TBIF – Thank blog it’s Friday! 12-5-08

Tuesday Thingers: questions for LibraryThing users from The Boston Bibliophile

What’s the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it?


Aproximately 37,400 LibraryThing members, myself included, have a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) listed in their LT libraries – it’s the #1 book on LibraryThing overall, and has an average rating of 4.23, based on 364 reviews (just under 1% of holders) (thanks to Bermudaonion for inspiring me to include those additional statistics!). I’ve read it at least twice, but since I consider it the most “kid-lit” of the Harry Potter books, it’s my least favorite in the series. It’s essential for background, though, and anyone who enters the Potterverse has to read it sometime.

The seven most popular/shared books in my LT library are the Harry Potter books, actually. Interestingly enough, though, they don’t decline in popularity by order of publication; the second-most popular book in the series is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6), followed by my personal favorite, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5). The series finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), comes in last, with a 11,275-copy drop-off from Book 1. Is that an indicator of how many people didn’t stick around to see how it ended? I have to wonder.

I noticed that the most popular book a few other Tuesday Thingers responders have is Pride and Prejudice, which ranks at #10 on LibraryThing overall. That comes in just after the Harry Potter books on my list, so if P&P is your most popular LT book, does that mean you aren’t a fan of Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code (which is more popular than Deathly Hallows, breaking J.K. Rowling’s hold on the top tier of LibraryThing), or The Hobbit? Or are you like me, and you just haven’t entered your copies in your LT library yet? To be honest, I just plain forgot to list my copy of The Hobbit. I never had any intention of acknowledging my copy of The Da Vinci Code.


5 for Favorites – Booking Through Thursday

1. Do you have a favorite author?

I don’t like to play favorites, and I always fumble when asked to pin down my single favorite author/book/movie/song/whatever…how can you pick just one? (And what if people think your choice is weird?) But from the “favorite authors” section of my LibraryThing profile, here are five: Michael Chabon, Jasper Fforde, J. K. RowlingChristopher Moore, and Jodi Picoult.

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

I don’t think so. I would have said “yes” regarding Rowling, but she’s written some supplemental books related to Harry Potter (but not part of the narrative) that I haven’t read. I haven’t read Picoult’s latest (from earlier this year) since I wait for her books to come out in paperback. When I finish Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, which I’m just past halfway through now, I will have read all of Jasper Fforde’s books – until Shades of Grey comes out next year, at any rate.

3. Did you LIKE everything?

I really couldn’t get into Chabon’s Summerland, and I’ve definitely liked some of Picoult’s books better than others.

4. How about a least favorite author?

Anita Shreve – sorry, but every one of her books that I’ve read has annoyed me in one way or another (and the fact that I can’t put them down just makes them more annoying!)

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

No one comes to mind right now, but that’s a good question! Maybe Joyce Carol Oates, but I think that’s really a case of wanting to like her books more than I do – she’s kind of hit-or-miss for me.

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I liked this week’s BTT format, even if I don’t like playing favorites! Maybe you do, though – care to answer any of these questions in the comments?


Friday Fill-ins #101

A note from Janet:

Sorry I didn’t get around to see everyone again last week; my Dad’s still very sick. Thank you for all your kind comments and positive thoughts! Since Sandra was so helpful in starting off this week’s questions, I’ll stick with her idea. Thanks, Sandra.

And…here we go!

1. Snow is pretty rare around these parts (and a good thing too, because people can barely drive in good weather).

2. I’m looking forward to giving myself a LONG weekend (Thursday-Monday) next week – and NOT having it involve moving!

3. Gypsy is the best dog ever! (Well, some of the time she is…but Tall Girl would say she always is!)

4. One of my favorite old tv shows is I Love Lucy – it’s still funny!

5. I’m done with having babies (well, technically it could still happen – but it had better not!).

6. The most enjoyable thing around the holidays is seeing the lights and decorations while driving around town in the evening.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to nothing in particular, tomorrow my plans include not much, because I haven’t really made them yet and Sunday, I want to put up the Christmas tree, if we don’t do it on Saturday!

Surely your weekend plans are more interesting than mine – but then again, I think I’m due for a fairly quiet one, so not having a lot of interesting plans is actually OK with me! 

***Have you entered any of my FOUR giveaways yet? Find out more here!***

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,316 other subscribers

9 comments

  1. Harry Potter was at the top of my list too for the most popular book in my library as well. 🙂

    I decided not to narrow down my list of favorite authors this time. So I took the easy way out. It was much easier to think of an author I liked least.

    Oh! Can you imagine me driving in snow? Haha!

    After last weekend, I wish I had a long weekend ahead of me to make up for it. It’s my Friday off today though, and a three day weekend isn’t anything to sneeze at. I’m taking a week off after Christmas (3 days of vacation, it turns out–but 11 days straight off).

    I hope you have a great weekend, Florinda. My plans today include mailing off Christmas presents and doing some of the can’t-put-off-any-longer chores. My husband’s home today (he took a couple of days off to do his Christmas shopping–which means for me and his brother) and so I imagine he’ll want to do something. Maybe we’ll see Australia this weekend. I hear it’s a pretty long movie.

  2. Driving in the snow can be fun, especially when I was younger, but not so much now!

    I feel the same way about Joyce Carol Oates as you 🙂

    Thanks for playing, Florinda! Have fun with whatever you do this weekend.

  3. Wendy (Literary Feline) – I loved the way you approached both the popular-books question AND this week’s BTT. I really do dislike playing favorites, and I wish I’d come up with an approach as creative as yours!

    Driving in snow is one thing I do NOT miss from living in more northerly and easterly climes.

    Enjoy your three-day weekend – and it sounds like you’ll have a nice holiday break too! Let me know if you see Australia – I’m on the fence about it.

    Jerralea – I think everyone who’s ever had dogs had at least one they think was the Best Dog Ever :-).

    Janet – I think a lot of things about winter are less fun as you get older.

    I’ve got at least three Joyce Carol Oates’ books in TBR for “one of these days.” We’ll see…

    I hope things get better with your dad!

  4. Jill (softdrink) – The man is a twisted genius. He’s also special for me because he’s the first author I introduced to my husband (well, not literally, but you know what I mean). I love to get people hooked on the things I already love.

  5. I love four of the authors you mentioned – I have yet to read anything by Jodi Piccoult, although I do have a copy of The 10th Circle sitting in my TBR pile. And while I still haven’t entered the majority of my books into LT (or BookCrossing, or Good Reads, or even Libra for that matter), The DaVinci Code will probably not make the cut. 🙂

  6. A long weekend without moving! Sounds like fun!

    I’m not sure who my favorite author is either. I think it would depend on my mood.

    Let’s not talk about snow; we are supposed to get more tonight. 🙁

  7. JessiThe Tenth Circle isn’t one of my favorite Picoult novels, truthfully, but it’s not bad. I just didn’t get into the graphic-novel aspect all that much.

    I wonder how high The Da Vinci Code would rank on LT if everyone who had a copy actually DID enter it in their libraries :-).

    Mike – I don’t mind snow if I can stay home and ignore it, but I’m actually pretty glad I don’t have to deal with it.

    A long weekend without packing, moving, unpacking OR holiday guests and travel! I guess I really am looking forward to that.
https://3rsblog.com/2008/12/tbif-thank-blog-its-friday-12-5-08.html
3rsblog.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-05
269593
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KV7FUHNDT6A7S7HZRAWBOT53LZTZSQT3
<urn:uuid:0b3b166d-0e30-43c8-90de-a3b5431ce610>
2022-01-29T10:18:18Z
51.222.80.222
text/html
sha1:BTQFR4UOBYVFE73KBMAVYONZF6TDG7WV
<urn:uuid:4815bc56-ee08-48a5-bbf6-bceda7dfa82a>
https://3rsblog.com/2008/12/tbif-thank-blog-its-friday-12-5-08.html
response
<urn:uuid:fb2a08c7-718b-44d3-8ba4-b3f142a43853>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-95
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/