Comments on: Top books

By: Jeremy Pierce

Jeremy Pierce — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 21:34:32 +0000

I think they’re collecting all editions together. Otherwise, the Bible would have been way ahead of the 2000 census.

By: Scott Spiegelberg

Scott Spiegelberg — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 18:06:18 +0000

Over 10% (137) of the listings are music scores. Of them, a large proportion are operas, with vocal music in general outnumbering instrumental works (78 to 58). I have a post about this, as does Tim Rutherford-Johnson.

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:51:46 +0000

I was surprised to see how much Robert Louis Stevenson there was up there. I believe four of the top 200 books.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:56:10 +0000

I’ve read Lucretius, too, and have been planning to read him again, this time in English. Is there a good verse translation?

By: rea

rea — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:58:57 +0000

Mind you, I don’t object to comics lke The Far Side or even Peanuts being on the list. There’s a certain amount of substance there, despite the pop culture format. But Garfield?

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 15:39:04 +0000

Yah, I was awfully surprised to see Lucretius way up there. I’ve read it, but aside from my classmates, not a whole lot of folks I’ve known have. It deserves to be there, though.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 10:33:02 +0000

Is it possible that the Garfield listing is a catch-all for all 40 (or however many) Garfield titles that are available? That would give it a pretty big boost. It wouldn’t explain Garfield’s position relative to Peanuts, but that may be mostly a matter of tempus fugiting right along.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:31:36 +0000

I have a rough survey of the History and Asia books in the list here: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/8733.html Is it just me or is there an awful lot of 19th century novels on this list?

By: Lawrence L. White

Lawrence L. White — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 06:21:28 +0000

For those interested in poetry, there are some glaring ommissions: Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, Yeats. I suspect these libraries all have books by these folks, but the variety of editions evades the survey. I nominate Lucretius for highest rated (#47) unread book.

By: Erik

Erik — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 22:13:16 +0000

Frankly, I’m amazed that the Critique of Pure Reason beat Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:22:17 +0000

My “best books” selection has just 60 titles on it – but then I’ve only reviewed 800 books!

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:34:22 +0000

You’ll want to keep in mind that lots of OCLC libraries are public libraries which have a different mission and scope than academic or research libraries. Many research libraries belong to RLIN rather than OCLC, though I think some may belong to both. (I’ve worked at both OCLC and RLIN so I don’t think I’m especially biased one way or the other..) MKK

By: DeAnn

DeAnn — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 06:58:35 +0000

Too much good stuff here in one post. I’m bookmarking this exact post and coming back again and again! Thanks.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 06:16:09 +0000

Garfield at #18 and Peanuts at only #70, that’s bad, though. (It looks to me as though they bundled all anthologies of the same comic strip together, which would help account for Garfield’s high rank.)

By: Kevin Mulligan

Kevin Mulligan — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 05:32:45 +0000

From the “fun facts” section: Which author has the most works on the OCLC Top 1000 list? William Shakespeare (with 40 works). He is followed by Charles Dickens (16 works) and John Grisham (13 works).