Skip to main content

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 abandoned tags 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):

  1. The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling
  2. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  3. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
  4. A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
  5. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

to (shrunken posterior proportions):

  1. Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James
  2. Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente
  3. Little, Big, John Crowley
  4. The Witches: Salem, 1692, Stacy Schiff
  5. Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan

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:

  1. The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling
  2. The Chemist, Stephenie Meyer
  3. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
  4. The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
  5. Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2002), David Sedaris

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. 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.2 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 2014. 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 me3, 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 (readabandoned), 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 lies to bots.4

At first, I thought I could simply use my usual elinks -dump trick and iterate through the 25 pages GR allows.5 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://gwern.net/doc/culture/2019-12-09-goodreads-bookshelf-abandoned.csv",
    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               1.00

Newer/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         0.0057

The ranking by rate looks completely different from ranking by count: The Casual Vacancy, Catch-22, American Gods, A Game of Thrones6 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 read7. 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://gwern.net/doc/culture/2020-01-05-goodreads-bookshelf-abandoned-posteriorproportions.csv
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 plausible8:

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 = 1250 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 vs. 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 1977–2002 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) Elena Ferrante 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, #1) 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 Philip K. Dick 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 1936 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 John Carreyrou 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 2002, “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

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://gwern.net/doc/culture/2019-12-09-goodreads-votinglist-abandoned.csv",
    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.


  1. 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’?)↩︎

  2. !Margin: Fixing GoodReads.↩︎

  3. 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.↩︎

  4. !Margin: GR sits on a throne of lies.↩︎

  5. 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
    ↩︎
  6. Yes, yes, ‘and even the author abandoned it!’ You are very clever.↩︎

  7. 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!

    ↩︎
  8. 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.↩︎