A new poll from Harris Interactive recently asked 2,234 Americans about their favorite books. And for the top four slots, the answers haven’t changed much since the poll was last conducted in 2008. The Bible lands at the top of the list among every demographic (age, race, political affiliation, gender, etc.), No. 2 is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, No. 3 is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings taking the fourth slot. However, once the demographics are examined a little further, the results get a bit more interesting: For example, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is having a surge, landing at No. 5 after not even placing in the top 10 in 2008—mostly due to the fact that African Americans have stopped reading Dan Brown books, apparently.
Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye are also both on the rise from their previous positions. Books that placed high on the previous list but have since been bumped include Stephen King’s The Stand (2008’s No. 5); Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels And Demons (Nos. 6 and 8 respectively); and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (No. 9). And Republicans are now claiming to love Gone With The Wind just as much as Democrats and Independents. The 2014 top 10 list shakes out as follows:
- The Bible
- Gone With The Wind
- Harry Potter series
- The Lord Of The Rings series
- To Kill A Mockingbird
- Moby Dick
- The Catcher In The Rye
- Little Women
- The Grapes Of Wrath
- The Great Gatsby