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
1.199	4.36	Jane Eyre / Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë
1.195	3.83	Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
1.143	3.06	Bored of the Rings by Harvard Lampoon
1.109	3.42	The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.092	3.64	Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear by Frank Luntz
1.083	3.84	Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
1.081	3.87	The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
1.062	3.93	A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer
1.052	3.95	Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
1.051	3.51	Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp
1.043	3.59	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander
1.042	3.8	Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
1.036	3.93	Scribbler of Dreams by Mary E. Pearson
1.033	3.71	Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
1.033	4.05	Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
1.03	3.85	The Republic by Plato
1.029	3.22	The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees
1.024	3.68	The Crucible by Arthur Miller
1.019	3.81	Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
1.018	3.91	The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1.015	3.99	Maya Angelou: Poems by Maya Angelou
1.01	4.01	The Host by Stephenie Meyer
1.01	3.95	A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
1.006	3.81	The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
1.001	3.59	The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
0.999	3.72	Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien
0.991	3.85	Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
0.988	3.96	Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
0.984	3.67	The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
0.983	3.93	Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
0.982	3.94	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
0.982	3.72	A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
0.978	3.94	Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained by John Milton
0.976	3.73	Pet Sematary by Stephen King
0.975	4.08	King Lear by William Shakespeare
0.971	3.8	Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
0.965	3.89	The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis
0.963	4.12	Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
0.961	3.84	The Monk by Matthew Lewis
0.956	3.58	The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 by J. R. R. Tolkien
0.953	3.93	My Ántonia by Willa Cather
0.95	3.83	Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
0.95	3.72	The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene
0.948	3.4	The Clockwise Man by Justin Richards
0.947	3.94	The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis
0.946	4.21	32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching by Phillip Done
0.941	4	An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It by Al Gore
0.935	3.89	Mythology by Edith Hamilton
0.934	3.74	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
0.931	3.61	Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
0.93	3.66	Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson
0.927	3.89	Pay it Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde
0.926	4.1	The Once and Future King by T.H. White
0.926	3.63	Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende
0.925	4.03	Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
0.921	4.05	Closer by Patrick Marber
0.919	3.59	Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
0.917	3.89	Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis
0.916	3.85	Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
0.913	4.05	The Odyssey by Homer
0.912	3.66	Good Grief by Lolly Winston
0.91	3.98	The Complete Plays of Aristophanes by Aristophanes
0.908	4.14	Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
0.908	3.5	The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten by Julian Baggini
0.906	3.45	Stowaway by Karen Hesse
0.905	3.74	Mary, Bloody Mary: A Young Royals Book by Carolyn Meyer
0.904	4.09	Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
0.903	4.02	Regeneration by Pat Barker
0.902	4.08	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
0.902	4	The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
0.902	4.13	Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
0.902	4.16	Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
0.9	3.81	Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
0.899	3.95	Dracula by Bram Stoker
0.899	3.87	The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
0.898	3.11	The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History by Dan Karlan
0.891	4.09	The Shining by Stephen King
0.888	3.85	The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
0.886	4.25	A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn
0.885	4.25	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
0.882	4.18	Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
0.882	3.94	The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
0.881	3.5	Once Upon a More Enlightened Time: More Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner
0.881	4.14	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
0.88	4.14	Blindness by José Saramago
0.876	3.86	The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
0.869	4.21	Roget's International Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget
0.868	4.12	The Color Purple by Alice Walker
0.866	4.2	A River Runs through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean
0.866	4.13	Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
0.864	3.8	Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
0.861	4.25	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
0.852	3.56	The Black Pearl by Scott O'Dell
0.851	4.08	Holes by Louis Sachar
0.85	3.76	Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
0.844	4.38	Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
0.838	4	Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko
0.836	4.27	1984 by George Orwell
0.832	4.31	His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
0.828	3.2	The Secret Man by Bob Woodward

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