Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Most Common Books and Authors

First off, I want to apologize to Myza, Amy, and Michelle, as this data doesn't include your lists. I typed in all the lists that were available by the time I went to bed last night and sent the data over to my husband, who has a lot more computer skills than me, and he created these reports. He was already mostly done before I found the three new lists this morning and I didn't have the heart to hand him another 300 entries. I'm very sorry, and if I figure out a way to add these and other incoming lists to my data in the future, I will update this list. The good news is that with 20 lists, this probably provides a fairly accurate cross-section, so I doubt the data will change tremendously until we have a lot more lists.

We sorted the list two ways - first, by most common title, second, by most common author. I'll give you guys the title list first:

1. Eliot, George - Middlemarch - 12 people are reading this
2. Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace - 10
3. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Love in the Time of Cholera - 9
4. Martel, Yann - Life of Pi - 8
5. Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary - 8
6. Morrison, Tony - Beloved - 8
7. Wharton, Edith - Age of Innocence - 7
8. Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness - 7
9. Adams, Richard - Watership Down - 7
10. Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Game - 7
11. Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar - 7
12. Walker, Alice - The Color Purple - 7
13. Diaz, Junot - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - 7
14. Dickens, Charles - Bleak House - 7
15. Dickens, Charles - David Copperfield - 7
16. Forster, E.M. - A Room with a View - 7
17. Kidd, Sue Monk - The Secret Life of Bees - 7
18. Rand, Ayn - Atlas Shrugged - 7
19. Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited - 7

I let 7 be my cutoff as after that there are like 40 titles that 6 people have in common...

Here is the list sorted by most common author. It's longer, because we have more authors in common than titles. I cut this one off at 8 instances so that it wouldn't get too out of hand. I'm sorting them by unique instances (number of blog members to have this author on their list) rather than by the number of times the author shows up on the master list, though I included that information for fun anyway. :)

1. Dickens, Charles - 24 instances - 15 unique instances
2. Austen, Jane - 30 - 14
3. Dostoevsky, Fyodor - 13 - 13
4. Hemingway, Ernest - 19 - 13
5. Atwood, Margaret - 14 - 12
6. Eliot, George - 17 - 12
7. Faulkner, William - 19 - 11
8. Fitzgerald, F. Scott - 13 - 11
9. Forster, E.M. - 15 - 11
10. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - 16 - 11
11. Steinbeck, John - 20 - 11
12. Tolstoy, Leo - 17 - 11
13. Woolf, Virginia - 13 - 11
14. Flaubert, Gustav - 10 - 10
15. Hardy, Thomas - 12 - 10
16. Morrison, Tony - 13 - 10
17. Nabokov, Vladimir - 13 - 10
18. Rand, Ayn - 11 - 10
19. Wharton, Edith - 12 - 10
20. Conrad, Joseph - 9 - 9
21. Joyce, James - 12 - 9
22. Allende, Isabel - 12 - 8
23. Bronte, Charlotte - 10 - 8
24. Cather, Willa - 9 - 8
25. Chabon, Michael - 15 - 8
26. Eugenides, Jeffrey - 8 - 8
27. Ishiguro, Kazuo - 8 - 8
28. Kafka, Franz - 9 - 8
29. Kidd, Sue Monk - 10 - 8
30. Lawrence, D.H. - 12 - 8
31. Martel, Yann - 8 - 8
32. Maugham, William Somerset - 8 - 8
33. Murakami, Haruki - 8 - 8
34. Orwell, George - 10 - 8
35. Roth, Philip - 14 - 8
36. Vonnegut, Kurt - 8 - 8
37. Waugh, Evelyn - 10 - 8
38. Wilde, Oscar - 11 - 8

Emily, let me know if you want me to change/add/subtract anything on here. And like I said before, if I figure out a way to incorporate all the incoming lists, I will update this at that point.

10 comments:

Emily Cross said...

wow amanda! thank you and thank you to Mr. Amanda too!! *hugs*

That list is brilliant. thank you so much!!

moonrat said...

You are SO WONDERFUL!!! That's all I have to say at the moment--I'm going to read through the list 5 times carefully and try to process & cogitate a little.


THANK YOU!!

Amanda said...

Thanks and your welcome, Jason says your welcome too (and he likes the name "Mr. Amanda", haha!).

1morechapter said...

Middlemarch and War & Peace are both on my lists, too. It would be fun to possibly read them as a group.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Amanda (and Mr Amanda heehee). This is great!

Denise said...

Oh, this is so cool!! I likewise will mull these lists over some more. However we use them, it's fascinating to see where the overlaps are. Thanks!!

Julie said...

Thank you. So um, can we all read "War and Peace" together, because I'm going to need some support on that one. I just started it, anyone want to join me?

It's this big fat book staring me in the face and it would be nice to check it off my list!

Trixie said...

It's so interesting to see a list of all the titles and authors that we all see as being important and haven't yet tackled! I think it would be fun to read some of these together.

iasa said...

Julie- It's not on my list but I'll read War and Peace with you.

Andromeda Romano-Lax said...

Cool. Love it. Thank you. Middlemarch is on my list and I wouldn't mind taking part in a discussion. If y'all decide to read War and Peace together, I may just have to add it to my list and knock out something else. (WE make the rules here.) But having recently finished Anna K, I'm not in a HURRY for W & P.