4 ms·
My theory is that we're just looking at the list of books most frequently assigned by english teachers. Excluding children books, most of these can be found in
by fyp 7y ago
My theory is that we're just looking at the list of books most frequently assigned by english teachers. Excluding children books, most of these can be found in the new york state education department's literature suggestions: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf.
The exceptions were "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (rank 8) and "Harry Potter" (rank 9).
I am actually pretty shocked by this. I didn't expect a self-help book (15 million copies sold) to beat harry potter (120 million copies sold, 500 million if you include the entire series, making it the best-selling series in history). I guess people who love the franchise would rather own the book?
- kick 7y agoOne was first published before World War II, the other was first published in the 1990s.
- fyp 7y agoAh I didn't realize they were talking about over the history of the library. That makes much more sense.
- CrazyStat 7y agoHarry Potter checkouts may also have been heavily bottlenecked by the number of available copies.
- TuringNYC 7y agoI wish the list were scaled a la TF/IDF, perhaps to total checkouts for that year or with some scale that includes utilization of available copies. That would be more telling.
- MBCook 7y agoDon’t forget that self-help book has been around for a very long time where as Harry Potter has only been around since ‘98. Personally I would love to see a top 100 list.
- coliveira 7y agoYou just explained the issue: Harry Potter solder so many copies that everyone who ever read it already has one.