Here is a list of 100 books that liberals and conservatives like in equal measure. As we discuss in our article, these lists were derived by identifying readers on Goodreads as either conservative or liberal based on whether they positively rated a highly partisan book from a select list (titles like James Carville’s It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! or Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now! on the left and Glenn Beck’s Cowards, Ann Coulter’s Demonic, or Pat Buchanan’s Suicide of a Superpower on the right).
The books are ranked by the overall number of bookshelves that they appear on. We use a statistical test to ensure that they are no more likely to appear on one set of shelves versus another.
We also identified the top 100 books that liberals prefer and the top 100 books that conservatives prefer.
Title | Bookshelves |
To Kill a Mockingbird | 8905 |
1984 | 8687 |
Animal Farm | 8222 |
Lord of the Flies | 6125 |
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium; #1) | 5925 |
Fahrenheit 451 | 5729 |
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn; #2) | 4768 |
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire; #1) | 4381 |
Romeo and Juliet | 4370 |
Frankenstein | 3635 |
Jane Eyre | 3564 |
Water for Elephants | 3378 |
The Lovely Bones | 3287 |
Hamlet | 3211 |
A Thousand Splendid Suns | 2696 |
A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet; #1) | 2475 |
11/22/63 | 2450 |
The Secret Life of Bees | 2424 |
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War | 2408 |
Moby-Dick; or; The Whale | 2192 |
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society | 1861 |
The Outsiders | 1743 |
Emma | 1672 |
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | 1628 |
A Midsummer Night’s Dream | 1620 |
The Red Tent | 1597 |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket; #1) | 1543 |
The War of the Worlds | 1528 |
2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey; #1) | 1427 |
Persuasion | 1422 |
Rebecca | 1348 |
Gulliver’s Travels | 1334 |
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones; #1) | 1325 |
The Pearl | 1310 |
The Good Earth (House of Earth; #1) | 1309 |
I; Robot (Robot; #0.1) | 1308 |
Girl With a Pearl Earring | 1290 |
Don Quixote | 1287 |
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood | 1277 |
The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle; #1) | 1239 |
Cold Mountain | 1234 |
The Historian | 1228 |
The Canterbury Tales | 1187 |
Miss Peregrine�۪s Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine�۪s Peculiar Children; #1) | 1104 |
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress | 1032 |
Alice in Wonderland (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; #1) | 996 |
The Light Between Oceans | 996 |
Julius Caesar (Oxford School Shakespeare) | 989 |
Orphan Train | 988 |
The Bonfire of the Vanities | 981 |
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes; #5) | 980 |
The Thirteenth Tale | 969 |
Much Ado About Nothing | 968 |
The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower; #2) | 955 |
Mansfield Park | 937 |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court | 926 |
Me Before You (Me Before You; #1) | 921 |
Northanger Abbey | 919 |
Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh; #1) | 919 |
Paradise Lost | 910 |
Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse; #1) | 909 |
The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle; #2) | 901 |
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency; #1) | 896 |
The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler; #1) | 889 |
Rendezvous with Rama (Rama; #1) | 886 |
Old Man’s War (Old Man’s War; #1) | 884 |
Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles; #2) | 875 |
Tess of the D’Urbervilles | 874 |
The Taming of the Shrew | 872 |
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe | 858 |
The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower; #3) | 851 |
Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy; #1) | 844 |
The Chosen | 810 |
The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles; #2) | 805 |
Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot; #10) | 804 |
Children of Dune (Dune Chronicles; #3) | 801 |
Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower; #4) | 795 |
Hatchet (Brian’s Saga; #1) | 790 |
The Invisible Man | 790 |
The Divine Comedy | 746 |
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town; #2) | 735 |
Wonder | 732 |
Ringworld (Ringworld; #1) | 704 |
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand | 701 |
Are You There God? It’s Me; Margaret | 693 |
Wool Omnibus (Silo; #1) | 685 |
Big Little Lies | 670 |
Grave Peril (The Dresden Files; #3) | 662 |
The Language of Flowers | 660 |
Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower; #5) | 660 |
Inferno (The Divine Comedy #1) | 659 |
Mystic River | 658 |
Before I Go to Sleep | 637 |
Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse; #2) | 637 |
The Island of Dr. Moreau | 634 |
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce; #1) | 634 |
The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower; #7) | 632 |
Tuck Everlasting | 617 |
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood; #1) | 614 |
Revival | 609 |
One comment