The Books We Love and What They Say About Us

A new status has been popping up on Facebook lately, and it’s not, surprisingly enough, more #IceBucketChallenge posts. Instead, users are sharing their “top 10 books.” The status usually prompts participants to list 10 books that have “stayed with them” in some way. It encourages people to answer the prompt quickly, without over-analyzing the question; to simply list the first books that pop into their heads.

Facebook responded to the outpouring of statuses that followed by assembling some rather interesting data on users’ favorite books. They found that books users most liked seemed clustered in groups, according to genre. They also assembled a list of the most-liked books amongst users:

1. Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
2. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
3. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
4. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
5. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
6. The Holy Bible
7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
8. The Hunger Games Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
9. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
10. The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
11. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. 1984 - George Orwell
13. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
14. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
15. The Stand – Stephen King
16. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
17. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
18. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
19. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
20. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

You may see the top five book picks, and think to yourself, “Ah, Facebook’s sample was obviously made up of young adults. Because mature adults would pick Confucius and Kafka and stuff.” But no, surprisingly enough—Facebook said its sample of 130,000 status participants had an average age of 37.

What does this tell us about what we read? Well, first, it seems to show the importance of literature—particularly Young Adult literature—in changing and affecting our lives. It could be that a lot of the status participants read Harry Potter or To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, and the lessons and messages of those books stayed with them over time. It could also be, however, that they read the books later in life, and still found them quite relevant and poignant. Either way, we know that these books had a message and storyline that truly inspired their readers. I think that YA literature often does this—partly because it keeps things simple, and doesn’t over-complicate its books with “mature” material (i.e., obscene language and sex and innuendo). YA lit often presents questions of identity, virtue, and vocation in a straightforward yet inquiring manner, and these are the questions that truly stay with us over time.

The list also shows us what sort of stories stick with us, and there seem to be two predominant styles reflected by the top 20 (and the top 100). There is a lot of fantasy literature and dystopian fiction in the list—books like the Chronicles of Narnia series, the Hunger Games trilogy, 1984, The Giver, the Harry Potter series, The Handmaid’s Tale, A Wrinkle in Time, and the like. Why would these two genres, specifically, have such a large following? I think it has to do with their metaphorical and imaginative messages: we are imaginative beings, and love the ability to see things in veiled truths and layered meanings. We love the patterns and poignancy reflected in metaphor and allegory. But additionally, we like opportunities to stretch our minds in new ways, especially in an age where everything we see has been quantified and de-mystified. Thus, both fantasy and dystopian literature force us to see the world in new and interesting lights. They usually leave us looking at the world with new eyes. As G.K. Chesterton said, “[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

Finally, the list reflects the continued presence of classical literature amongst our favorite books. True, there are a few modern works in the list, but most of the books are older ones, ones that we identify as “classics.” Sometimes, it’s easy to forget why such books are important and worth reading—truly their relevance has abated with time. But this little experiment on Facebook has shown us that, if anything, these books are more important than ever: in the midst of a shifting and changing world, these books offer us stories that are timeless. And we need them, perhaps because of the change happening all around us. A Tale of Two Cities will always be one of the greatest tales of friendship and sacrifice. Anna Karenina will forever remind us of the life-destroying peril of sin. Harry Potter will continue to teach us important lessons about friendship, courage, and community. Literature may grow old, but it doesn’t die.

These are 10 books that have “stayed with me”: books that changed the way I look at the world, my understanding of human nature, or my understanding of vocation in some deep and lasting way.

1. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
2. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
3. The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
4. The Fall – Albert Camus
5. Remembering – Wendell Berry
6. Laddie – Gene Stratton Porter
7. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
8. At the Back of the North Wind – George MacDonald
9. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
10. Mystery and Manners – Flannery O’Connor

There are so many others worth including. But I suppose that’s the point of having 10: to give us just a snapshot into each other’s reading lives and personalities, and to hopefully arouse the curiosity of our friends, that they might seek out and read these excellent works of literature, and understand why these books continue to stick with us.

The post The Books We Love and What They Say About Us appeared first on Acculturated.