About Christopher Pound

Web Developer

Fiction at Gutenberg

What are the most popular works of fiction available in English for free at Project Gutenberg as of Spring 2013?

Based on an XML dump of Gutenberg.org’s catalog, I’ve built a list of all ~5000 English language texts described as fiction in the subject metadata. I’ve cross-referenced that list with user ratings at Goodreads.com. Titles are sorted by the value generated by this formula: (($avg – 1)/4) * log($num), where $avg was the average rating and $num was the number of ratings. The top 1000 are given below; however, only the ordering is preserved, not the data.

The result mostly seems to be a ranked list of ‘classics.’ These caveats about classics/canonization are relevant for interpreting the significance of such a list. However, because it’s based on a value that weighs both the number of people reading the text and their reactions, it’s not a bad guide to which texts would have the best chance of becoming common ground in an agreeable conversation with other readers. YMMV.

   1 Pride and Prejudice (Austen, Jane)
   2 Jane Eyre (Brontë, Charlotte)
   3 Little Women (Alcott, Louisa May)
   4 Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
   5 The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas, Alexandre)
   6 Sense and Sensibility (Austen, Jane)
   7 The Secret Garden (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
   8 Les Misérables (Hugo, Victor)
   9 Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
  10 Persuasion (Austen, Jane)
  11 The Velveteen Rabbit (Bianco, Margery Williams)
  12 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain, Mark)
  13 The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde, Oscar)
  14 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, Lewis)
  15 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
  16 Dracula (Stoker, Bram)
  17 Emma (Austen, Jane)
  18 A Little Princess; being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
  19 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  20 Anna Karenina (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
  21 Wuthering Heights (Brontë, Emily)
  22 A Christmas Carol (Dickens, Charles)
  23 The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Potter, Beatrix)
  24 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain, Mark)
  25 Siddhartha (Hesse, Hermann)
  26 A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens, Charles)
  27 Peter Pan (Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew))
  28 Frankenstein (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft)
  29 The Three Musketeers (Dumas, Alexandre)
  30 A Study in Scarlet (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  31 Anne of Avonlea (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
  32 War and Peace (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
  33 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
  34 Anne of the Island (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
  35 The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  36 The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy, Baroness Emmuska)
  37 Black Beauty (Sewell, Anna)
  38 The Trial (Kafka, Franz)
  39 The Idiot (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
  40 Heidi (Spyri, Johanna)
  41 Great Expectations (Dickens, Charles)
  42 The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  43 The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Gaston)
  44 David Copperfield (Dickens, Charles)
  45 North and South (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
  46 Metamorphosis (Kafka, Franz)
  47 Treasure Island (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
  48 Mansfield Park (Austen, Jane)
  49 The Time Machine (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
  50 The Wind in the Willows (Grahame, Kenneth)
  51 A Room with a View (Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan))
  52 Oliver Twist (Dickens, Charles)
  53 The Woman in White (Collins, Wilkie)
  54 The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie, Agatha)
  55 The Age of Innocence (Wharton, Edith)
  56 Northanger Abbey (Austen, Jane)
  57 The Call of the Wild (London, Jack)
  58 Anne's House of Dreams (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
  59 The Gift of the Magi (Henry, O.)
  60 Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne, Jules)
  61 Middlemarch (Eliot, George)
  62 Don Quixote (Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de)
  63 Candide (Voltaire)
  64 The Chimes (Dickens, Charles)
  65 The Cricket on the Hearth (Dickens, Charles)
  66 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
  67 Bleak House (Dickens, Charles)
  68 Dubliners (Joyce, James)
  69 The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  70 The House of Mirth (Wharton, Edith)
  71 Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe, Harriet Beecher)
  72 The War of the Worlds (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
  73 White Fang (London, Jack)
  74 Of Human Bondage (Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset))
  75 Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss, Johann David)
  76 Just So Stories (Kipling, Rudyard)
  77 Rilla of Ingleside (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
  78 Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Hardy, Thomas)
  79 Howards End (Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan))
  80 The Jungle Book (Kipling, Rudyard)
  81 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne, Jules)
  82 Right Ho, Jeeves (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
  83 Far from the Madding Crowd (Hardy, Thomas)
  84 Swann's Way (Proust, Marcel)
  85 The Man in the Iron Mask (Dumas, Alexandre)
  86 Wives and Daughters (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
  87 The Yellow Wallpaper (Gilman, Charlotte Perkins)
  88 Moby Dick (Melville, Herman)
  89 The Prince and the Pauper (Twain, Mark)
  90 The Sign of the Four (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
  91 Dead Souls (Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich)
  92 The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan, John)
  93 Madame Bovary (Flaubert, Gustave)
  94 Ulysses (Joyce, James)
  95 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Twain, Mark)
  96 Little Brother (Doctorow, Cory)
  97 The Jungle (Sinclair, Upton)
  98 Pollyanna (Porter, Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman))
  99 The Story of Doctor Dolittle (Lofting, Hugh)
 100 Eight Cousins (Alcott, Louisa May)
 101 The Moonstone (Collins, Wilkie)
 102 The Awakening (Chopin, Kate)
 103 Vanity Fair (Thackeray, William Makepeace)
 104 The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
 105 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, Daniel)
 106 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Brontë, Anne)
 107 Hunger (Hamsun, Knut)
 108 Rainbow Valley (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 109 My Father's Dragon (Gannett, Ruth Stiles)
 110 A Hero of Our Time (Lermontov, Mikhail Yurevich)
 111 Daddy-Long-Legs (Webster, Jean)
 112 His Last Bow (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 113 Anthem (Rand, Ayn)
 114 The Mysterious Island (Verne, Jules)
 115 Little Dorrit (Dickens, Charles)
 116 The Railway Children (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 117 Ivanhoe (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 118 The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (Potter, Beatrix)
 119 Gulliver's Travels (Swift, Jonathan)
 120 Heart of Darkness (Conrad, Joseph)
 121 Our Mutual Friend (Dickens, Charles)
 122 Three Men in a Boat (Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka))
 123 My Man Jeeves (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 124 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce, James)
 125 A Girl of the Limberlost (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 126 Jude the Obscure (Hardy, Thomas)
 127 The Lost World (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 128 The Forsyte Saga (Galsworthy, John)
 129 In His Steps (Sheldon, Charles Monroe)
 130 Ben-Hur; a tale of the Christ (Wallace, Lew)
 131 Pinocchio (Collodi, Carlo)
 132 A Princess of Mars (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 133 The Island of Dr. Moreau (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 134 Martin Eden (London, Jack)
 135 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (Sidney, Margaret)
 136 Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, Charles)
 137 Little Men (Alcott, Louisa May)
 138 Ozma of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 139 Tarzan of the Apes (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 140 Kidnapped (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 141 Rose in Bloom (Alcott, Louisa May)
 142 Flatland: a romance of many dimensions (Illustrated) (Abbott, Edwin Abbott)
 143 The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 144 Villette (Brontë, Charlotte)
 145 The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy, Thomas)
 146 O Pioneers! (Cather, Willa)
 147 An Old-Fashioned Girl (Alcott, Louisa May)
 148 Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville, Herman)
 149 This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott))
 150 The Invisible Man (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 151 The Canterville Ghost (Wilde, Oscar)
 152 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith)
 153 Winesburg, Ohio; a group of tales of Ohio small town life (Anderson, Sherwood)
 154 The Decameron (Boccaccio, Giovanni)
 155 The Gambler (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
 156 King Solomon's Mines (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 157 The Sea Wolf (London, Jack)
 158 Captain Blood (Sabatini, Rafael)
 159 Twenty Years After (Dumas, Alexandre)
 160 Moon and Sixpence (Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset))
 161 The Beautiful and Damned (Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott))
 162 The Return of the Native (Hardy, Thomas)
 163 The Mill on the Floss (Eliot, George)
 164 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Bierce, Ambrose)
 165 Secret Adversary (Christie, Agatha)
 166 The Valley of Fear (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 167 Cranford (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 168 The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von)
 169 Jo's Boys (Alcott, Louisa May)
 170 The Fall of the House of Usher (Poe, Edgar Allan)
 171 Camille (Dumas, Alexandre)
 172 Five Children and It (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 173 Notes from the Underground (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
 174 History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Fielding, Henry)
 175 Sister Carrie: a Novel (Dreiser, Theodore)
 176 The Pickwick Papers (Dickens, Charles)
 177 Stepping Heavenward (Prentiss, E. (Elizabeth))
 178 Resurrection (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 179 The Marvelous Land of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 180 The Way We Live Now (Trollope, Anthony)
 181 Daniel Deronda (Eliot, George)
 182 Kim (Kipling, Rudyard)
 183 The Turn of the Screw (James, Henry)
 184 Sons and Lovers (Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert))
 185 Barchester Towers (Trollope, Anthony)
 186 The Mysterious Stranger (Twain, Mark)
 187 L'Assommoir (Zola, Émile)
 188 Silas Marner (Eliot, George)
 189 Women in Love (Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert))
 190 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Sterne, Laurence)
 191 Carmilla (Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan)
 192 The Grand Inquisitor (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
 193 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Potter, Beatrix)
 194 The Phoenix and the Carpet (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 195 Alcatraz (Brand, Max)
 196 Captains Courageous (Kipling, Rudyard)
 197 The Prisoner of Zenda (Hope, Anthony)
 198 Bel Ami (Maupassant, Guy de)
 199 Main Street (Lewis, Sinclair)
 200 Agnes Grey (Brontë, Anne)
 201 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving, Washington)
 202 From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon (Verne, Jules)
 203 The Gods of Mars (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 204 The Monk; a romance (Lewis, M. G. (Matthew Gregory))
 205 Hard Times (Dickens, Charles)
 206 Adam Bede (Eliot, George)
 207 The Wings of the Dove (James, Henry)
 208 Ethan Frome (Wharton, Edith)
 209 The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories (Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich)
 210 The Good Soldier (Ford, Ford Madox)
 211 The Story Girl (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 212 Little Fuzzy (Piper, H. Beam)
 213 Laddie; a true blue story (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 214 Chronicles of Avonlea (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 215 Scaramouche (Sabatini, Rafael)
 216 The Innocence of Father Brown (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 217 The Road to Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 218 Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women (MacDonald, George)
 219 The Black Arrow (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 220 In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant (Verne, Jules)
 221 Warlord of Mars (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 222 Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens, Charles)
 223 Shirley (Brontë, Charlotte)
 224 Lord Jim (Conrad, Joseph)
 225 Little Lord Fauntleroy (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 226 The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 227 Dombey and Son (Dickens, Charles)
 228 Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates (Dodge, Mary Mapes)
 229 Nostromo (Conrad, Joseph)
 230 The Emerald City of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 231 Moll Flanders (Defoe, Daniel)
 232 Lady Audley's Secret (Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth))
 233 The Vicomte De Bragelonne (Dumas, Alexandre)
 234 The Rainbow (Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert))
 235 Washington Square (James, Henry)
 236 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 237 Glinda of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 238 The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (Potter, Beatrix)
 239 The Woodlanders (Hardy, Thomas)
 240 The Song of the Lark (Cather, Willa)
 241 The Black Tulip (Dumas, Alexandre)
 242 The Last Chronicle of Barset (Trollope, Anthony)
 243 Lorna Doone; a Romance of Exmoor (Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge))
 244 The Enchanted Castle (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 245 Lilith, a romance (MacDonald, George)
 246 The Old Curiosity Shop (Dickens, Charles)
 247 Tik-Tok of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 248 Peter and Wendy (Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew))
 249 The Secret Sharer (Conrad, Joseph)
 250 Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais, François)
 251 The Lost Princess of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 252 Phineas Finn (Trollope, Anthony)
 253 The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (Twain, Mark)
 254 Those Extraordinary Twins (Twain, Mark)
 255 The Land That Time Forgot (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 256 House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
 257 The Golden Bowl (James, Henry)
 258 Manalive (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 259 The Mansion (Van Dyke, Henry)
 260 Can You Forgive Her? (Trollope, Anthony)
 261 Mary Barton (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 262 The Red Badge of Courage (Crane, Stephen)
 263 A Damsel in Distress (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 264 The Man Who Would Be King (Kipling, Rudyard)
 265 Mother (Gorky, Maksim)
 266 Five Weeks in a Balloon (Verne, Jules)
 267 No Name (Collins, Wilkie)
 268 The Magic of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 269 The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains (Wister, Owen)
 270 The Secret Agent (Conrad, Joseph)
 271 The First Men in the Moon (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 272 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew))
 273 The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington, Booth)
 274 Summer (Wharton, Edith)
 275 The Return of Tarzan (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 276 The Warden (Trollope, Anthony)
 277 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Tressell, Robert)
 278 The Chessmen of Mars (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 279 Thuvia, Maid of Mars (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 280 The Tin Woodman of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 281 The Royal Book of Oz (Thompson, Ruth Plumly)
 282 The King in Yellow (Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William))
 283 Further Chronicles of Avonlea (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 284 The Golden Road (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 285 The Scarecrow of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 286 The Ambassadors (James, Henry)
 287 The Story of Little Black Sambo (Bannerman, Helen)
 288 The Diary of a Nobody (Grossmith, George)
 289 The Story of the Treasure Seekers (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 290 Rinkitink in Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 291 Queen Lucia (Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic))
 292 Lady Susan (Austen, Jane)
 293 The Garden Party and Other Stories (Mansfield, Katherine)
 294 Deathworld (Harrison, Harry)
 295 The Deerslayer (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 296 Sir Gibbie (MacDonald, George)
 297 The Voyage Out (Woolf, Virginia)
 298 The Financier, a novel (Dreiser, Theodore)
 299 Where Angels Fear to Tread (Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan))
 300 Daisy Miller (James, Henry)
 301 The Story of the Amulet (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 302 She (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 303 Beautiful Joe (Saunders, Marshall)
 304 The Great God Pan (Machen, Arthur)
 305 Flappers and Philosophers (Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott))
 306 He Knew He Was Right (Trollope, Anthony)
 307 Night and Day (Woolf, Virginia)
 308 The Satyricon — Complete (Petronius Arbiter)
 309 Boyhood (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 310 Childhood (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 311 Youth (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 312 Kilmeny of the Orchard (Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud))
 313 Venus in Furs (Sacher-Masoch, Leopold, Ritter von)
 314 Rob Roy — Complete (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 315 Barnaby Rudge: a tale of the Riots of 'eighty (Dickens, Charles)
 316 The Queen Of Spades (Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich)
 317 The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Dickens, Charles)
 318 Piccadilly Jim (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 319 Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school (Hardy, Thomas)
 320 The Eustace Diamonds (Trollope, Anthony)
 321 The Small House at Allington (Trollope, Anthony)
 322 Armadale (Collins, Wilkie)
 323 One of Ours (Cather, Willa Sibert)
 324 Riders of the Purple Sage (Grey, Zane)
 325 The Iron Heel (London, Jack)
 326 The Harvester (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 327 The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, Daniel)
 328 Miss Mapp (Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic))
 329 The Cossacks (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 330 Allan Quatermain (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 331 The American (James, Henry)
 332 Parnassus on Wheels (Morley, Christopher)
 333 Twice Told Tales (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
 334 What Katy Did at School (Coolidge, Susan)
 335 The Shepherd of the Hills (Wright, Harold Bell)
 336 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Hogg, James)
 337 The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 338 The Magic Pudding (Lindsay, Norman)
 339 What Men Live By, and Other Tales (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 340 Master and Man (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 341 McTeague (Norris, Frank)
 342 Bouvard and Pécuchet (Flaubert, Gustave)
 343 A Pair of Blue Eyes (Hardy, Thomas)
 344 Michael Strogoff (Verne, Jules)
 345 Dear Enemy (Webster, Jean)
 346 Hidden Hand (Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte)
 347 Capitola the Madcap (Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte)
 348 The Titan (Dreiser, Theodore)
 349 Jacob's Room (Woolf, Virginia)
 350 Pathfinder; or, the inland sea (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 351 Mike and Psmith (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 352 Beasts of Tarzan (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 353 The Way of All Flesh (Butler, Samuel)
 354 Master of Ballantrae (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 355 Son of Tarzan (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 356 Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 357 The Prime Minister (Trollope, Anthony)
 358 Ten Years Later (Dumas, Alexandre)
 359 Seven Little Australians (Turner, Ethel Sybil)
 360 At the Earth's Core (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 361 Framley Parsonage (Trollope, Anthony)
 362 The Sea-Hawk (Sabatini, Rafael)
 363 Jack and Jill (Alcott, Louisa May)
 364 Three Men on the Bummel (Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka))
 365 The Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton, Edith)
 366 Herland (Gilman, Charlotte Perkins)
 367 Triplanetary (Smith, E. E. (Edward Elmer))
 368 The Elusive Pimpernel (Orczy, Baroness Emmuska)
 369 Ruth (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 370 El Dorado, an adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy, Baroness Emmuska)
 371 Victory: An Island Tale (Conrad, Joseph)
 372 Under the Lilacs (Alcott, Louisa May)
 373 The Story of the Other Wise Man (Van Dyke, Henry)
 374 The Ball and the Cross (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 375 New Grub Street (Gissing, George)
 376 Phineas Redux (Trollope, Anthony)
 377 The White Company (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 378 The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe, Ann Ward)
 379 Puck of Pook's Hill (Kipling, Rudyard)
 380 The Masterpiece (Zola, Emile)
 381 The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame, Kenneth)
 382 Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 383 The Lady, or the Tiger? (Stockton, Frank Richard)
 384 The House on the Borderland (Hodgson, William Hope)
 385 White Jacket (Melville, Herman)
 386 The Wisdom of Father Brown (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 387 Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (Hearn, Lafcadio)
 388 Jennie Gerhardt (Dreiser, Theodore)
 389 Greenmantle (Buchan, John)
 390 Salammbo (Flaubert, Gustave)
 391 A Tramp Abroad (Twain, Mark)
 392 The Red House Mystery (Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander))
 393 Mystery of the Yellow Room (Leroux, Gaston)
 394 Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (Crane, Stephen)
 395 Smoke Bellew (London, Jack)
 396 Tales of the Jazz Age (Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott))
 397 The Aspern Papers (James, Henry)
 398 Men of Iron (Pyle, Howard)
 399 A Journal of the Plague Year, written by a citizen who continued all the while in London (Defoe, Daniel)
 400 Manon Lescaut (Prévost, Abbé)
 401 The People of the Mist (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 402 The Children of the New Forest (Marryat, Frederick)
 403 Mrs. Warren's Profession (Shaw, Bernard)
 404 The Club of Queer Trades (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 405 Green Mansions: a romance of the tropical forest (Hudson, W. H. (William Henry))
 406 Moonfleet (Falkner, John Meade)
 407 Louise de la Valliere (Dumas, Alexandre)
 408 The Wouldbegoods (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 409 The Home and the World (Tagore, Rabindranath)
 410 The Duke's Children (Trollope, Anthony)
 411 The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith, Oliver)
 412 The Cat of Bubastes (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 413 Under Western Eyes (Conrad, Joseph)
 414 The Man Who Knew Too Much (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 415 The Confidence-Man (Melville, Herman)
 416 Pellucidar (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 417 The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 418 In Freedom's Cause : a Story of Wallace and Bruce (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 419 The Lost Prince (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 420 Love Among the Chickens (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 421 The Shadow Line; a confession (Conrad, Joseph)
 422 Tarzan the Terrible (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 423 Memoirs Of Fanny Hill (Cleland, John)
 424 Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Cleland, John)
 425 The People of the Abyss (London, Jack)
 426 The Valley of the Moon (London, Jack)
 427 The Haunted Bookshop (Morley, Christopher)
 428 Typee (Melville, Herman)
 429 The Castle of Otranto (Walpole, Horace)
 430 Tarzan the Untamed (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 431 The Odd Women (Gissing, George)
 432 The Beast in the Jungle (James, Henry)
 433 Romola (Eliot, George)
 434 Elizabeth and Her German Garden (Von Arnim, Elizabeth)
 435 Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (Leacock, Stephen)
 436 The Riddle of the Sands (Childers, Erskine)
 437 Crome Yellow (Huxley, Aldous)
 438 The Adventures of Sally (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 439 The Unknown Masterpiece (Balzac, Honoré de)
 440 For the Term of His Natural Life (Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop)
 441 Beric the Briton : a Story of the Roman Invasion (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 442 South Sea Tales (London, Jack)
 443 The Temptation of St. Antony (Flaubert, Gustave)
 444 The Octopus : A story of California (Norris, Frank)
 445 Ishmael (Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte)
 446 The Europeans (James, Henry)
 447 To Let (Galsworthy, John)
 448 Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle, Howard)
 449 In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, Henryk)
 450 Orley Farm (Trollope, Anthony)
 451 Uneasy Money (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 452 The Circular Staircase (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 453 The Second Jungle Book (Kipling, Rudyard)
 454 Old Mother West Wind (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 455 East Lynne (Wood, Henry, Mrs.)
 456 Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story (Beerbohm, Max, Sir)
 457 A Voyage to Arcturus (Lindsay, David)
 458 The Blithedale Romance (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
 459 The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse (Potter, Beatrix)
 460 The Talisman (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 461 Jungle Tales of Tarzan (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 462 The Coral Island (Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael))
 463 Plague Ship (Norton, Andre)
 464 Montezuma's Daughter (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 465 The Scottish Chiefs (Porter, Jane)
 466 The Law and the Lady (Collins, Wilkie)
 467 The Skylark of Space (Smith, E. E.)
 468 Penrod (Tarkington, Booth)
 469 The Status Civilization (Sheckley, Robert)
 470 The Magician (Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset))
 471 Chicot the Jester (Dumas père, Alexandre)
 472 The Monkey's Paw (Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark))
 473 Alice Adams (Tarkington, Booth)
 474 The Country of the Pointed Firs (Jewett, Sarah Orne)
 475 Country of the Pointed Firs (Jewett, Sarah Orne)
 476 The Rosary (Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa))
 477 Rudin: A Novel (Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich)
 478 Star Born (Norton, Andre)
 479 The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy, Baroness Emmuska)
 480 Waverley (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 481 Before Adam (London, Jack)
 482 Mr. Standfast (Buchan, John)
 483 Sylvia's Lovers — Complete (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 484 The Reef (Wharton, Edith)
 485 The Little White Bird; or, Adventures in Kensington gardens (Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew))
 486 The Downfall (Zola, Emile)
 487 Cabbages and Kings (Henry, O.)
 488 The Hand of Ethelberta (Hardy, Thomas)
 489 The Poison Belt (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 490 The Outlaw of Torn (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 491 The Lost Continent (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 492 Self-Raised (Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte)
 493 When God Laughs: and other stories (London, Jack)
 494 Skylark Three (Smith, E. E.)
 495 Betty Zane (Grey, Zane)
 496 Wessex Tales (Hardy, Thomas)
 497 Industrial Revolution (Anderson, Poul William)
 498 The Trumpet-Major (Hardy, Thomas)
 499 The Rise of Silas Lapham (Howells, William Dean)
 500 Space Viking (Piper, H. Beam)
 501 Michael O'Halloran (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 502 Raggedy Ann Stories (Gruelle, Johnny)
 503 Trent's Last Case (Bentley, E. C. (Edmund Clerihew))
 504 When the Sleeper Wakes (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 505 Two on a Tower (Hardy, Thomas)
 506 Ramona (Jackson, Helen Hunt)
 507 The People That Time Forgot (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 508 Just David (Porter, Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman))
 509 A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne, Jules)
 510 The Adventures of Gerard (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 511 To Have and to Hold (Johnston, Mary)
 512 Elsie Dinsmore (Finley, Martha)
 513 The Bobbsey Twins in the Country (Hope, Laura Lee)
 514 Arsene Lupin (Leblanc, Maurice)
 515 Stalky & Co. (Kipling, Rudyard)
 516 The Holy war, made by King Shaddai upon Diabolus, for the regaining of the metropolis of the world; or, the losing and taking again of the town of Mansoul (Bunyan, John)
 517 Wood Beyond the World (Morris, William)
 518 Cousin Pons (Balzac, Honoré de)
 519 The Scarlet Plague (London, Jack)
 520 The Spirit of the Border (Grey, Zane)
 521 Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 (Bellamy, Edward)
 522 Jurgen (Cabell, James Branch)
 523 Ayesha, the Return of She (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 524 The Underground City, or, the Child of the Cavern (Verne, Jules)
 525 The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" (Conrad, Joseph)
 526 Jill the Reckless (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 527 Caleb Williams (Godwin, William)
 528 Plain Tales from the Hills (Kipling, Rudyard)
 529 A Woman of Thirty (Balzac, Honoré de)
 530 The Shuttle (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 531 In the Reign of Terror (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 532 Further Adventures of Lad (Terhune, Albert Payson)
 533 The Defiant Agents (Norton, Andre)
 534 Carmen (Mérimée, Prosper)
 535 The Dragon and the Raven (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 536 Sarrasine (Balzac, Honoré de)
 537 Merry Men (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 538 The Crock of Gold (Stephens, James)
 539 Desperate Remedies (Hardy, Thomas)
 540 Monday or Tuesday (Woolf, Virginia)
 541 The Longest Journey (Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan))
 542 Eve's Diary, Complete (Twain, Mark)
 543 The Four Million (Henry, O.)
 544 The Rainbow Trail (Grey, Zane)
 545 Barry Lyndon (Thackeray, William Makepeace)
 546 My Antonia (Cather, Willa)
 547 The Little Lame Prince (Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock)
 548 The Gun (Dick, Philip K.)
 549 Last Days of Pompeii (Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron)
 550 The Master of the World (Verne, Jules)
 551 Adventures of Reddy Fox (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 552 Virgin Soil (Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich)
 553 The Damnation of Theron Ware (Frederic, Harold)
 554 The End of Time (West, Wallace)
 555 Rupert of Hentzau (Hope, Anthony)
 556 The Confessions of Arsène Lupin (Leblanc, Maurice)
 557 Quentin Durward (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 558 The Lone Star Ranger, a romance of the border (Grey, Zane)
 559 Beasts and Super-Beasts (Saki)
 560 The History of Caliph Vathek (Beckford, William)
 561 Seventeen (Tarkington, Booth)
 562 Wildfire (Grey, Zane)
 563 Light of the Western Stars (Grey, Zane)
 564 Penrod and Sam (Tarkington, Booth)
 565 Greyfriars Bobby (Atkinson, Eleanor Stackhouse)
 566 Father Sergius (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 567 Dracula's Guest (Stoker, Bram)
 568 The Touchstone (Wharton, Edith)
 569 The Big Trip Up Yonder (Vonnegut, Kurt)
 570 Burning Daylight (London, Jack)
 571 Sir Nigel (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 572 The Pioneers (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 573 Elsie's Girlhood (Finley, Martha)
 574 The Well at the World's End: a tale (Morris, William)
 575 The Haunted Hotel (Collins, Wilkie)
 576 A Knight of the White Cross : a tale of the siege of Rhodes (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 577 The Cosmic Computer (Piper, H. Beam)
 578 The Vortex Blaster (Smith, E. E.)
 579 Tom Sawyer, Detective (Twain, Mark)
 580 With Lee in Virginia: a story of the American Civil War (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 581 The Amateur Cracksman (Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William))
 582 The Piazza Tales (Melville, Herman)
 583 The Crystal Stopper (Leblanc, Maurice)
 584 The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Smollett, T. (Tobias))
 585 Beyond Lies the Wub (Dick, Philip K.)
 586 The Night Land (Hodgson, William Hope)
 587 The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge (Hope, Laura Lee)
 588 The Lodger (Lowndes, Marie Belloc)
 589 The Vampyre; a Tale (Polidori, John William)
 590 Two Little Savages (Seton, Ernest Thompson)
 591 Sketches by Boz, illustrative of everyday life and every-day people (Dickens, Charles)
 592 The House Behind the Cedars (Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell))
 593 The History of Mr. Polly (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 594 The Beetle (Marsh, Richard)
 595 The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat (Hope, Laura Lee)
 596 Lost Face (London, Jack)
 597 The Call of the Canyon (Grey, Zane)
 598 The Bobbsey Twins at School (Hope, Laura Lee)
 599 The Last Man (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft)
 600 The Forged Coupon (Tolstoy, Leo, graf)
 601 Pearl-Maiden (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 602 Penguin Island (France, Anatole)
 603 Cloudy Jewel (Hill, Grace Livingston)
 604 The Gilded Age (Twain, Mark)
 605 Racketty-Packetty House, as Told by Queen Crosspatch (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 606 The Light That Failed (Kipling, Rudyard)
 607 Man and Wife (Collins, Wilkie)
 608 Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter (Potter, Beatrix)
 609 The Mad King (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 610 Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist (Brown, Charles Brockden)
 611 Five Little Peppers Midway (Sidney, Margaret)
 612 Almayer's Folly: a story of an Eastern river (Conrad, Joseph)
 613 The Jewel of Seven Stars (Stoker, Bram)
 614 In a German Pension (Mansfield, Katherine)
 615 The Mucker (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 616 The Little Nugget (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 617 A Daughter of the Land (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 618 Baree, Son of Kazan (Curwood, James Oliver)
 619 Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh (Carlyle, Thomas)
 620 Cousin Phillis (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 621 Miss Mackenzie (Trollope, Anthony)
 622 The Bride of Lammermoor (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 623 Three Soldiers (Dos Passos, John)
 624 An Outcast of the Islands (Conrad, Joseph)
 625 Bruce (Terhune, Albert Payson)
 626 Bunner Sisters (Wharton, Edith)
 627 Out of Time's Abyss (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 628 The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 629 Tales of Space and Time (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 630 A Dreamer's Tales (Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron)
 631 The Man of the Forest (Grey, Zane)
 632 The Adventure of the Dying Detective (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 633 Life's Little Ironies (Hardy, Thomas)
 634 The Eight Strokes of the Clock (Leblanc, Maurice)
 635 Tono Bungay (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 636 The Prairie (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 637 Robur the Conqueror (Verne, Jules)
 638 The Well-Beloved (Hardy, Thomas)
 639 The Crisis (Churchill, Winston)
 640 Dr. Wortle's School (Trollope, Anthony)
 641 Her Father's Daughter (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 642 Tom Sawyer Abroad (Twain, Mark)
 643 The Skull (Dick, Philip K.)
 644 The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 645 A Dog's Tale (Twain, Mark)
 646 New Treasure Seekers (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 647 The Awkward Age (James, Henry)
 648 The Girl with the Golden Eyes (Balzac, Honoré de)
 649 Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (Twain, Mark)
 650 The Claverings (Trollope, Anthony)
 651 By Right of Conquest (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 652 The Lifted Veil (Eliot, George)
 653 Prester John (Buchan, John)
 654 Nightmare Abbey (Peacock, Thomas Love)
 655 Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale (Brown, Charles Brockden)
 656 The Teeth of the Tiger (Leblanc, Maurice)
 657 Basil (Collins, Wilkie)
 658 Tom Brown's Schooldays (Hughes, Thomas)
 659 The Blue Lagoon: a romance (Stacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere))
 660 The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (Rohmer, Sax)
 661 The Vicar of Bullhampton (Trollope, Anthony)
 662 Babbitt (Lewis, Sinclair)
 663 The Thirteen (Balzac, Honoré de)
 664 Liza of Lambeth (Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset))
 665 The American Senator (Trollope, Anthony)
 666 The Colors of Space (Bradley, Marion Zimmer)
 667 The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 668 Ragged Dick, Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks (Alger, Horatio)
 669 Droll Storie (Balzac, Honoré de)
 670 Desert Gold (Grey, Zane)
 671 Voodoo Planet (Norton, Andre)
 672 The Brethren (Haggard, Henry Rider)
 673 To the Last Man (Grey, Zane)
 674 New Arabian Nights (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 675 Mr. Midshipman Easy (Marryat, Frederick)
 676 The Getting of Wisdom (Richardson, Henry Handel)
 677 Kenilworth (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 678 Roderick Hudson (James, Henry)
 679 Exit Betty (Hill, Grace Livingston)
 680 The Lesson of the Master (James, Henry)
 681 Clotel; or, the President's Daughter (Brown, William Wells)
 682 Five Little Peppers Grown Up (Sidney, Margaret)
 683 Allan and the Holy Flower (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 684 Free Air (Lewis, Sinclair)
 685 Little Wizard Stories of Oz (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 686 Cleopatra (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 687 Poor Miss Finch (Collins, Wilkie)
 688 The War in the Air (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 689 Omoo (Melville, Herman)
 690 In the Days of the Comet (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 691 The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 692 A Sicilian Romance (Radcliffe, Ann Ward)
 693 King Coal : a Novel (Sinclair, Upton)
 694 The Monster Men (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 695 The Leavenworth Case (Green, Anna Katharine)
 696 The Mystery of Cloomber (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 697 Heritage of the Desert (Grey, Zane)
 698 The Hungry Stones and Other Stories (Tagore, Rabindranath)
 699 The Last of the Plainsmen (Grey, Zane)
 700 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Fox, John)
 701 Novel Notes (Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka))
 702 Xingu (Wharton, Edith)
 703 The Pothunters (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 704 The Absentee (Edgeworth, Maria)
 705 Lord of the World (Benson, Robert Hugh)
 706 A Little Bush Maid (Bruce, Mary Grant)
 707 Castle Rackrent (Edgeworth, Maria)
 708 The King of the Golden River (Ruskin, John)
 709 Don Rodriguez; chronicles of Shadow Valley (Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron)
 710 The Spy (Cooper, James Fenimore)
 711 The Border Legion (Grey, Zane)
 712 Uller Uprising (Piper, H. Beam)
 713 Catriona (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 714 A Rogue's Life (Collins, Wilkie)
 715 The Pit (Norris, Frank)
 716 The Belton Estate (Trollope, Anthony)
 717 The Defenders (Dick, Philip K.)
 718 The Antiquary — Complete (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 719 Eric Brighteyes (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 720 Alexander's Bridge (Cather, Willa)
 721 The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (Fox, John)
 722 The Biography of a Grizzly (Seton, Ernest Thompson)
 723 The Rise of David Levinsky (Cahan, Abraham)
 724 The Awakening and Selected Short Stories (Chopin, Kate)
 725 A Laodicean : a Story of To-day (Hardy, Thomas)
 726 Life in the Iron-Mills; or, the Korl Woman (Davis, Rebecca Harding)
 727 The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 728 The Man in Lower Ten (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 729 Chance (Conrad, Joseph)
 730 The Moon Pool (Merritt, Abraham)
 731 Huntingtower (Buchan, John)
 732 Tom Swift and His Airship (Appleton, Victor [pseud.])
 733 The Adventures of Roderick Random (Smollett, T. (Tobias))
 734 The Nether World (Gissing, George)
 735 Old Mortality, Complete (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 736 Edgar Huntly (Brown, Charles Brockden)
 737 Rewards and Fairies (Kipling, Rudyard)
 738 Brother Jacob (Eliot, George)
 739 By Pike and Dyke: a Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 740 Fanny Herself (Ferber, Edna)
 741 The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 742 She and Allan (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 743 A House to Let (Dickens, Charles, et al.)
 744 The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (Rohmer, Sax)
 745 Jerry of the Islands (London, Jack)
 746 Bab: a Sub-Deb (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 747 Omnilingual (Piper, H. Beam)
 748 An Antarctic Mystery (Verne, Jules)
 749 Child of Storm (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 750 Marie (Haggard, H. Rider)
 751 The Calling of Dan Matthews (Wright, Harold Bell)
 752 Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Twain, Mark)
 753 Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges (Thackeray, William Makepeace)
 754 The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (Thackeray, William Makepeace)
 755 Mogens and Other Stories (Jacobsen, J. P. (Jens Peter))
 756 Hide and Seek (Collins, Wilkie)
 757 Tartarin of Tarascon (Daudet, Alphonse)
 758 The Egoist (Meredith, George)
 759 At Agincourt (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 760 The Amazing Interlude (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 761 The Eye of Osiris (Freeman, R. Austin (Richard Austin))
 762 Lightfoot the Deer (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 763 Harding's luck (Nesbit, E. (Edith))
 764 Zanoni (Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron)
 765 Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (Leacock, Stephen)
 766 The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 767 Castle Richmond (Trollope, Anthony)
 768 The Lost Continent (Hyne, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright)
 769 Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (Richardson, Samuel)
 770 The Golden Age (Grahame, Kenneth)
 771 The Red Thumb Mark (Freeman, R. Austin (Richard Austin))
 772 A Hazard of New Fortunes (Howells, William Dean)
 773 The World Set Free (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 774 Is He Popenjoy? (Trollope, Anthony)
 775 Taras Bulba and Other Tales (Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich)
 776 Lair of the White Worm (Stoker, Bram)
 777 Allan's Wife (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 778 The Quadroon (Reid, Mayne)
 779 The Adventure of the Red Circle (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 780 St. Elmo (Evans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane))
 781 Letters of Two Brides (Balzac, Honoré de)
 782 Democracy, an American novel (Adams, Henry)
 783 Poor White (Anderson, Sherwood)
 784 Blacky the Crow (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 785 At the Foot of the Rainbow (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
 786 News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest : being some chapters from a utopian romance (Morris, William)
 787 The Wide, Wide World (Warner, Susan)
 788 Dream Days (Grahame, Kenneth)
 789 The Survivors of the Chancellor, diary of J.R. Kazallon, passenger (Verne, Jules)
 790 The Bobbsey Twins in Washington (Hope, Laura Lee)
 791 Tales of the Fish Patrol (London, Jack)
 792 The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns (Bennett, Arnold)
 793 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan)
 794 The Eyes of the World (Wright, Harold Bell)
 795 By England's Aid (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 796 Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle, or, Fun and Adventures on the Road (Appleton, Victor [pseud.])
 797 Redgauntlet (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 798 The Unbearable Bassington (Saki)
 799 Heart of the West (Henry, O.)
 800 The History of Pendennis (Thackeray, William Makepeace)
 801 In the Cage (James, Henry)
 802 The Three Clerks (Trollope, Anthony)
 803 The Lion of the North (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 804 Five Little Peppers Abroad (Sidney, Margaret)
 805 A Prefect's Uncle (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 806 Old Granny Fox (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 807 The Hand Of Fu-Manchu (Rohmer, Sax)
 808 The Dark Flower (Galsworthy, John)
 809 The Dueling Machine (Bova, Ben)
 810 Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X (Appleton, Victor [pseud.])
 811 Madame De Treymes (Wharton, Edith)
 812 The Crystal Crypt (Dick, Philip K.)
 813 Mathilda (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft)
 814 The Coming Race (Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron)
 815 Nada the Lily (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 816 The Ivory Child (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 817 The Gold Bat (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 818 A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (De Mille, James)
 819 The Secret Rose (Yeats, W. B. (William Butler))
 820 Ralph the Heir (Trollope, Anthony)
 821 The Story of a Bad Boy (Aldrich, Thomas Bailey)
 822 The Re-Creation of Brian Kent (Wright, Harold Bell)
 823 The House of a Thousand Candles (Nicholson, Meredith)
 824 Watchbird (Sheckley, Robert)
 825 The Frozen Deep (Collins, Wilkie)
 826 Buttered Side Down: Stories (Ferber, Edna)
 827 All Cats Are Gray (Norton, Andre)
 828 The Enchanted Island of Yew (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 829 Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman (Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William))
 830 Toby Tyler; Or, Ten Weeks with a Circus (Otis, James)
 831 The Jolly Corner (James, Henry)
 832 The House with the Green Shutters (Brown, George Douglas)
 833 The Wandering Jew (Sue, Eugène)
 834 Peter Simple; and, The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 (Marryat, Frederick)
 835 Colomba (Mérimée, Prosper)
 836 Mates at Billabong (Bruce, Mary Grant)
 837 Back to Billabong (Bruce, Mary Grant)
 838 Love and Mr. Lewisham (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 839 Bob, Son of Battle (Ollivant, Alfred)
 840 Miss Minerva and William Green Hill (Calhoun, Frances Boyd)
 841 Brewster's Millions (McCutcheon, George Barr)
 842 The White Feather (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 843 Capitola's Peril (Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte)
 844 The Peterkin Papers (Hale, Lucretia P. (Lucretia Peabody))
 845 This Crowded Earth (Bloch, Robert)
 846 The Peterkin papers (Hale, Lucretia P. (Lucretia Peabody))
 847 The Great Stone Face (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
 848 Reginald (Saki)
 849 Cousin Henry (Trollope, Anthony)
 850 The Altar of the Dead (James, Henry)
 851 The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 852 Won By the Sword : a tale of the Thirty Years' War (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 853 Five Little Peppers and their Friends (Sidney, Margaret)
 854 The Grandissimes (Cable, George Washington)
 855 The Bertrams (Trollope, Anthony)
 856 Mr. Scarborough's Family (Trollope, Anthony)
 857 The Saracen: Land of the Infidel (Shea, Robert)
 858 Bonnie Prince Charlie : a Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 859 Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth (Kingsley, Charles)
 860 The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 861 Both Sides the Border (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 862 The Real Thing (James, Henry)
 863 Kai Lung's Golden Hours (Bramah, Ernest)
 864 Morning Star (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 865 The End of the Tether (Conrad, Joseph)
 866 Thelma (Corelli, Marie)
 867 The Cloister and the Hearth (Reade, Charles)
 868 A Modern Instance (Howells, William Dean)
 869 The Turmoil, a novel (Tarkington, Booth)
 870 The Witch and other stories (Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich)
 871 The Head of Kay's (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 872 The Blockade Runners (Verne, Jules)
 873 Amy Foster (Conrad, Joseph)
 874 The Pupil (James, Henry)
 875 The Companions of Jehu (Dumas, Alexandre)
 876 The Door Through Space (Bradley, Marion Zimmer)
 877 The Real Diary of a Real Boy (Shute, Henry A. (Henry Augustus))
 878 Captain Jim (Bruce, Mary Grant)
 879 Printcrime (Doctorow, Cory)
 880 Extracts from Adam's Diary, translated from the original ms. (Twain, Mark)
 881 Extracts from Adam's Diary (Twain, Mark)
 882 The House of the Wolfings (Morris, William)
 883 The Wife, and other stories (Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich)
 884 The Ebb-Tide (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 885 The Oakdale Affair (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 886 Rolf in the Woods (Seton, Ernest Thompson)
 887 A Lady of Quality (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 888 Immensee (Storm, Theodor)
 889 Michael, Brother of Jerry (London, Jack)
 890 The Mystery of 31 New Inn (Freeman, R. Austin (Richard Austin))
 891 The Country Beyond (Curwood, James Oliver)
 892 The Ancient Allan (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 893 My Lady Ludlow (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn)
 894 When a Man Marries (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 895 The Parenticide Club (Bierce, Ambrose)
 896 Weir of Hermiston (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 897 Moods (Alcott, Louisa May)
 898 Robbery under Arms; a story of life and adventure in the bush and in the Australian goldfields (Boldrewood, Rolf)
 899 Aaron's Rod (Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert))
 900 Queen Sheba's Ring (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 901 The Little Duke (Yonge, Charlotte Mary)
 902 The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (France, Anatole)
 903 The Fifth Queen (Ford, Ford Madox)
 904 Helen's Babies (Habberton, John)
 905 Brood of the Witch-Queen (Rohmer, Sax)
 906 The Wreck of the Titan (Robertson, Morgan)
 907 Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood (MacDonald, George)
 908 Through Russian Snows (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 909 The Swoop! (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 910 Greener Than You Think (Moore, Ward)
 911 One Basket (Ferber, Edna)
 912 The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 913 His Dog (Terhune, Albert Payson)
 914 The Saracen: The Holy War (Shea, Robert)
 915 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (Twain, Mark)
 916 In the South Seas (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
 917 South Wind (Douglas, Norman)
 918 The After House (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 919 The Evil Genius (Collins, Wilkie)
 920 The Black Robe (Collins, Wilkie)
 921 The Flood (Zola, Émile)
 922 Tish (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 923 Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite (Trollope, Anthony)
 924 The Son of the Wolf (London, Jack)
 925 An Eye for an Eye (Trollope, Anthony)
 926 The House of the Vampire (Viereck, George Sylvester)
 927 Mistress Wilding (Sabatini, Rafael)
 928 John Caldigate (Trollope, Anthony)
 929 Whitefoot the Wood Mouse (Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo))
 930 The Breaking Point (Rinehart, Mary Roberts)
 931 Flower Fables (Alcott, Louisa May)
 932 A Romance of Two Worlds (Corelli, Marie)
 933 A House-Boat on the Styx (Bangs, John Kendrick)
 934 Bardelys the Magnificent; being an account of the strange wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, marquis of Bardelys... (Sabatini, Rafael)
 935 The Figure in the Carpet (James, Henry)
 936 The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 (Poe, Edgar Allan)
 937 The Lost Stradivarius (Falkner, John Meade)
 938 Ordeal of Richard Feverel (Meredith, George)
 939 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Complete (Meredith, George)
 940 Maiwa's Revenge (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 941 The Little Colonel (Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows))
 942 I Say No (Collins, Wilkie)
 943 The Wheels of Chance: a Bicycling Idyll (Wells, H. G. (Herbert George))
 944 Arthur Mervyn (Brown, Charles Brockden)
 945 The Grand Babylon Hotel (Bennett, Arnold)
 946 A Desert Drama (Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir)
 947 Jezebel's Daughter (Collins, Wilkie)
 948 The Kellys and the O'Kellys (Trollope, Anthony)
 949 A Kidnapped Santa Claus (Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank))
 950 The Trees of Pride (Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith))
 951 Born in Exile (Gissing, George)
 952 The Regent's Daughter (Dumas père, Alexandre)
 953 The Two Destinies (Collins, Wilkie)
 954 The Fair Maid of Perth (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 955 The Wanderer's Necklace (Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider))
 956 The Schoolmistress, and other stories (Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich)
 957 Children of the Frost (London, Jack)
 958 They and I (Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka))
 959 The Amateur Gentleman (Farnol, Jeffery)
 960 After Dark (Collins, Wilkie)
 961 The Trimmed Lamp, and other Stories of the Four Million (Henry, O.)
 962 The Head of the House of Coombe (Burnett, Frances Hodgson)
 963 The Tavern Knight (Sabatini, Rafael)
 964 A Thief in the Night: a Book of Raffles' Adventures (Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William))
 965 Miss Billy (Porter, Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman))
 966 John Halifax, Gentleman (Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock)
 967 The Black Dwarf (Scott, Walter, Sir)
 968 The Mistress of Shenstone (Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa))
 969 The Queen of Hearts (Collins, Wilkie)
 970 Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle; or, Daring Adventures in Elephant Land (Appleton, Victor [pseud.])
 971 The Efficiency Expert (Burroughs, Edgar Rice)
 972 William Tell Told Again (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 973 Sybil, or the Two Nations (Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield)
 974 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman (Wollstonecraft, Mary)
 975 The Centaur (Blackwood, Algernon)
 976 The Rose-Garden Husband (Widdemer, Margaret)
 977 The Chautauqua Girls At Home (Pansy)
 978 The Cornet of Horse (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 979 Berry And Co. (Yates, Dornford)
 980 A March on London: Being a Story of Wat Tyler's Insurrection (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))
 981 A Strange Disappearance (Green, Anna Katharine)
 982 Probable Sons (Le Feuvre, Amy)
 983 At Fault (Chopin, Kate)
 984 The Hoosier Schoolmaster (Eggleston, Edward)
 985 Tales of St. Austin's (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville))
 986 Kept in the Dark (Trollope, Anthony)
 987 The Tinker's Wedding (Synge, J. M. (John Millington))
 988 The Doorway (Smith, Evelyn E.)
 989 Finished (Haggard, Henry Rider)
 990 The Battle of Life (Dickens, Charles)
 991 1601 (Twain, Mark)
 992 The Heir of Redclyffe (Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary))
 993 My Lady's Money (Collins, Wilkie)
 994 Murder in the Gunroom (Piper, H. Beam)
 995 An Unsocial Socialist (Shaw, Bernard)
 996 The Red Lily (France, Anatole)
 997 The House of Souls (Machen, Arthur)
 998 Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout, or, the Speediest Car on the Road (Appleton, Victor [pseud.])
 999 Badge of Infamy (Del Rey, Lester)
1000 Colonel Thorndyke's Secret (Henty, G. A. (George Alfred))

The most highly rated films of 2012

More or less like last year, I’ve taken most of the films that IMDb counts as 2012 releases and multiplied their IMDb Bayesian average rating times their Rotten Tomatoes critic percentages. Excluded were films with fewer than 2000 ratings, films with fewer than 20 critic reviews, and all documentaries. And so, here are the top ~36 films–all that scored over 6.0:

IMDb Hist.      Votes   IRaw    Bayes   RT%     RT%*B   Title
==========      ======  ===     =====   ==      =====   ===================================
0000000233	266519	8.6	8.592	89	7.647	Django Unchained (imdb)
0000001123	476450	8.3	8.297	92	7.633	The Avengers (imdb)
0000001321	174734	7.9	7.895	96	7.579	Argo (imdb)
0000000124	568818	8.6	8.596	87	7.479	The Dark Knight Rises (imdb)
0000001221	105227	7.9	7.893	94	7.419	Moonrise Kingdom (imdb)
0000000232	6905	8.3	8.120	91	7.389	Jagten (The Hunt) (imdb)
0000001321	143457	8.0	7.993	92	7.354	Silver Linings Playbook (imdb)
0000001221	29118	7.9	7.874	93	7.323	Amour (imdb)
0000001222	157924	8.2	8.191	88	7.208	Life of Pi (imdb)
0000001221	275398	7.8	7.798	92	7.174	Skyfall (imdb)
0000002311	201194	7.6	7.599	93	7.067	Looper (imdb)
0000002311	4286	7.5	7.500	93	6.975	No (imdb)
0000002211	85761	7.5	7.500	93	6.975	Zero Dark Thirty (imdb)
0000001222	99147	8.1	8.088	85	6.875	The Perks of Being a Wallflower (imdb)
0000013210	14694	7.2	7.236	94	6.802	The Sessions (imdb)
0000001322	85733	7.9	7.891	86	6.786	Wreck-It Ralph (imdb)
0000002211	80971	7.6	7.598	89	6.762	Lincoln (imdb)
0000013200	7140	7.0	7.109	95	6.754	The Angels' Share (imdb)
0000001212	3165	7.6	7.561	89	6.729	Dupa dealuri (Beyond the Hills) (imdb)
0000012310	2842	7.3	7.383	91	6.719	Dans la maison (In the House) (imdb)
0000002311	9977	7.5	7.500	89	6.675	En kongelig affaere (imdb)
0000012310	2044	7.2	7.348	90	6.613	Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die) (imdb)
0000002311	71192	7.7	7.695	85	6.541	End of Watch (imdb)
0000012211	3235	6.7	7.006	93	6.516	The Sapphires (imdb)
0000012210	37321	7.1	7.120	91	6.479	Safety Not Guaranteed (imdb)
0000001211	11845	7.1	7.158	90	6.442	Holy Motors (imdb)
0000001211	2030	7.4	7.450	86	6.407	Tabu (imdb)
0000122100	2284	6.2	6.807	94	6.398	Les adieux a la reine (Farewell, My Queen) (imdb)
0000012210	2534	6.9	7.165	88	6.305	Sightseers (imdb)
0000122100	3162	6.3	6.765	93	6.291	Shadow Dancer (imdb)
0000012211	36932	7.3	7.310	86	6.287	Beasts of the Southern Wild (imdb)
0000013200	13786	7.1	7.151	87	6.221	Robot & Frank (imdb)
0000002310	16306	7.5	7.500	82	6.150	De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (imdb)
0000012211	168604	7.2	7.204	85	6.123	21 Jump Street (imdb)
0000012201	33459	7.0	7.028	87	6.114	Frankenweenie (imdb)
0000012200	34804	7.0	7.027	87	6.113	ParaNorman (imdb)

And, incidentally, here are the top documentaries:

0000001322	12331	8.2	8.102	96	7.778	Searching for Sugar Man (imdb)
0000002211	2552	7.4	7.444	100	7.444	The Invisible War (imdb)
0000002311	3678	7.7	7.630	95	7.248	Side by Side (imdb)
0000001321	5435	7.9	7.792	93	7.247	Indie Game: The Movie (imdb)
0000002310	8859	7.6	7.582	95	7.203	The Imposter (imdb)
0000000016	2075	8.1	7.806	88	6.869	The Other Dream Team (imdb)
0000013200	4371	7.0	7.157	95	6.799	The Queen of Versailles (imdb)

Board game rank change report for 2013Q1

In Q2 of 2012, Boardgamegeek.com shut down a significant chunk of their play statistics pages, because they were unoptimized and someone was harvesting them daily or worse.  That also put an end to my quarterly ‘epidemiology’ report.

This January, I finally got around to snapshotting game rankings so that I could at least generate a quarterly report on what games had broken into the top ranks lately.  The report below shows which games have had a significant positive jump in ratings between January 1 and March 31 of this year.

In the ‘Board games’ category, that’s any jump of +100 or better.  In the other categories, the jump currently has to be +350 or better.  There’s no data for ‘Strategy games,’ because I failed to notice my data collection script missed the first page of results for it back in January.

Movers in 'Board games':
030 (+470) Twilight Imperium (Third Edition)
217 (+277) The Resistance: Avalon
200 (+247) Suburbia
279 (+221) Bora Bora
280 (+220) Clash of Cultures
253 (+207) Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
299 (+193) Myrmes
156 (+192) Sentinels of the Multiverse
321 (+179) Star Wars: The Card Game
322 (+178) Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery
326 (+174) Ginkgopolis
084 (+174) Mage Wars
343 (+157) Successors (third edition)
147 (+148) Mice and Mystics
163 (+145) Keyflower
289 (+119) Love Letter
331 (+115) Libertalia
174 (+109) Zombicide

Movers in 'Strategy games':
No data.

Movers in 'War games':
042 (+458) Successors (third edition)
086 (+414) The Napoleonic Wars (Second Edition)
088 (+412) Nexus Ops
139 (+361) Red Winter: The Soviet Attack at Tolvajärvi, Finland: 8-12 December 1939
146 (+354) Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (second edition)

Movers in 'Family games':
115 (+385) Fleet
116 (+384) Mus
136 (+364) Rosenkönig

Movers in 'Collectible games':
036 (+464) Star Trek Customizable Card Game (Second Edition)
049 (+451) Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game (second edition)
063 (+437) Veto! Szlachecka Gra Karciana 2 edycja (2ed)
125 (+375) Highlander: The Card Game
146 (+352) Eragra: The Game of Eras and the First Step

Movers in 'Thematic games':
008 (+492) Twilight Imperium (Third Edition)
112 (+388) Space Cadets
145 (+355) Talisman (Revised 4th Edition)
149 (+351) DC Comics Deck-Building Game

Notable SF/F of 2012

As I mentioned in July, I’ve been tracking the year’s SF/F releases here, including young adult and urban fantasy only when I decided it had some crossover appeal:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10956781?shelf=2012

Since Amazon et al. have begun publishing their editors’ picks for the year, I guess it’s not out of line to go ahead and generate a list of notable SF/F of 2012.  Here are the criteria I’ve applied:

  • All books should be from 2012 or at least eligible for this year’s Hugo.
  • Books should either stand alone, start a series, or be a reasonable entry point for the series.
  • YA or urban fantasy should be stuff I’ve heard about from non-YA/UF sources, suggesting it has crossover appeal.
  • Roughly 100 people or more should have voted for it at Goodreads.
  • Its Goodreads score should be among the top 15 or so after applying a Bayesian estimation heuristic that further penalizes books having few voters.

Here then are the most notable new SF/F books of 2012:

Joe Abercrombie, Red Country
Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone
Sam Weller, Shadow Show: Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
Daniel O’Malley, The Rook
Brandon Sanderson, Legion
David Levithan, Every Day
Dathan Auerbach, Penpal
Philip Pullman, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm
Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken
Zack Parsons, Liminal States
Terry Pratchett, Dodger
Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata
Margo Lanagan, The Brides of Rollrock Island
K.J. Parker, Sharps
China Miéville, Railsea
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

There’s a substantial gap between those 16 titles and the next on the list that might qualify. But going on further, here are all the remaining books that more than 1000 people voted for. As it happens, none of their scores were bad–just kind of average–and getting such a wide audience is a kind of notability too:

John Scalzi, Redshirts
Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer: The Chronicles of Kazam
Justine Larbalestier, Team Human
Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon
Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth
Rob Reid, Year Zero
Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine

Finally, the following authors had sequels out that would have put their books higher on my list than Leigh Bardugo’s, if I were counting non-standalone sequels: Brent Weeks, Michael J. Sullivan, Rae Carson, David Wong, Mark Lawrence, Scott Sigler, Cassandra Clare, Max Frei, Catherynne M. Valente, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jim Butcher, and James S. A. Corey. The scores of their earlier works are probably more comparable to the scores of the standalone / series starters above.

Tracking current SF/F on Goodreads

In the past, I’ve relied on Locus magazine’s list of SF/F published over the past year as the basis for digging into Goodreads ratings of current SF.  But pulling data just once per year isn’t that great, so here’s my latest solution.

Goodreads allows you to have multiple accounts, so I now have this:

Here’s the profile description:

  • I’m selectively tracking most SF/F novels as they come out, creating sortable shelves of new releases such that their stats can be easily compared.
  • As a matter of personal preference, graphic novels, game-related fiction, non-fiction, reprints, urban fantasy / paranormal romance, and young adult novels tend to be excluded (often by consulting the shelves other users have put them on).
  • However, I include them occasionally if I have a subjective impression that the book has crossover appeal or if I just kind of feel like it. But that’s pretty rare.
  • This account is not itself used to rate books.

Here’s how to use it:

  • Click on the 2012 bookshelf.
  • Along the top, hit shelf settings and select Author, Avg Rating, Cover, Date Pub, Num Pages, Num Ratings, and Title.  Unselect everything else.
  • At the bottom of the page, select Infinite Scroll and sort by Avg Rating or Num Ratings, descending.

Advice on using it:

  • Obviously, you need to show the “Num Ratings” column to interpret the ratings at all.  Ignore the rating when few users have contributed to it.
  • Heavily discount the avg. rating of sequels.  Their ratings are demonstrably very inflated relative to standalone or initial novels in a series.
  • Also discount the avg. rating of fat / epic fantasy.  Their ratings are demonstrably very inflated relative to the overall values of neutral shelves such as fiction or 2012, possibly because they tend to have many sequels.
  • You’d have to discount urban fantasy / young adult heavily too, if there were much here.  Their ratings are demonstrably very inflated relative to the overall values of neutral shelves such as fiction or 2012, possibly because they tend to have many sequels.
  • In my experience, the mean rating for a large selection of theoretically popular fiction on Goodreads hovers around 3.75 with a median noticeably higher.  So 3.75 and below is probably a reasonable point at which to say a book was only well-received by a small audience.
  • In my own ratings, 25% of the books I really liked had ratings below 3.75, which is plenty of reason to investigate books below that threshold.  However, the numbers I’ve given to fiction in the past suggest that, in my case, I should spend about twice as much time investigating books rated over 3.75.

N.b.: I realize that audiences have characteristics of their own that strongly influence the significance of genre labels and the practice of assessing a title with a rating.  Furthermore, I’d be the first to acknowledge the limited utility of Goodreads ratings.  But if someone were to try using Goodreads to assess urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and young adult novels, I think they’d be wise to exclude sequels completely, because they dominate those genres, and the first in the series is probably the most indicative of what the widest audience thought.  Looking at them from an annual point of view is probably not useful to very many people–even those who tend to like work in the genre.

Board game epidemiology report for 2012Q1

Board games ranked by new players acquired in the first quarter of 2012:

1168 Eclipse
1049 7 Wonders
 890* Ora et Labora
 749 Dominion
 651 Power Grid: The First Sparks
 649 Kingdom Builder
 621 Quarriors!
 619 Agricola
 553 Flash Point: Fire Rescue
 551* Dungeon Petz
 543 Carcassonne
 541* Mage Knight: Board Game
 535 Pandemic
 504 Settlers of Catan
 494 Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game
 480 King of Tokyo
 462 Castles of Burgundy
 462 Resistance
 460 Eminent Domain
 460 Last Will
 454 Ticket to Ride
 452 Puerto Rico
 446 Forbidden Island
 446 Stone Age
 438 Power Grid
 428 Race for the Galaxy

* Games suffering a standard 500 player penalty that other games also suffered in their first appearances too.

Sub-genre and series ratings on Goodreads

I took the Locus Magazine list of SF/F novels of 2011 and pulled from Goodreads the ratings and most common “shelves” for each book.  Then, for each shelf (which usually represents a genre or sub-genre), I totaled up the stars given to the books on that shelf and divided by the number of books.  The result was a list of ratings given to each sub-genre.  I don’t think that list constitutes actual Goodreads data, anymore, but rather an original synopsis, so here it is, along with the number of books contributing to that score in parentheses:

4.22 epic-fantasy (22)
4.16 paranormal-romance (36)
4.15 kindle (42)
4.13 magic (42)
4.11 favorites (133)
4.05 urban-fantasy (157)
4.05 romance (50)
4.01 paranormal (131)
4.01 fantasy (344)
3.98 vampire (23)
3.98 2011 (312)
3.97 to-read (517)
3.97 currently-reading (433)
3.96 vampires (59)
3.96 series (137)
3.95 steampunk (34)
3.95 young-adult (33)
3.93 mystery (47)
3.92 read-in-2011 (88)
3.89 fiction (257)
3.85 sci-fi (136)
3.85 to-buy (59)
3.84 science-fiction (162)
3.82 sf (39)
3.82 2012 (41)
3.82 ebook (56)
3.74 scifi (44)
3.72 zombies (21)
3.67 first-reads (40)
3.64 horror (53)
3.62 historical-fiction (23)
3.59 thriller (21)
3.56 wish-list (54)
3.46 library (29)

 

Taking the “fiction” shelf as the zero point zero of fiction ratings, here are the offsets of each shelf’s score from it, perhaps showing biases for and against particular genres:

+0.32 epic-fantasy (22)
+0.26 paranormal-romance (36)
+0.25 kindle (42)
+0.23 magic (42)
+0.21 favorites (133)
+0.16 romance (50)
+0.15 urban-fantasy (157)
+0.12 paranormal (131)
+0.11 fantasy (344)
+0.09 2011 (312)
+0.08 vampire (23)
+0.07 vampires (59)
+0.07 to-read (517)
+0.07 series (137)
+0.07 currently-reading (433)
+0.06 steampunk (34)
+0.06 young-adult (33)
+0.04 mystery (47)
+0.03 read-in-2011 (88)
-0.00 fiction (257)
-0.04 sci-fi (136)
-0.05 to-buy (59)
-0.06 science-fiction (162)
-0.07 2012 (41)
-0.07 ebook (56)
-0.08 sf (39)
-0.16 scifi (44)
-0.17 zombies (21)
-0.22 first-reads (40)
-0.25 horror (53)
-0.28 historical-fiction (23)
-0.30 thriller (21)
-0.33 wish-list (54)
-0.43 library (29)

 

But I suspect some genres are more sequel-prone than others.  Taking the series position for each title as a sort of pseudo-shelf we can rate, as above, here’s the value of having a particular series position:

4.28 sequel_5 (21)
4.13 sequel_2 (96)
4.09 sequel_4 (28)
3.96 sequel_3 (66)
3.80 not-a-sequel (259)

 

And here are the offsets from ‘not-a-sequel,’ showing a clear and understandable selection bias in favor of sequels (i.e. people who don’t like a series tend to stop reading it, leaving only those who liked it plunging on into later volumes):

+0.48 sequel_5 (21)
+0.33 sequel_2 (96)
+0.29 sequel_4 (28)
+0.16 sequel_3 (66)
-0.00 not-a-sequel (259)

 

Naively applying the offsets to a book’s rating, as if that would determine an unbiased score, turned out pretty obviously not to yield unbiased scores.  While the results did look vastly more plausible overall from my personal point of view, they allowed numerous ‘niche-interest’ books to stand high in the rankings, even though you would only read them if you really liked a particularly contentious topic or form.  A Bayesian recalculation would presumably help with that, but I’ll leave it for another time.

SF/F novels of 2011

FWIW, cross-referencing Locus Magazine’s list of 2011’s SF/F novels with the Goodreads data for each novel yielded these two lists.  It’s hard to do anything about the astonishing number of urban fantasy novels that crowd the top of the rankings, because there are too many series that appeal to both typical SF/F readers and typical paranormal fiction readers. I could exclude a bunch of them arbitrarily, or I can accept that there’s an interesting question about Goodreads rankings for SF/F: why is paranormal fiction generally rated so much higher than other SF/F?

The 10 most read SF/F novels of 2011, ranked highest to lowest number of readers:

Erin Morgenstern, _The Night Circus_

The ~95 SF/F novels of 2011 with 25+ reviews that still scored above 4.0, ranked from highest (4.55) to lowest (4.0):

Patrick Rothfuss, _The Wise Man's Fear_

The 20 most highly-rated films of 2011

I played around with IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes scores for all films of 2011 to arrive, subjectively, at a reasonable formula for combining the two to make one list of the most highly-rated films of 2011: just multiply the unweighted IMDB score times the RT score. That allows newer / smaller films to enjoy the ratings IMDB users actually gave them while using RT to more heavily weight the field. The films that make up the top 20 don’t change much, though, whatever formula you use.

Here’s the result:

8.6   A Separation [Jodaeiye Nader az Simin] (2011)
8.148 The Artist (2011)
7.872 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
7.857 The Muppets (2011)
7.802 Hugo (2011/II)
7.533 Drive (2011)
7.533 50/50 (2011)
7.505 Moneyball (2011)
7.254 Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
7.254 Midnight in Paris (2011)
7.138 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
7.12  The Descendants (2011)
7.03  The Guard (2011)
7.007 Delhi Belly (2011)
6.992 Source Code (2011)
6.873 X-Men: First Class (2011)
6.862 Win Win (2011)
6.806 Warrior (2011)
6.552 We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
6.545 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Board game epidemiology report for 2011Q4

Board games ranked by new players acquired in the fourth quarter of 2011:

 1033* Eminent Domain
 1024  Quarriors!
 1008  7 Wonders
  872  King of Tokyo
  812  Elder Sign
  803* Discworld: Ankh-Morpork
  649  Resistance
  644* Kingdom Builder
  632  Few Acres of Snow
  597  Dominion
  538  Carcassonne
  524* Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game
  507  Forbidden Island
  499  Agricola
  470  Alien Frontiers
  461  Troyes
  457  Settlers of Catan
  447  Dixit
  443  Pandemic
  420  Innovation
  415  Ticket to Ride
  401  Small World
  393  Puerto Rico
  385  Power Grid
  384  Qwirkle
  383* Panic Station

* Games suffering a standard 500 player penalty that other games suffered in their first appearances too.