Monday, August 6, 2012

My 100 Most Controversial Books

Once again Library Thing offers a fun meme to explore. Here are the 100 most controversial books in my library. Of course not all the books I own are listed on Library Thing. I'm sure there are others that would make the list, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe. What is surprising to me is how many of my Buddhist titles make the list.

This page shows your 100 most controversial books, as measured by the standard deviation of members star ratings. To be included, a book must have been rated at least 20 times. 
 

RatingTitle

3.54Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

3.18Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee G. Miller

3.97Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

3.67The Pure and the Impure by Colette

4.03The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

3.79Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia

3.68Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule

3.65Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

4.02The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

4.01Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham

4.41The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

3.86Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

3.79Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

3.56Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead

3.72The Lover by Marguerite Duras

3.85The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

3.6Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler

3.54Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather

3.95The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

3.56Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

3.97Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

3.72Black Spring by Henry Miller

3.87Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

4.11Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath (Penguin Classics) by Sigrid Undset

4.18The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

3.63Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman

3.74My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor

3.93Plexus by Henry Miller

4.07The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality by Dalai Lama

4.09Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

4.09The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert

4.05Light in August by William Faulkner

4.05Lust for Life by Irving Stone

4.06The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright

4.17Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

3.74Henry and June: From A Journal of Love: the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932) by Anaïs Nin

3.68A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones

3.61Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

4.11The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

4.07The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 1: 1915-1919 by Virginia Woolf

3.92Herland, The Yellow Wall-Paper, and Selected Writings (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

3.9O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

3.78Claudine's House by Colette

4Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

3.78The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America (Penguin Classics) by Anonymous

4.05Renascense and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

4.01Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

3.86Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara

4.07A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

3.85Genes, Peoples, and Languages by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

4.05Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

4.21Three by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge, and Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

4.17Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

3.8Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen E. Ambrose

4.25Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4.08Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

4.01The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

3.82Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom by Joseph Goldstein

3.85Right Hand, Left Hand by Chris McManus

3.75Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

3.45Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts

4.23The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn

4.13The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

4.08Lincoln by Gore Vidal

4.15Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

3.7The First Salute by Barbara W. Tuchman

3.97The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks

4.16The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

4.21Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies

3.97The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

4.23Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

4.25The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

3.9Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis

4.15The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3.86The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

3.86Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick

4.24Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

4.1D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose

3.74Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island by Thor Heyerdahl

3.74The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally

4.13A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman

4.24The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

4.05Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell

4.12Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

4.01The Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara

3.98Awakening the Buddha within: eight steps to enlightenment by Lama Surya Das

4.29The Captured by Scott Zesch

4.09Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

4.19The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

4.41The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

4.04The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth M. Stampp

4.39The Gilded Bat by Edward Gorey

3.68Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

3.95The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

4.21Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade

4.1With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates

4.02All for the Union: The Civil War Diary & Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes by Elisha Hunt Rhodes

3.63Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project by Spencer Wells

4.26Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics) by Pema Chödrön

4.52Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch

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