Library books
I’d been meaning to put into words my thoughts on one article I saw on Digg a week or so back — on facts about the Online Computer Library Center top 1000. According to it,
[They] compiled a list of the top 1,000 titles owned by member libraries—the intellectual works judged to be the most worthy based on the “purchase vote” of libraries around the globe.
It’s an interesting list of interesting (and sometimes bizarre!) facts about books that are found in most libraries. It’s US-centric, but hey it’s still interesting. I suggest you read the article to get all the trivia, but the ones that were most interesting to me were:
- William Shakespeare had the most work in the top 1,000 with 37 works which isn’t surprising; John Grisham was third with 13 works; and Stephen King didn’t place at all. The Stephen King work to get nearest to the top thousand is The Gunslinger. (Which is the first King book I’ve read…and I’ve never read any other save the DT series.)
- Highest-ranking written work by women were Wuthering Heights (E. Brontë), Jane Eyre (C. Brontë), and Pride and Prejudice (J. Austen). They are separated from each other by exactly one gap each (at 28, 30, and 32, respectively). I didn’t like the first, but the other two are my top two books of all time.
- Jesus is the most written-about person in the World Category (I assume that’s what they mean by “WorldCat”; correct me if I’m wrong).
- Comics in the library! Garfield is 15th.
It makes me wonder, really, how Philippine libraries would fare. I’ve never been to a library (that I could call a library) in a long time.