Hacker News Reader

Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

Depressing list. Is there an index for the reading level required for particular books to join this with? The mean on this would have to be somewhere around 8th-10th grade, and if the weights were used the median would be even lower.

What percentage of books here would be found outside of the 'Young Adult' section of the bookstore or a high school assigned reading list?

View on HN

I think there are a couple of factors here. This is a popularity contest, which means it's mass-market by default. If you listed the "favorite artists" or "favorite songs" from Facebook, it would be similarly easily accessible pop music that can be played on the radio when children are in the room. The average person is going to like a lot of easily accessible books and a few outliers in specific genres. So while you might get 95% of people liking Harry Potter, you gets 15% liking the Mistborn series and maybe 12% liking Snow Crash and 4% liking The Martian. There is likely a long tail that Facebook won't show you.

So people like pop literature, which means pop literature is going to be written so the mass market can read and enjoy it. I've read quite a few books where I've said "I liked it up until..." or "I like it but this part annoys me". I can't say the same about Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. They're inoffensive and appeal to everyone (or at least the 95%).

Social factors also play into it, such as the appearance of The Holy Bible so high in the list. Is the Bible actually so many people's favorite book? No, of course not. That would be like saying my favorite book is Learn Python the Hard Way. It's a textbook, really, something to study and learn from. But it's a way to easily identify with a group. If you want people to know you're serious about your religion, you say the Bible is your favorite book. Another social aspect, The Great Gatsby is known at The Great American Novel and also a popular movie recently. Did this many people read it? No. They watched the movie or they heard it's a great book so they "like" it in order to appear smart and well-read. Nobody likes Hamlet as a book. No one. Because it's not a book. But you were probably forced to read it like one in high school, and it's one of the few books you've ever read, so let put it on the list too. In fact, I would say most of these books are on there because they're the some of the only books the 95% have ever read.

Depressing comment. Is accessibility to the majority of humans somehow a negative factor in evaluating an artistic work? You can win at the cultural one-upmanship game by writing crap that only a few critical theorists will ever read, but by far the most valuable works of culture are those that everyone can share in enjoying.

>writing crap that only a few critical theorists will ever read

It's also depressing that you would characterize anything outside of a high school reading list or that wasn't intentionally written to appeal to children in this way.

I see a few reasons for this:

First, the books that introduce us to the world of literature tend to stay with us, especially those we choose on our own. This is opposed to the books we are forced to read because they are "great." For example, I still hate "The Great Gatsby" even if it is objectively great because I was forced to read it in a class with a teacher whom I did not respect.

So, I'm going to say Piers Anthony was more memorable to me than Hemingway. I'm sure that Harry Potter would have stayed with me if I'd read it at 12.

I watched through these lists and noticed that some of my best read friends still had YA books on their lists, so it doesn't seem to be "just" a matter of people who don't read much.

I read the Great Gatsby out of my own volition (well prior to the movie coming out) and I didn't really like it.

Agreed - I would love to see the results of the same search but with the key words "school" and "class" elsewhere in the post flagged as non-participants (unless they were part of the title). I'm guessing the results would be quite different.

I don't think it's helpful to think in terms of the 'right' or 'wrong' kind of books. Notwithstanding the fact that it's quite hard to define what makes certain books better/more valuable than others, we should be commending/encouraging any reading of literature, as opposed to, say, just messing around on Reddit all day (I speak from great experience of this!)

We should be careful, also, not to be too disparaging of 'Young Adult' fiction. Yes, you may have some shockers in there at the moment, but Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, David Copperfield (along with many, many other 'classic' works) would all probably have been considered Young Adult titles if the genre had existed back then.

For more: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/featur...

Sadly, the average American can only read at a 7th or 8th grade level. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

Would be interesting to analyze favorite youtube videos that have stayed with the viewers.

There's probably a lot of sample bias. FB users that participated in the meme probably don't represent the universe of readers. I'd guess that the meme participants skewed towards young adults.

Anecdotally, last night on the couch my wife was scrolling thru facebook while I was reading in the kindle app. This is pretty typical "wind down" end of day for us. Therefore I did not hear of this meme until it hit HN and I certainly didn't participate although I spend a lot of time reading, in comparison my wife could have seen it and participated, but she's on FB not reading.

Its like asking a bunch of xbox gamers about their favorite PS4 game or vice versa. Well, there might be some overlap in that Venn diagram, but...

Leaving aside the typical silly assumption that a "young adult" book is somehow less likely to grapple with important questions...

You shouldn't be at all surprised that a list of books characterized by "what has stayed with you" would skew towards books typically read during youth. I can still provide basic plot lines of the reruns I watched during my childhood, not to mention commercial jingles. Also, youth is a prime time for adopting such guidepost stars. A young adult book is probably going to prove a better roadmap than, say, a cult leader.

>a "young adult" book is somehow less likely to grapple with important questions...

I don't know that that's a silly assumption. Young adult books would tend to target questions that can be understood by your median 14 year old. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there are at least as many important questions that are out of the realm of median 14 year old understanding as there are within. "Less likely to" isn't the same as saying 'will never.'

I'd argue that a survey of the literature shows quite the opposite. A young adult novel is more likely to address a specific subset of questions, yes, but if anything they are more likely to address e.g. ethical issues and moral dilemmas.

Accessibility is an important feature. Most of the country cannot read at a literary arts postgrad level, and that is OK.

Is there "responsive book design" targeted at human brains instead of web browsers? Important books could have different versions for different audiences, and readers could change the version on the fly.

But "a literary arts postgrad level" is a strawman. Are there more than 10 books on this list that don't have a movie version?

Would there be 10 books on any list of the favorite books by the general population that wouldn't be turned into movies?

It's a list of books that have stayed with us. Books that I read as a kid had a lot more impact on me than books I read now so it could explain why some of those books are books that one is more likely to read as a kid...

That makes sense. The average age of response would probably skew the ratings for 'books that have stayed with' people towards books that they've read in their youth or in school. A 25 year old probably wouldn't describe something that they read when they were 23 as something that has 'stayed with' them.

I have a similar thought: how many books are on here because they are a part of high school curriculums? Of course, it's also possible that they are read in high school because they are good works.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com