Disinformation Readers Pick Favorites

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 7/14/2008 1:03:00 PM

Favorite book lists vary widely, as Sara Nelson points out in this week’s PW. Her editorial comments on two recent polls: one recent by Harris that queried just over 2,500 Americans about their favorite books and found the top two were the Bible and Gone with the Wind; and another by Disinformation.com that found the top two were Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ralph Bernardo, managing editor at Disinformation, explained the results.

Disinformation received more than 1,000 responses to its poll, which was posted on its MySpace blog. The overall top 10 books were Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy), Brave New World, Slaughterhouse Five, The Catcher in the Rye, Tao Te Ching, The Illuminatus! Trilogy and Ishmael.

Bernardo said Disinformation’s readership is diverse geographically, economically and racially; however, the group tends to more highly educated than the general population. Disinformation’s and Harris’s polls did share some favorites: both included Lord of the Rings and Catcher in the Rye.  

Because Disinformation’s list features so much fiction, Bernardo also created a top 10 list for nonfiction, which mostly includes spiritual and philosophical works. The nonfiction picks were: Tao Te Ching, A People's History of the United States, The God Delusion, Cosmic Trigger (Series), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prometheus Rising, The Bible, Walden, God is Not Great, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.