22 Mar 2011 No Comments

Books Everyone Should Read

How clever is this? We’ve all read those “100 best book” list, but do all those various polls and charts agree on a standard set of literary classics?

Information is Beautiful’s David McCandless and Miriam Quick compiled this graphic using the results of over 15 notable book polls, readers surveys and top 100′s, both popular and high-brow, included all Pulitzer Prize winners, Desert Island Discs choices, The Guardian’s Top 100 Books of All Time, and, of course, Oprah’s Bookclub list.

A simple frequency analysis on the gathered titles produced a neat ‘consensus cloud’ visualisation of the most mentioned books titles across the polls.

So do you agree with the consensus? And let’s be honest — how many have you read and how many have you never heard of? Check the data and analysis here: bit.ly/BooksEveryone