I just came acros the December 9, 2007, issue of the
New York Times Book Review in which I had looked up the number of owners on LT at that point (maybe late December). Now 6 months later, I am looking at the list again. This post will deal with the top five fiction books of 2007.
Man Gone Down by
Michael Thomas had 69 owners, now has 111 owners with 2 reviews and average rating of 3.78. 739 copies in Worldcat.
Out Stealing Horses by Per
Petterson had 238 owners, now has 541 owners with 28 reviews and average rating of 4.07. 1,051 copies in Worldcat.
The Savage Detectives by
Roberto Bolano had 266 owners, now has 492 owners with 10 reviews and 4.06 average rating. 1,035 copies in Worldcat.
Then We Came to the End by
Joshua Ferris had 505 owners, now has 1,092 copies with 46 reviews and 3.65 average rating. 1,290 copies in Worldcat.
Tree of Smoke by
Denis Johnson had 228 owners now has 413 with 14 reviews and 3.82 average rating. 1,658 copies in Worldcat.
Now the stats are a little scattered.
Then we came to the end has the most LT owners and reviewers, but also has the lowst rating. The best rated are a tie between
Out Stealing Horses and
The Savage Detectives.
I didn't look up the actual dates these books were released, but the numbers have more than doubled for
Out Stealing Horses and
Then We Came to the End, suggesting possible legs for these books.
The most popular book in Worldcat is
Tree of Smoke, perhaps suggesting that because Denis Johnson is the best known author of the five, every library should get the book. Maybe
Denis Johnson was published simultaneously in every English-Speaking country, and the others were not. I think Johnson gets translated into French, but maybe not yet for
Tree of smoke.
Bolano is Spanish, so maybe he has a greater international reputation.
These are the five
best Nonfiction books of 2007:
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by
Rajiv Chandrasekaran had 358 owners, now has 412 owners with 17 reviews and average rating of 4.12. 1,531 in Worldcat.
Little Heathens: Hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression by
Mildred Armstrong Kalish had 98 owners, now has 199 with 7 reviews and average rating of 3.55. 1,025 in Worldcat.
The Nine: Inside the secret world of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin had 195 owners, now has 425 owners with 18 reviews and average rating of 4.03. 1,922 in Worldcat.
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A woman in world history had 43 owners, now has 64 owners, with 2 reviews and average rating of 3.54. 777 in Worldcat.
The Rest is noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by
Alex Ross had 111 owners, now has 316 owners, with 7 reviews and average rating of 4.41. 1,225 in Worldcat.
The best non-fiction book doesn't compare with the best fiction in terms of owners--
Imperial Life in the Emerald City has less than half as many as
Then We Came to the End, and hasn't had many legs since December. So, it might be a book of short time in history.
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh is obviously the least popular of the whole bunch -- perhaps this is a problem of the obscurity of the subject, Elizabeth Marsh. (This book is 10th most owned in LT and 9th in Worldcat).
The book that resonates the best with LTers is
The Rest is Noise. It has "legs" with the largest increase in owners in the last 6 months. That Might be a result of word-of-mouth, what with its high rating of 4.41. I've put it on my own list of books to seek out a some date.
It's intersting to note that the book most owned by libraries is
The Nine: ... Supreme Court. Maybe this is a "must have" book that fills in a subject not well represented in the libraries that list in Worldcat.
Wonder how these increases compare to those of other new books that weren't on the list . . . and whether any have since come out in paperback and how that relates to increased ownership . . .
All the books have paper editions;
Man Gone Down appears to have no hardback edition.
All the books except
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh have a
Amazon Kindle edition.
Three books got 4.5 ratings in Amazon,
Out Stealing Horses (61 cust);
Imperial Life (151 cust);
Little heathens (67 cust).
Four books got 4.0 ratings,
Man Gone Down (23 cust);
The Nine Supreme (134 cust);
Ordeal of Elizabeth (6 cust);
Rest is Noise (42 cust).
Two books got 3.5 ratings,
Savage Detectives (36 cust);
Then We Came (180 cust).
One book got a 3.0 rating,
Tree of Smoke (74 cust).
Not dissimilar ratings between Amazon and Librarything.
Savage detectives does better on LT, I believe, because LT has a greater international sweep, whereas these Amazon numbers are mostly for the U.S. By the way, the author,
Roberto Bolano was Chilean and is now deceased.
Note, also, I had a surprising success with Touchstones, except for Jeffrey Toobin.
It has been my experience from combining efforts that French translators (and/or publishers) completely change titles of works originally written in other languages much more than translators into other languages -- so much so that it's often difficult to figure out which work a French title refers to (and I'm pretty good in French). This seems to be one of those cases.
Interesting data!
>4 "All the books have paper editions"
But not all the pbks have been released yet. Just went to order
The Rest is Noise but the pbk isn't avail till Sept. 30.
>5 vpfluke, according to BNF (
La Bibliographie nationale française: French national bibliography, maintained by the French national library), Toobin's
Qui gouverne l'Amérique ? Le cas Ashcroft is the translation of
Ashcroft's ascent, how far will the attorney general go? which was an article originally published in The New Yorker.
>6 rebeccanyc, I'm fairly good in French as well, but I find BNF an invaluable resource for combining French-language editions because of the changing of titles.
Edited to fix BNF linkMessage edited by its author, Jun 15, 2008, 3:06pm.
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