
−1.587
1160
Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1)
Becca Fitzpatrick
2009
3.98
−1.591
1161
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
1932
3.98
−1.596
1162
A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)
George R. R. Martin
2000
4.54
−1.599
1163
What Alice Forgot
Liane Moriarty
2009
4.08
−1.606
1164
Watchmen
Alan Moore
1987
4.36
−1.615
1165
Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3)
E. L. James
2012
3.86
−1.616
1166
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See
2005
4.07
−1.616
1167
Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen
2006
4.08
−1.621
1168
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
1999
4.20
−1.623
1169
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
1922
4.02
−1.624
1170
Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)
Cassandra Clare
2010
4.33
−1.625
1171
Persuasion
Jane Austen
1818
4.14
−1.629
1172
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
Philip Pullman
1995
3.97
−1.655
1173
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
2008
4.14
−1.658
1174
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt
2005
3.96
−1.676
1175
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
1871
4.07
−1.686
1176
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
1813
4.26
−1.705
1177
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell
2000
3.96
−1.711
1178
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
1988
3.86
−1.721
1179
The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9)
Philippa Gregory
2001
4.06
−1.721
1180
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
1973
4.26
−1.726
1181
The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)
J. R. R. Tolkien
1954
4.44
−1.733
1182
Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn
2006
3.96
−1.734
1183
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
1869
4.06
−1.747
1184
The Chronicles of Narnia (Chronicles of Narnia, #1–7)
C.S. Lewis
1956
4.26
−1.754
1185
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2)
Stieg Larsson
2006
4.24
−1.769
1186
The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1)
Lemony Snicket
1999
3.94
−1.774
1187
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold
2002
3.80
−1.775
1188
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
2005
4.27
−1.779
1189
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
2003
3.87
−1.790
1190
City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5)
Cassandra Clare
2012
4.28
−1.804
1191
Ender’s Game (Ender’s Saga, #1)
Orson Scott Card
1985
4.30
−1.806
1192
1984
George Orwell
1949
4.18
−1.831
1193
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
1953
3.98
−1.850
1194
Me Before You (Me Before You, #1)
Jojo Moyes
2012
4.26
−1.872
1195
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
1982
4.20
−1.903
1196
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
J. R. R. Tolkien
1954
4.36
−1.910
1197
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
1847
4.12
−1.920
1198
Wonder
R. J. Palacio
2012
4.45
−1.929
1199
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
1811
4.07
−1.932
1200
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
J. R. R. Tolkien
1937
4.27
−1.936
1201
Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)
L. M. Montgomery
1908
4.25
−1.947
1202
The Selection (The Selection, #1)
Kiera Cass
2012
4.14
−1.976
1203
The Odyssey
Homer
−700
3.75
−1.979
1204
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
1951
3.80
−1.992
1205
One for the Money (Stephanie Plum, #1)
Janet Evanovich
1994
4.04
−2.013
1206
City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2)
Cassandra Clare
2008
4.19
−2.038
1207
The Shining (The Shining, #1)
Stephen King
1977
4.21
−2.043
1208
Divergent (Divergent, #1)
Veronica Roth
2011
4.20
−2.050
1209
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
1936
4.29
−2.053
1210
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
1875
3.91
−2.056
1211
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
1954
3.68
−2.061
1212
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
1884
3.81
−2.097
1213
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1)
Sophie Kinsella
2000
3.64
−2.098
1214
Digital Fortress
Dan Brown
1998
3.64
−2.148
1215
The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)
Lauren Weisberger
2003
3.73
−2.155
1216
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
1996
3.97
−2.166
1217
Breaking Dawn (Twilight, #4)
Stephenie Meyer
2008
3.69
−2.180
1218
The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1)
Rick Riordan
2010
4.35
−2.218
1219
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
2003
4.29
−2.222
1220
The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)
J. R. R. Tolkien
1955
4.53
−2.257
1221
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
1952
3.76
−2.269
1222
The Stranger
Albert Camus
1942
3.97
−2.270
1223
The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)
Dan Brown
2003
3.83
−2.273
1224
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
2009
4.47
−2.276
1225
Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
Suzanne Collins
2010
4.03
−2.293
1226
The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)
Rick Riordan
2005
4.25
−2.316
1227
Tuesdays with Morrie
Mitch Albom
1997
4.10
−2.324
1228
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
2007
4.36
−2.417
1229
Twilight (Twilight, #1)
Stephenie Meyer
2005
3.59
−2.421
1230
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
Helen Fielding
1996
3.77
−2.437
1231
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1925
3.91
−2.443
1232
Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
1997
4.11
−2.529
1233
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1910
4.13
−2.537
1234
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
2001
4.04
−2.554
1235
My Sister’s Keeper
Jodi Picoult
2004
4.07
−2.596
1236
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
2012
4.23
−2.610
1237
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
1947
4.13
−2.651
1238
The Notebook (The Notebook, #1)
Nicholas Sparks
1996
4.09
−2.811
1239
Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
Suzanne Collins
2009
4.29
−2.866
1240
New Moon (Twilight, #2)
Stephenie Meyer
2006
3.53
−2.867
1241
Eclipse (Twilight, #3)
Stephenie Meyer
2007
3.69
−2.880
1242
To Kill a Mockingbird (To Kill a Mockingbird, #1)
Harper Lee
1960
4.27
−2.957
1243
Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)
Dan Brown
2000
3.89
−2.970
1244
The Giver (The Giver, #1)
Lois Lowry
1993
4.13
−3.061
1245
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
J. K. Rowling
2003
4.49
−3.414
1246
The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
Suzanne Collins
2008
4.33
−3.432
1247
Animal Farm
George Orwell
1945
3.92
−3.466
1248
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
J. K. Rowling
1998
4.41
−3.664
1249
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
J. K. Rowling
1997
4.47
−3.737
Modeling With Covariates
‘Controlling for’ other variables. What else can we do? The scrape includes some basic metadata, so we can fit a model with them as covariates and get out new coefficients for each book as before—it’s all there, just toss some more variables into the formula.
“Controlling For”?
But it’s worth taking a moment to think about what it would mean to go beyond estimating proportions to fitting a model with covariates like Abandoned ~ Author + Year + Rating + Title.
If we just wanted to rank titles, we have already done that. If you want to know which title has the most readers who then go on to label it ‘abandoned’, there’s not much you can do aside from correcting for sampling error; count the numbers, divide, and sort. The ranking is what it is. Just look at it above! If we add in additional covariates, the meaning of the coefficient numbers change, even if the names like Title do not. So what would the number mean for Title if we added in those other variables?
What does ‘controlling for’ mean? Well, we are looking at an algorithm which tries to minimize its prediction error, by combining multiple variables into a prediction, and the final coefficient number is the marginal effect conditional on the others; this reduces to just ranking for titles alone when there are no others, but when we add the others in, what our new ranking by title coefficient will translate to is something like “what titles were surprisingly likely/unlikely to be abandoned after factoring in how often books published this year, by that author, with those average ratings?”
Perhaps something like “unexpectedly abandoned given what we’d predict”? So Rowling might have a low abandonment rate in general (since the Harry Potter books are so sticky) and her Casual Vacancy rated highly with a minor penalty for being a recently-published book, but then her Casual Vacancy is unexpectedly frequently abandoned (because her legions of fans discover it is really not what they expected nor hoped for), and so its marginal coefficient is extremely high (even as its concrete, absolute, raw abandonment rate is low); this reflects that Casual Vacancy is quite anomalous among J. K. Rowling’s book (which it is), and not necessarily that it is a ‘bad’ book. On the other hand, another book might be by an obscure struggling author with high abandonment rates and rated mediocrely, but is a bit more compelling than expected for such a mediocrity, and so somewhat surprisingly not abandoned too often, and it’ll get ranked quite low; not because it is necessarily better in any way than Casual Vacancy but simply because it is anomalous (in a good way) for its covariates. (If this is confusing, don’t feel bad; think of all the researchers who casually “control for education & SES” or “control for BMI & self-reported diet” and things like that.)
Fitting
Flexibly modeling the covariates with splines. Anyway! With those caveats in mind, let’s fit a baroque model. The binomial & prior & Title are all as before. Author must be treated like Title, as a random effects, because most authors are represented only once and are uninformative. Rating could be treated as just a regular additive variable, but ratings websites tend to have odd distributions of Likert scales, giving ‘J-shaped’ ratings, so I will instead exploit brms’s fancy spline feature to let ratings be modeled as some sort of smooth curve like a quadratic curve, or if no curves turn out to be justified by the data, it’ll fall back to a regular old line/additive variable. Similarly, for Year.percentile: we could treat it as a regular additive variable, but there’s no good reason to think the relationship between publication year & abandonment is linear, so we’ll let the spline figure it out. Finally, because the Author adds in 835 levels, and we have 2 new spline variables, this model will be substantially harder to fit to convergence, and will need to run for much longer; I ran it overnight on my AMD Threadripper.
Results:
library(brms)
gb <- brm(Abandoned|trials(Reads) ~ s(Year.percentile) + s(Rating) + (1|Author) + (1|Title),
prior=c(prior(student_t(3,0,1), class="sd", group="Title")), family=binomial, data=gr, chains=30, iter=10000)
gb
## Plot the possibly nonlinear effects of Year/Rating:
marginal_effects(gb)
Nonlinear effect of publication date percentile on predicted GoodReads abandonment rate (spline)
Nonlinear effect of average rating (1–5) percentile on predicted GoodReads abandonment rate
## Rank books by coefficient:
rgb <- as.data.frame(ranef(gb)$Title)
rgb <- rgb[order(rgb$Estimate.Intercept, decreasing=TRUE),]
head(rgb, n=50)
# Estimate.Intercept Est.Error.Intercept Q2.5.Intercept Q97.5.Intercept
# The Casual Vacancy 1.741876609 0.281476983 1.19001267649 2.30289577
# The Chemist 1.587266441 0.250780279 1.07036085240 2.06884029
# Infinite Jest 1.449431926 0.305558801 0.84629547789 2.04348551
# The Glass Bead Game 1.344537965 0.307995293 0.74003704574 1.95158587
# Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977–2002 1.256870674 0.278197570 0.71059050369 1.80099836
# Gravity’s Rainbow 1.165383010 0.276765364 0.62329326315 1.69933120
# Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West 1.156560985 0.300233089 0.56855843405 1.74681282
# The Unconsoled 1.095660050 0.287313105 0.53636629027 1.66013999
# Ulysses 1.048522494 0.297841824 0.46765972763 1.63793080
# The Host (The Host, #1) 1.014493672 0.230310063 0.55312203415 1.46168229
# Little, Big 1.012476536 0.448363994 0.12090276666 1.88812074
# The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1) 0.988457042 0.355105336 0.27806260365 1.67888621
# Dandelion Wine 0.975103599 0.280633476 0.42510571471 1.52494322
# Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1) 0.963443821 0.211581044 0.55036451966 1.37662957
# American Gods (American Gods, #1) 0.941171033 0.189903539 0.56971175875 1.30850397
# Bleak House 0.936355723 0.253714907 0.44327736503 1.43655797
# Underworld 0.914496144 0.351775206 0.22000323756 1.60774910
# The Years of Rice and Salt 0.904524932 0.279030303 0.35647211675 1.45513845
# Dhalgren 0.900008923 0.440174328 0.03641451487 1.77439496
# I Am a Cat 0.883040852 0.444432162 0.01238843445 1.76210642
# The Silmarillion (Middle-Earth Universe) 0.861654737 0.247010783 0.38291861129 1.36739720
# Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith 0.846854948 0.352070453 0.15594807111 1.52565917
# It Can’t Happen Here 0.838745403 0.442892564 -0.01990111314 1.70470050
# A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 0.829646511 0.311586812 0.22130511478 1.43963893
# The Gone-Away World 0.827484825 0.442804235 -0.03667923383 1.69096191
# The Waves 0.820727828 0.285890675 0.26132158033 1.37930626
# Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid 0.816626681 0.437128163 -0.04353752831 1.67540809
# The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition 0.809341905 0.441578311 -0.05697029017 1.68484471
# Tender Morsels 0.784969319 0.441631533 -0.10498169773 1.65195379
# Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1) 0.777043249 0.437648826 -0.08284551560 1.63911701
# 1Q84 0.776369266 0.244856092 0.29537586773 1.25094910
# The Lacuna 0.759484402 0.272298402 0.22625747544 1.28831931
# How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading 0.747111449 0.442452171 -0.11125431192 1.62098481
# Barkskins 0.744000502 0.350624236 0.05288160822 1.43224617
# Bridge of Clay 0.737458793 0.311989629 0.12101640247 1.33840941
# Hild 0.726140501 0.441738217 -0.14334736809 1.57580440
# Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality 0.725682599 0.443761467 -0.13334026501 1.59044401
# Tender Is the Night 0.725508879 0.307743065 0.12441375362 1.32282931
# Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1) 0.714724806 0.438353277 -0.14725016691 1.57008149
# Winter's Tale 0.713598568 0.439409311 -0.14859480091 1.57056254
# Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1) 0.707905742 0.272161167 0.17611553854 1.24237051
# Zone One 0.699312934 0.352195479 0.00570113601 1.39064540
# Villette 0.698141817 0.350428018 0.00946856345 1.38295155
# The Dovekeepers 0.695801671 0.275740994 0.15586008712 1.23671725
# The Golden Notebook 0.695319765 0.439303760 -0.16519743865 1.54446027
# Three Wishes 0.691457342 0.260047140 0.19221973319 1.19709825
# What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures 0.688134160 0.264350162 0.15641277774 1.20366679
# The Stand 0.685553475 0.184846308 0.31377846354 1.04337187
# Cryptonomicon 0.684769185 0.209651679 0.28237060226 1.09454115
# Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1) 0.683110921 0.352403909 -0.03925119519 1.37325692
Interpreting Covariate-Adjusted Rankings
Anomaly explanations: mismatch, fads, slogs, & niche. As warned, the rankings are different from the regular rankings, because it’s estimating something different and not some ‘corrected’ version: these are better thought of as ‘surprisingly often-abandoned given their author/rating’. This could reflect a book being critically overrated, or some phenomena causing serious mismatch between a book & readers. With this in mind, some examples are interesting and make sense:
Wrong Audience: The Casual Vacancy shows up again: from what I’ve read about it, I think that is simply due to Harry Potter readers picking it up because J. K. Rowling wrote it, and discovering it was nothing like Harry Potter.
Meyer’s The Chemist may be a similar case—instead of a supernatural romance like her Twilight series, it’s an action-thriller potboiler about an ex-government agent on the run etc.
Overrated Prestige: Dhalgren shows up, and I’d consider that one probably due to being critically overrated—Delany was a critical darling because he was ‘black’ and ‘gay’ and ‘transgressive’, but I do not award books points for those traits & was deeply unimpressed by what I read of Dhalgren (& the man himself when I went to his panels at SF conventions), and I appear to not be alone in this.
Highly Rated But Difficult: I suspect I Am A Cat & The Silmarillion mix those two explanations: few would read The Silmarillion if that was all Tolkien had written, but it’s also genuinely difficult, despite its rewards.
Polarizing: The presence of a few like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Perdido Street Station, and Cryptonomicon are a little more puzzling: none of those are hard to read, and they aren’t really pushed on school curriculums or radically different from the author’s other work, nor are they critically vaunted (3 of the 4 are much more likely to be harshly insulted by literary professors & critics as problematic).
I suspect for those, it’s neither being critically overrated nor reaching the wrong argument, but being intrinsically polarizing and ‘love it or hate it’—they appeal to a niche of readers. I greatly enjoyed A Connecticut Yankee because I like worldbuilding and development and proto-steampunk, and the plot being silly and the economics/technology tremendously overly-optimistic didn’t bother me; but I could easily imagine someone else who hates it like poison and being unable to finish it. Similarly, Cryptonomicon: discussion of how to implement cryptography with a deck of cards? Bring. It. On. (But for other people maybe not so much.)
This is consistent with the average rating results: polarizing books may get lower reviews/ratings, as extreme as being abandoned, but they still earn high average ratings from those who like it (and the latter will tend to self-select into reading them).
Perhaps polarizing books are an example of what one should strive for? Find something & do it well—aiming for the moon instead of mediocrity. In the contemporary world, as Tim O’Reilly noted all the way back in 200223ya, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”. The downside is relatively bounded—it’s hard for a book to do worse than simply vanish into ignominious obscurity—and the upside is nigh-unlimited, but the average book is simply a failure. I’m reminded of an OKCupid dating photo analysis which argued that it’s more important to have profile photos that stand out from the crowd & polarize the opposite-sex, perhaps by appealing to niches (like having tattoos) than ones which are uncontroversially ‘pretty’.
See Also
External Links
Appendix
Abandoned: “List of Books Voted Most Abandoned”
GoodReads also has a list for voting on frequently-abandoned books, but after looking at it, the data seems to be garbage and deeply unrepresentative of GoodReads readers in general, so I abandoned any further analysis of it.
I noticed while looking for API help that there was a similar list, but constructed using voting: “The Most Begun ‘Read but Unfinished’ (Initiated) book ever”. GR users can vote on books (either casting a vote from a book or, default, not voting on it), and add new books to the list. The list page reports that it covers 2,329 books, and has votes from 12,525 voters.
With the idea of perhaps combining the two datasets in a latent variable factor analysis to get a more accurate measure of abandonment, I extracted the data from it, same as with the tag.
Loading the CSV up, counting shows it has recorded 47,897 votes or ~20 votes per book on the list. The data is, however, so skewed as to be borderline useless:
gv <- read.csv("https://myweightloss42.com/doc/culture/2019-12-09-goodreads-votinglist-abandoned.csv%22%3C/span%3E,%3C/span%3E
colClasses=c("factor", "factor", "numeric", "integer", "integer"))
skim(gv)
# Skim summary statistics
# n obs: 2327
# n variables: 5
#
# ── Variable type:factor ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n n_unique top_counts ordered
# Author 0 2327 2327 1707 Ste: 23, Ann: 14, Cha: 10, Mic: 10 FALSE
# Title 0 2327 2327 2317 Ali: 2, And: 2, Aut: 2, Bri: 2 FALSE
#
# ── Variable type:integer ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n mean sd p0 p25 p50 p75 p100 hist
# Reads 0 2327 2327 130479.28 385056.57 1 2036.5 14864 84767 6239642 ▇▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
# Votes 0 2327 2327 20.58 104.76 1 1 1 3 1991 ▇▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
#
# ── Variable type:numeric ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# variable missing complete n mean sd p0 p25 p50 p75 p100 hist
# Rating 0 2327 2327 3.84 0.35 0 3.67 3.88 4.06 5 ▁▁▁▁▁▃▇▁
Effectively, aside from the top 300 books, books have only 1 or 2 votes. Still, I gave it a chance, albeit with heavier regularization:
bgv <- brm(Votes|trials(Reads) ~ (1|Title), prior=c(prior(student_t(3,0,0.5), class="sd", group="Title")),
family=binomial, data=gv, chains=30)
bgv
# Formula: Votes | trials(Reads) ~ (1 | Title)
# Data: gv (Number of observations: 2327)
# Samples: 30 chains, each with iter = 2000; warmup = 1000; thin = 1;
# total post-warmup samples = 30000
#
# Group-Level Effects:
# ~Title (Number of levels: 2317)
# Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Eff.Sample Rhat
# sd(Intercept) 1.93 0.04 1.85 2.00 1356 1.02
#
# Population-Level Effects:
# Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Eff.Sample Rhat
# Intercept -8.90 0.04 -8.99 -8.81 975 1.03
bgvr <- as.data.frame(ranef(bgv)$Title); bgvr <- bgvr[order(bgvr$Estimate.Intercept, decreasing=TRUE),]
head(bgvr, n=30)
# Estimate.Intercept Est.Error.Intercept Q2.5.Intercept Q97.5.Intercept
# How to Read a Page: A Cours... 5.38204009 1.2305407158 2.6889175683 7.46299219
# Finnegans Wake 5.09604001 0.0784560406 4.9395880468 5.24884339
# Adept (The Wiccan Diaries #3) 4.98646278 1.1811990071 2.3623513076 6.96201323
# Who Moved My Bone: A Guide ... 4.95494745 1.1611594828 2.3886414505 6.89145803
# The Scarlet Letter and Othe... 4.74029863 0.1680566097 4.3998550261 5.06238828
# Ulysses 4.73227532 0.0508705552 4.6333361209 4.83198213
# Gravity’s Rainbow 4.60794433 0.0651088164 4.4806395498 4.73529781
# Obras completas 4.37501582 0.7559132531 2.7108179987 5.64226480
# Dianetics: The Modern Scien... 4.27649757 0.1979955275 3.8732683273 4.64355668
# Neophyte (The Wiccan Diarie...) 4.15909507 1.0569860403 1.7519603753 5.91731061
# Realmgolds (The Gryphon Cle...) 4.10459375 1.0194113326 1.8366736192 5.78690229
# Infinite Jest 4.03234211 0.0619999259 3.9111099731 4.15344818
# American Junk 3.87078182 0.9922211213 1.6522260087 5.52190577
# The Satanic Verses 3.82457833 0.0718885158 3.6828805976 3.96392974
# The American Heritage Dicti... 3.80920846 0.7108850861 2.2099731437 5.00493848
# Holy Bible: King James Version 3.77235163 0.0526127709 3.6691860039 3.87512458
# The Wiccan Diaries (The Wic...) 3.74341315 0.9991628239 1.5006262229 5.40201310
# The Journal of Joyce Carol ... 3.65267531 0.7142768009 2.0675646812 4.86252960
# The Art of Interior Design:... 3.64215451 1.8634692814 -0.1039907607 7.22634805
# Prague and Bohemia: Medieva... 3.64105168 1.8494993932 -0.0422548391 7.19596699
# Alphabets Sublime: Contempo... 3.63497694 1.8612179073 -0.0378189700 7.19803265
# Swann's Way (In Search of L...) 3.63054368 0.0829307061 3.4682225579 3.79141887
# Murphy Blue 3.62759642 1.8880145651 -0.1063323453 7.28576732
# In Search of Lost Time (6 V...) 3.62753180 0.1515961350 3.3232938116 3.91714796
# Spies and Saucers 3.56821959 1.8299110410 -0.1192548224 7.04941588
# Quantum Gods: Creation Cha... 3.54662054 0.9733951263 1.3588060829 5.16892444
# Kobrin in There with the Kids 3.52129542 1.7882763228 -0.0855424774 6.8839114
# [Arabic book]... 3.51498925 1.8135874144 -0.1436548668 6.90342934
# Parkway 3.48491516 1.7801420369 -0.1339575798 6.80541442
# Mason & Dixon 3.47998067 0.1664473049 3.1457974255 3.79687113
The results, while not totally absurd (Infinite Jest still shows up), are too idiosyncratic to take seriously. The American Heritage Dictionary, really? An Arabic book? And the voters seem to have something against The Wiccan Diaries…
This hardly even overlaps with the tag dataset, and so I abandoned the idea of trying to pool them.
Two alternative tags, “couldn’t finish”/“didn’t finish”, are much less popular, but after I did this analysis, I learned of “dnf” (did not finish), which is noticeably more popular than “abandoned”. In hindsight, that might’ve been better to analyze. (On the other hand, “dnf” is hard to find and the list seems heavy on genre fiction, so I wonder if it’s used by a niche group of readers and much more unrepresentative of GR than ‘abandoned’?)↩︎
Yes, I did finish (and enjoy) Infinite Jest. The trick was keeping a finger or bookmark at the last endnote, so flipping back and forth wasn’t too much of a hassle.↩︎
Example Bash script:
## eg. https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/abandoned?page=1
(for i in {1..25}; do
elinks -dump "https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/abandoned?page=$i" \
| grep -E --before=3 --after=1 "shelved .* times as abandoned"
sleep 2s
done) > gr-abandoned.txt
↩︎Yes, yes, ‘and even the author abandoned it!’ You are very clever.↩︎
Vox’s (otherwise highly complimentary) reviewer admits:
But while I may respect James’s choice as a critic, as a reader, I found much of Black Leopard to be a slog. It’s difficult to push through page after page of beautiful sentences—and James’s sentences really are stunning—that are organized specifically to avoid telling you who is doing what or why and why you should care. Sure, truth is unstable, stories don’t need resolution, the gods are dead, etc. etc., but would it kill this book to give me a single concrete arc to hang onto? It’s 620 pages long! Cut a girl a break!
↩︎Although again I will note that low abandon-rates don’t necessarily mean high-quality—it simply means those readers who chose to start them tended to finish them, for whatever reason.↩︎
Similar Links
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Bibliography
[Bibliography of links/references used in page]