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
1.237	3.36	Budapest by Chico Buarque
1.158	3.33	A Village Romeo and Juliet by Gottfried Keller
1.126	3.68	La concessione del telefono by Andrea Camilleri
1.111	3.41	Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit
1.107	3.6	The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom
1.102	3.29	Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
1.097	3.46	The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
1.089	3.63	The Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti
1.087	4	By Night Under the Stone Bridge by Leo Perutz
1.085	3.62	Rhetoric (Ars Rhetorica) by Aristoteles
1.071	3.83	The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
1.066	2.74	Bonjour, Laziness by Corinne Maier
1.064	3.66	Through a Glass, Darkly by Jostein Gaarder
1.059	3.79	History of beauty by Umberto Eco
1.057	3.86	Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
1.057	4.06	The Wisdom of the Sands by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1.057	3.51	Discourse on Method by René Descartes
1.046	3.35	Maya by Jostein Gaarder
1.045	4.19	Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
1.03	3.85	The Republic by Plato
1.03	3.55	Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1.025	3.96	Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1.024	3.47	Firmin by Sam Savage
1.023	4.05	Becket by Jean Anouilh
1.019	3.57	A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future by Charles Van Doren
1.015	3.63	Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd
1.015	3.46	How to read a film by James Monaco
1.015	3.82	When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
1.007	4	To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm
1.007	3.74	The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago
1.006	4.13	Faust: Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil. Urfaust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1.005	3.71	Come si fa una tesi di laurea by Umberto Eco
1.004	3.32	The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
1.001	3.5	Baudolino by Umberto Eco
0.992	3.79	The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
0.99	3.75	The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes
0.986	3.64	The Old Man and Mr. Smith: A Fable by Peter Ustinov
0.985	3.73	Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
0.981	3.53	Schrödinger's Cat: The Universe Next Door by Robert Anton Wilson
0.981	3.74	Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
0.974	3.17	Setting Free the Bears by John Irving
0.974	3.99	London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
0.974	3.62	Die philosophische Hintertreppe. Vierunddreißig große Philosophen in Alltag und Denken. by Wilhelm Weischedel
0.974	3.97	Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
0.969	3.32	Un mese con Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri
0.964	4.23	One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
0.962	3.63	The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
0.959	3.94	Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard
0.959	3.81	On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning by Haruki Murakami
0.957	3.56	The Death of Faith (a.k.a., Quietly in Their Sleep) by Donna Leon
0.954	3.63	Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
0.953	3.94	The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
0.951	3.53	Ensel und Krete by Walter Moers
0.95	3.54	About Face by Donna Leon
0.95	3.79	Spieltrieb by Juli Zeh
0.945	3.59	Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
0.944	3.54	Belief or Nonbelief?: A Confrontation by Umberto Eco
0.941	3.52	Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon
0.941	3.77	Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
0.939	3.51	Uniform Justice by Donna Leon
0.939	4.13	The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
0.938	3.92	The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
0.936	4.04	The Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm
0.933	3.54	Andorra by Max Frisch
0.931	3.67	The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway
0.93	3.87	My Mother's Castle by Marcel Pagnol
0.929	3.49	Through a Glass, Darkly by Donna Leon
0.928	3.89	Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension by Michio Kaku
0.927	3.49	Suffer the Little Children by Donna Leon
0.926	3.53	The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind
0.925	3.87	The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien
0.923	3.82	Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre
0.922	3.72	A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
0.919	3.39	Felidae on the Road by Akif Pirincci
0.918	3.56	A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon
0.917	3.97	The Inspector Barlach Mysteries by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
0.916	3.99	The Stranger by Albert Camus
0.913	4.05	Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger
0.912	3.87	The Fall by Albert Camus
0.911	3.6	Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
0.907	4.29	The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
0.905	3.92	The Misbehavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot
0.904	3.95	My Father's Glory by Marcel Pagnol
0.903	3.95	The Plague by Albert Camus
0.901	3.77	Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth by J. R. R. Tolkien
0.899	3.91	The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt
0.898	3.81	Italian Journey: 1786-1788 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
0.898	3.48	La prima indagine di Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri
0.896	3.81	Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
0.896	3.69	The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa
0.895	3.9	The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
0.892	3.61	Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon
0.89	4.12	Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
0.879	4.24	Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
0.877	3.61	Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
0.876	3.86	The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
0.874	4.03	Economics by Paul A Samuelson
0.873	3.7	Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
0.871	3.99	Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer
0.87	4.19	The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

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