Last week First Thoughts‘ Mark Misulia posted about Squidoo’s most-read book info-graph.
The social media website Squidoo has produced an info-graph about the most read books in the past fifty years. Who knows whether it’s better that more copies of Dan Brown were sold than copies of the Twilight Saga, but it’s encouraging to know that the Bible beat out the rest by over 3 billion copies.
When I looked over the graph, I couldn’t decide if I should be excited or depressed. It’s wonderful to see the Bible towering so far above even it’s closest competitor. Of the rest, I’ve only read The Lord of the Rings. I started Gone with the Wind in college, and still hope to finish it some time. The presence of Twilight scares me a little. Surely books of greater literary merit have been written in the last 50 years. It’s fascinating to me that four slots went to the fantasy genre — this says something about our generations taste in reading.
Incandescent Ink 
When you mean generation, are you referring to the current living generation? That could include many generations at once. My generation, my parents generation, my grandparents generation… that's 3 different generations all living today that could affect Mark Misulia's graph. Most people younger than I don't read many books, while most people older than I read much more. I think you really have to go back and do a comparative study of what were the most popular books in an age where television and/or radio was non-existent. That would help account for the change in society throughout the generations. Or… find the demographics of who are reading these books. In fine print, it says \”based on the number of books that were printed and sold\”… I guess that doesn't include the books that were passed around from friends or family members for free. Just a couple months ago, I borrowed \”Boundaries in Dating\” from my sister, and I read it, my roomate read it, and my other sister read it… stats like that are not included. At the rate we're heading for, 2062 will be which brand name electronic gadget sells the most that has the capability of storing books in its memory. Hopefully, by then we will still not have human chips implanted. It's also interesting that there's only one non-english book on the list, especially for a world-wide graph. (btw, this is jrsimeon… I can't figure out how to post my name yet)