2001

Now something almost recent. The official bestseller novel lists don't mention the Harry Potter books. I think they are regarded as children's chapter books, despite the numerous adults who read them.

1. Desecration: Antichrist takes the throne by Jerry B Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. has 432 owners and 3 reviews. The first novel in this series is Left Behind: a novel of the earth's last days with 966 owners and 14 reviews. "Desecration" is #8 in the series.

2. Skipping Christmas by John Grisham has 986 owners and 25 reviews. This book was #6 in 2002. (humor)

3. A Painted House by John Grisham has 1,454 owners and 14 reviews. The biggest book by Gresham is The Firm with 2230 owners and 21 reviews. (legal thriller)

4. Dreamcatcher by Stephen King has 1,558 owners and 14 reviews. (horror)

5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen has 3,759 owners and 57 reviews. Is this to become an American classic?

6. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub has 1,401 owners and 10 reviews. (horror)

7. The Kiss by Danielle Steel has 62 owners and 1 review. (Romance). I've read The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison but not Steel's.

8. Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler has 482 owners and 3 reviews. (adventure)

9. A Day Late and a Dollar Short by Terry McMillan has 161 owners and 1 review. (African-American)

10. Violets are blue by James Patterson has 669 owners and 3 reviews. (mystery)

11. Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter has 276 owners and 10 reviews. (mystery). This book is published under the title Belladonna in Great Britain and Germany.

Yikes, not only haven't I read any of those, I've never even heard of them! (Some of the author names are familiar, of course.)

Just sign me,
One Who'll Welcome Another OLD List!

Well, I've read The corrections & I actually hated to see it end. It could be another American classic.
I've also read the John Gresham books. He is a good writer, too, but I don't care for legal thrillers.
Terry McMillan is another good writer. I've read Waiting to exhale & enjoyed it. Maybe I'll get to her others one of these days.

#2
Doing this series of bestseelrs has made me realize how many books I don't know about and maybe never will (or should?).

I looked at your profile, am I sympathize with the note putting a list of short stories in your review. How do we find out about specific short stories, outside of looking them up in a library's short story index. Although this ought to be online by now.

I put the four novels making up the The Essential John Steinbeck: Four Complete Novels in my tags on that book. Note, the Touchstone doesn't work, but I am allowing it to refer to another John Steinbeck book.

Apparently, I'm once again out of the mainstream and have missed all of these. I have heard that the Left Behind novels' numbers may be inflated because of it being purchased in mass quantities by groups and not individuals.

#5> Varielle, I know that books are purchased in quantity to goose them up the bestseller list (William F. Buckley, Jr. got caught at it) but I had not heard that specifically about Left Behind.

It makes a certain amount of sense, though, if Library Thing is at all indicative of the reading public. For Desecration: Antichrist takes the throne to have a third of the copies of A Painted House, and even the first book in the Left Behind series to have under a thousand, tells me that either LaHaye's readers are underrepresented on LT (which is possible) or a lot of the copies sold weren't read. (vpfluke, are your annual lists in order of popularity?)

The outlier here seems to be A Day Late and a Dollar Short, as 161 copies seems small.

varielle

These lists are derived ultimately From Bowker's/Publisher's Weekly, and are in order of popularity. But they only represent one year's sales. Looking at the data on LT, I think Jonathan Franzen is probably really strong on a backlist, and Danielle Steel is probably weak.

I have to admit the only book on this list I've looked at is Skipping Christmas. It is #2 among the 11 in the number of LT reviews, so I would say that people are stirred to say something about it.

The other thing I want to say is that if you look at the books shared by members of this group, we sure don't share bestsellers. The Perfect Potato, which I own, can't possibly be on the top 500 on any significant list.

I read Skipping Christmas and I have heard of the others. But only because I work in a bookstore. =)

only read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham a beutifull little storybook that Hollywood ruined with the movie.

Struck out here -- I've read more books from the 1915 list! My husband read The Corrections and hated it so I didn't bother -- should I give it a chance?

The Corrections is the only one I read from this list and I wish I hadn't.

I read Desecration and Skipping Christmas.

I read Dreamcatcher and Skipping Christmas. S.C. was a short and sweet book, but very good and worth multiple reads. Dreamcatcher was also very good, but meaty, and dragged on for a hundred or so pages in the middle there. Hell, it was 800 pages. It was bound to drag SOMEWHERE.

None of those for me. I own The Corrections and am interested in it, but haven't read it yet. I hear really mixed reviews. You seem to either love it or hate it.

Dreamcatcher! Great movie.

I own and have read The corrections and I was not happy with the ending.

Nothing for me. Guess I rarely buy a book I don't have to blow the dust off of first! :)

I thought The Corrections was dreadfully boring, but some of my friends thought it was a funny caricature of 1990s America.. I wouldn't recommend it though..

I don't think any of us put in the Non-fiction bestsellers for 2001:

1. The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson, Multnomah -- 1,676 owners (* reviews)

2. Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson, Multnomah -- 614 owners in LT (5 reviews)

3. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, Putnam -- 2,985 owners (45 reviews)

4. John Adams by David McCullough, Simon & Schuster -- 5,053 owners (82 reviews)

5. Guinness World Records 2002, Guinness Publishing -- 143 owners (0 reviews)

6. Prayer for Jabez for Women by Darlene Wilkinson, Multnomah -- 52 owners (0 reviews)

7. The No-Spin Zone by Bill O’Reilly, Broadway -- 284 owners (4 reviews)

8. Body for Life: 12 weeks to mental and physical strength by Bill Phillips, HarperCollins -- 679 owners (4 reviews)

9. How I Play Golf by Tiger Woods, Warner -- 163 owners (2 reviews)

10. Jack: straight from the gut by Jack Welch, Warner -- 715 owners (reviews)

11. I Hope You Dance by Mark D. Sanders and Tia Sillers, Rutledge Hill -- 119 owners (1 review)

12. Self Matters by Dr. Phil McGraw, Simon & Schuster -- 522 owners (3 reviews)

13. The Blue Day Book by Bradley Trevor Greive, Andrews McMeel -- 685 owners (11 reviews)

14. The Road to Wealth by Suze Orman, Putnam -- 217 owners (0 reviews)

15. "America’s Heroes: Inspiring Stories of Courage, Sacrifice and Patriotism" by the editors of SP LLC, Sports Publishing -- 18 owners (0 reviews)

I read The Prayer of Jabez. What an execrable book!

Robert

Due to a merger, we distributed Who Moved my Cheese? to our employees and showed the accompanying movie. The employees all yelped that we were going to get fired. We said. "Oh no, it just means things are going to change and we need to be ready." The employees were right.

To be a bit compulsive, I need to make some amendments to Message 20 here (once you've dickered extemsivewith Touchstones, you can never go back and do an edit):

The Prayer of Jabez has 8 reviews.
Jack: Straight from the Gut has 9 reviews.
This listing is from Publishers Weekly, which summarily excludes any of the Harry Potter books.

Some pretty awful reviews of Who moved my cheese... havent had to read it myself. On the other hand, John Adams was pretty awesome.

In general, good non-fiction doesn't seem to make bestseller lists. John Adams is an outlier. For Who moved my cheese, it gets like an average rating of 3.28 in LT and 3 stars at Amazon. The majority of people in Amazon either hate it or love it -- the majority gave it either five stars (495) or one star (430), (4 stars - 301, 3 stars 150, 2 stars 145). LT raders give a more even grouping of ratings, 5 star - 95, 4 star 132, 3 star 130, 2 star 77, 1 star 36. Neither of these are a real bell curve distribution (i.e. normal distribution -- maybe nothing is normal).

Maybe its just me or the books I look at, but in general I dont think LT readers ratings fall along a bell curve - and most books ive seen fall along the 4-5 stars... I would guess that the bias comes in because if a book is only ok, why bother rating it at all? whereas if it was really good or really bad, its worth noting for others

A lot of LT ratings can be high. However, a lot of Early Reviewer books get down into the 3 and below range.

For me, if I start a book, and give up after page 20, I don't feel I am qualified to give it a rating, let alone a review.

If I don't know a book, I usually feel it must have at least a 3.8 rating for me to consider it.

A lot of people are now thinking that we overuse the bell curve. Analysis of internet usage usually doesn't follow bell curve distributions, but more of what are called power law distributions, which is proabably where LT ratings lie.

sure - networks such as the internet, have been shown to have non-normal distributions - described informally with the analogy of 'rich get richer'. bell curves are only one type of distribution - often they are appropriate, but not everything is distributed that way. overuse would only be the case if the bell curve were used inappropriately..

I've read Who Moved My Cheese: kindest to say nothing. Of the fiction list, I have Black House and Valhalla Rising.