Controversial Books

This page shows your 100 most controversial books, as measured by the standard deviation of members star ratings. (This is also the source of the Zeitgeist category "25 Books People Can't Agree on.") To be included, a book must have been rated at least 20 times. Work titles are given.

Standard Deviation	Rating	Title
1.317	3.51	The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.302	3.62	Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
1.254	4.21	The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman
1.239	2.9	Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson
1.224	3.06	Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins
1.218	3.41	Fontamara by Ignazio Silone
1.213	3.71	Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Edition) by Joseph Conrad
1.2	4.12	Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams
1.197	3.19	Spy by Ted Bell
1.188	3.14	The 37th Hour by Jodi Compton
1.187	4.3	The Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV) by Bible
1.186	3.63	Then and Now by W. Somerset Maugham
1.178	3.53	The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
1.173	3.46	The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
1.157	3.17	Sign of the Cross by Chris Kuzneski
1.156	3.34	Children of God Go Bowling by Shannon Olson
1.155	3.92	Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
1.153	3.93	Rhetoric; Poetics by Aristoteles
1.152	3.74	Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
1.15	3.71	Linda Goodman's Sun Signs by Linda Goodman
1.147	3.86	Moby Dick by Herman Melville
1.139	3.29	Walden Two by B. F. Skinner
1.139	3.46	Decipher by Stel Pavlou
1.133	3.93	The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett
1.133	3.48	House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1.131	2.96	The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
1.127	3.32	The Prairie: A Tale by James Fenimore Cooper
1.123	3.88	Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
1.123	3.83	Carrots love Tomatoes Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte
1.122	3.45	Adventures in the Skin Trade by Dylan Thomas
1.116	4.07	Ulysses by James Joyce
1.115	3.77	Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the 'Tristan of Thomas' by Gottfried von Strassburg
1.114	3.81	The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound
1.109	3.42	The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.108	3.54	Winter in the Blood (Contemporary American Fiction Series) by James Welch
1.108	3.71	Selected Poems by Ezra Pound
1.103	3.64	Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
1.099	3.71	On the Road by Jack Kerouac
1.099	3.81	The Complete Poems by Andrew Marvell
1.098	3.48	The Joy of Sex: A Cordon Bleu Guide to Love by Alex Comfort
1.097	3.89	To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
1.097	3.69	Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson
1.095	4.07	Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams
1.094	3.76	The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
1.091	4.03	The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
1.088	3.57	Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
1.088	3.91	As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
1.085	3.79	The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1.081	4.06	de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens
1.081	3.93	Staggerford: A Novel by Jon Hassler
1.081	3.87	The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
1.08	3.34	The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
1.08	3.72	The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday
1.076	4.07	Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama
1.076	3.51	What Maisie Knew by Henry James
1.074	3.68	The Ambassadors by Henry James
1.074	3.59	Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn by Hannah Holmes
1.071	3.68	The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom
1.07	3.56	Peony in Love by Lisa See
1.069	4	The Earliest English Poems (Penguin Classics) by Michael Alexander
1.068	3.7	Paradise by Toni Morrison
1.067	3.92	Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
1.063	4.02	A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1.062	3.75	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
1.06	3.61	Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
1.06	3.64	Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
1.059	3.75	Pragmatism by William James
1.058	3.69	Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols
1.057	3.86	Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
1.055	3.55	Timeline by Michael Crichton
1.054	3.22	The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
1.054	3.85	Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
1.052	3.93	Confessions by Saint Augustine
1.052	3.66	Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
1.051	3.5	Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp
1.051	3.32	Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
1.051	3.64	The Awakening by Kate Chopin
1.051	3.56	Total control by David Baldacci
1.05	3.5	The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1.05	3.76	The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
1.05	3.62	What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
1.049	3.63	Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
1.049	3.9	Beloved by Toni Morrison
1.047	3.67	The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
1.046	4.21	Complete Poems of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
1.045	3.74	The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
1.044	3.76	Theogony by Hesiod
1.043	3.82	The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
1.043	3.59	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander
1.042	3.82	The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
1.04	3.84	The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
1.036	3.88	Killing Critics by Carol O'Connell
1.035	3.82	Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell
1.035	3.59	What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson
1.033	4.05	Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
1.032	3.55	We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
1.03	4	The Magus by John Fowles
1.03	3.85	The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
1.029	3.33	The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.027	3.88	Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

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