Books

This Is The Internet's Favorite Book

by Emma Oulton

If you'd asked me to guess the Internet's favorite book, I probably would have said one of the Harry Potter books. (If you've ever tried criticizing Harry Potter online, as I've made the mistake of doing, you'll see why I might assume that.) But it turns out I was totally wrong: according to Goodreads, the Internet's favorite book is The Hunger Games.

Can this be true? The Hunger Games is certainly beloved — but is it really more popular than the whole Harry Potter series, or A Song of Ice and Fire? Does it beat all the Jane Austen novels?! Well, apparently so. The hugely popular reading community Goodreads has compiled a crowdsourced list of the "best books ever" — and The Hunger Games comes out overwhelmingly on top. That's pretty conclusive.

J.K. Rowling does get a look-in, of course: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix came in at second place. (Again, I'm surprised. Order of the Phoenix is actually my favorite of the Harry Potter series — but I'm usually met with jeers and thumbs-down emojis whenever I make that opinion known.) The rest of the list is a seriously mixed bag. Apparently the Internet likes Twilight more than the entire Chronicles of Narnia series — but Austen's Pride and Prejudice managed to get in ahead of both of them. Winnie-the-Pooh just about cracks the top 100, but Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook reached a higher spot.

The Hunger Games' top spot still seemed surprising to me, so I decided to take to Twitter to confirm it for myself.

It turns out Goodreads was right: the Internet really does adore The Hunger Games. Of course, favorite books are very different to best books — but the results there were equally surprising. When Priceonomics compiled a list of the highest rated books on Goodreads, the #1 spot was taken by The Complete Calvin and Hobbes . Unorthodox, sure — but you know what? Totally deserved.

Image: Lionsgate Movies/YouTube