Christian Headlines Blog Christian Blog and Commentary

Get guidance on Bible study from C.S. Lewis - Free Course!

"Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" Top Bible in Books That Stayed with You Facebook Challenge

  • Amanda Casanova

    Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and…

    More
  • Updated Sep 15, 2014

A study of Facebook’s popular meme that invites users to share “10 books that have stayed with them” found that the “Harry Potter” series and “Lord of the Rings” series topped the lists more than the bible.

In the study from two researchers, Lada Adamic and Pinkesh Patel, the study analyzed data pulled from more than 130,000 Facebook status updates. The study then pieced together a list of the top 100 books cited by Facebook users in the last two weeks of August.

In first place was the Harry Potter series and then Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” followed by the Lord of the Rings series. The Hobbit took fourth place and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” ranked fifth.

The bible was ranked sixth in the study.

Many children’s books also made the top 100 list.

“Although these may not normally be considered great works of literature, they tend to stay with us through the decades,” the researchers said in a released statement with the study.

Of the Facebook posts studied, about 63 percent were from the US and another 9 percent from India and 6 percent from the UK.

Publication date: September 15, 2014