Top 1000 Books

There was recently compiled list of the top 1000 books in library's worldwide as of 2005.

My Favorite Fun Facts:

* The Lord of the Rings: #8, yes!!!! (what were the AP English test-makers saying about not being of sufficient "literary merit"?)

* Sherlock Holmes: top mystery novel at #192

* If all the Harry Potter books were counted together, they'd be #5 on the list :) But here's the individual break-down:
#220: Philosopher's Stone (a.k.a. Sorcerer's Stone)
#263: Chamber of Secrets
#304: Prisoner of Azkaban
#350: Goblet of Fire
#529: Order of the Phoenix

This was the updated list through 2005, so that probably explains the absence of Half-Blood Prince which came out in the second half of 2005. The 2006 data is not yet available.

* Shakespeare: 37 works in the top 1000, but not counting sonnets, he only wrote about 38 plays! So he's got almost a 100% conversion if it's all plays.

* Austen's Pride and Prejudice is #32 (beat out Tolstoy's Anna Karenina at #67, ha ha :P)

* Gardner's Art Through the Ages made it at #287 - That makes me feel better about having to carry that huge book for Art History :). But it's been great so far (through Baroque Art).


One unfortunate bias is that about 3/4 of all the books were written in English, so many great translated works missed the cut.

List is sorted by tags at del.ic.ious. And more fun facts are also here - go forth and find them.

-- Arkajit