Which Books Have You Read With The Most/Fewest Ratings? (12/13/20)

[Marc]

Which book that you've read has the most ratings and how many does it have?

Which book that you've read has the fewest ratings and how many does it have?

(Props to Whitney for alerting us to this GR function and suggesting the question.)
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HOW TO SEARCH YOUR READ BOOKS BY NUMBER OF RATINGS
1) Go to "My Books"
2) Select your "Read" shelf.
2) Choose to sort by "number of ratings." (You can automatically re-sort from most reviews to least reviews by clicking the "number of ratings" column header.)

[Marc]

Most ratings:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
# of ratings: 7,146,479
Avg. rating: 4.47 stars

Fewest ratings (a 3-way tie):
Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts, Issue Four: Displacement
A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World, Issue 5: Hysteria
Autodafe, Vol. 3/4
# of ratings: 0
(I read these before joining Goodreads, but they were auto-added when I moved here from Shelfari and I never re-rated them.)

[Bill]

I think the first Harry Potter book gets the most ratings partly because it's one of the suggested books when one joins goodreads.

My books with zero ratings:
Damien Ark, Fucked Up
Al Columbia, The Biologic Show
The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance
L'autre Fragonard
Le Musée Des Moulages De L'hôpital Saint Louis
Hanyang Kut: Korean Shaman Ritual Music from Seoul
Thomas Wiloch, Stigmata Junction
Tiffany Sia, Salty Wet
Eric Latzky, Three Views From Vertical Cliffs
Korean Music and Dance

Of the ones I've read (more than half), I read them so long ago and can't really settle on a rating. The rest are all on my to-read list. (I made database entries for many of these.)

There's another 20 or so books on my list with one rating (mine).

[Hugh]

OK, these are mine:

Most: Nineteen Eighty-Four 3,187,985 ratings · 71,397 reviews average 4.19
read this as a teenager and I have never owned a copy

Least: a three way tie:
Whistling Clough · Rating details · 1 rating · 0 reviews average 5.00 another book I read as a child, and didn't give a rating to

The Janet Frame Reader - Rating details · 1 rating · 0 reviews average 3.00 a book I was given by my sister back in the 90s

An Honourable Man - Rating details · 1 rating · 1 review average 3.00 this one was written by a school class-mate and mine is still the only review

I have never read any Harry Potter!

[Hugh]

I do have one with zero ratings on a different exclusive shelf called mostly-read, which I use for the sorts of books you dip in and out of without reading sequentially, another present:

Galloway Coast: 25 Walks Exploring the Natural Heritage of Southwest Scotland

[Bretnie]

What an interesting topic! I guessed by bottom two before even looking:

The Art Of Listening has two ratings, one of which is mine. It was a book my grandmother gave me as one of her favorite books. I didn't read it until years after her death, which I really regretted because I would have loved to ask her why she loved it so much - it was weird!

Under the Sun which has three ratings, which is a very short book my brother self-published under a pseudonym.

[Donna]

After a quick look:

Most ratings (after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

To Kill a Mockingbird 4,554,462

Fewest ratings-

Growing Up Literate: Learning from Inner-City Families. 29

[Robert]

Highest rating :

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

Lowest

Kate Schatz - Rid of me ( one of the 33 1/3 series)

[Bretnie]

Robert wrote: "Highest rating :

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes
"

Robert, you inspired me to find my calvin and hobbes books!

[Lark]

Books that have only one rating, mine, on goodreads:

1. Märkische Argonautenfahrt by Elisabeth Langgässer. Someone needs to translate her books.

Here is a link to a biography of Langgässer:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/en...

2. The Telephone Hand-Book by Hubert Laws Webb. This book is a history of telephone technology, written in 1894. Fascinating.

3. Peter Pan in Japanese. I can't be the only one who has read Peter Pan in Japanese, which goes to show that Goodreads is not at all representative of the reading world.

Most ratings:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which has almost exactly 2x as many ratings as my #2, 1984. :-/

[Kathleen]

Another great question, Marc!

The three on the top of my list are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and 1984. (Like Hugh, I haven't read Harry Potter.)

At the bottom was Down the Bayou and Other Poems, which I used for a challenge, and a smattering of other obscure short stories and unusual editions.

What was most interesting to me was to see the books with low ratings that I thought should be higher. For example, why does George Sand's Spiridion only have 16 ratings? And here's a good one only 216 people have rated: The Philosopher's Diet: How to Lose Weight & Change the World, which is actually funny and useful! And it's a crime that only 488 people have read The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda, in my humble opinion. :-)

[Robert]

Bretnie- welcome to the wonderful world of C & H

[Margaret]

Most after Harry Potter above, 6,441,434 for The Hunger Games

Zero ratings for Listones de Colores by Carlos Soriano, probably because last I heard it was only available in El Salvador which is a shame because it was excellent.

[Whitney]

My highest is To Kill a Mockingbird, although technically it would be lower as I deleted Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight from my GR books several years ago. GR used to be much more aggressive with their "since this is in your list, you should read this!" recommendations, and they were always based on these books (even though Twilight was a hate-read which I gave one star) and it was driving me crazy.

My lowest # of ratings is 2 for I Will Burn You Down, which was originally a limited edition chapbook, and 4 for Phantom Navigation, by a Rhysling award winning poet (given for the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year).

[Jenny]

This is a great question!
I haven’t added in any of the books I read prior to creating a goodreads account.

Highest:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
6,442,358 ratings

Lowest:
(Three-way tie with 7 ratings each)
Menadelook: An Inupiat Teacher’s Photographs of Alaska Village Life by Eileen Norbert
(My friend’s aunt wrote it and it’s great).

Handbook on Questioning Children by Anne Graffam Walker
(The most influential book on forensic Interviewing of children - my (soon-to-be) former profession.

Playboys and Mayfair Men by Angus McLaren
(An absolutely fascinating nonfiction book about a sensational robbery in interwar England. It’s all about the social mores of the time and an exploration of interwar masculinity. Highly recommend it).

[Marcus]

At the top of my list are 1984 (3.1m), The Hobbit (2.9m) and Aniamal Farm (2.7m).
The bottom half is much more interesting :-)
There is a six way tie where I am the only person in the entire (GoodReads) world to rate or review. I've only added links to the books that are good in my view!
Two books of New Zealand poetry. One good!
Odysseus in Woolloomooloo
One bad novel.
One autobiography of a firend.
One translation of a diary that covers early New Zealand history.
Living Among the Northland Maori: Diary of Father Antoine Garin, 1844–1846
One quite fun biography set in Africa and New Zealand. The author advised me to remove the review after he received death threats over some of the episodes in West Africa, but I remain unafraid!

[Ang]

Highest: To Kill a Mocking Bird
Lowest: Night Visits by Ron Butlin

I recall Night Visits to be an excellent book but it has only 7 ratings on goodreads.

[Whitney]

Marcus wrote: "The author advised me to remove the review after he received death threats over some of the episodes in West Africa, but I remain unafraid! "

Marcus, you tease! Details!

[Tina]

I have read many books during this quarantine. On the most, I liked the small, perhaps banal book To Kill a Mockingbird for many. This year in college we brought up the actual issue of racism and I found this site https://graduateway.com/essay-examples/kill-a-mockingbird/ where I found a lot of fiction on this topic. There I found essay examples on this novel. I liked it a lot, I think there is something to think about, it makes a lot of sense.

[Ang]

Ang wrote: "I recall Night Visits to be an excellent book but it has only 7 ratings on goodreads."

Correction - Night Visits has 12 ratings.

My next two are Mr Beethoven by Paul Griffiths (18 ratings) and Playing Possum by Kevin Davey (19 ratings). Both of these were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize and both are excellent. It just goes to show that that prize does not yet have significant reach. I think this is a problem of promotion rather than quality. There have been many excellent shortlists.

[Hugh]

I second both of those recommendations - most of Playing Possum's reviewers are very familiar names.

[Catherine]

Most rated: To Kill a Mockingbird, with 4,561,994 ratings.

Least rated:
With 1 rating:
Treating the Field as a Lab : A Basic Guide to Conducting Economics Experiments for Policymaking
Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology

With 2 ratings:
The Making of Experimental Economics: Witness Seminar on the Emergence of a Field
GALAPAGOS BIRDWATCHING: PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTIFICATION

Fun exercise, thanks!
Catherine

[Catherine]

Marcus wrote: "At the top of my list are 1984 (3.1m), The Hobbit (2.9m) and Aniamal Farm (2.7m).
The bottom half is much more interesting :-)
There is a six way tie where I am the only person in the entire (GoodR..."

New Zealand poetry, wow! My favorite New Zealand book that I read this year was The Bone People by Keri Hulme. Fantastically weird and interesting.

[Marc]

I'm not sure I've read any New Zealand books. Certainly, I can't even name ones that I haven't read!

[Vesna]

A friend just sent me a couple of articles that are somewhat related to this question. John Self on how an author's best-known works are not necessarily their best and a GR article on why that's the case with the most-rated books on GR as well. I'm not sure if everyone would agree with their examples, but thought it might be interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2...

ETA: Didn't initially see that there were almost 700 comments on the Guardian piece. Probably one of the most commented articles, people adding more, then dis/agreeing & so on...

[Neil]

Most rated:
1984
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Least rated (just the one rating from me):
Fields of Joy
Male Tears
Letters to Thomas Pynchon and Other Stories
Pound of Fine Flower: Recipes from a Lincolnshire Village Bakery

I should point out that Fields of Joy and Male Tears have not yet been published (NetGalley ARCs) and Pound of Fine Flower is a recipe book from the George Bakery in Folkingham and I am a direct descendant of the bakers concerned.

[Whitney]

Vesna wrote: "A friend just sent me a couple of articles that are somewhat related to this question. John Self on how an author's best-known works are not necessarily their best and a GR article on why that's th..."

This is an interesting topic, Vesna, I think it belongs as its own "question of the week". I remember reading a similar article a few years ago, it's how I discovered William Golding's The Spire, which has since become one of my favorite books.

I think the second article (from GR) is ridiculous, as it takes as its premise the idea that a higher rating on GR is an objective measure of quality.

[Vesna]

Whitney wrote: "Vesna wrote: "A friend just sent me a couple of articles that are somewhat related to this question. John Self on how an author's best-known works are not necessarily their best and a GR article on..."

Self's Guardian article is quite good and yes, it would be an interesting topic. I had fun reading a few comments there, especially playing with pun words for going back and forth between Heller's two novels. Very witty. But then someone compared Dan Brown's books and got slaughtered by the literati. :-) So many comments, some useful, other funny, I bookmarked it for later.

Totally agree about the GR article. He tried to challenge Self's interesting piece by using the number of GR ratings as an objective measure of its quality. Totally silly.

[Nadine in California]

Vesna wrote: "Totally agree about the GR article. He tried to challenge Self's interesting piece by using the number of GR ratings as an objective measure of its quality. Totally silly..."

I'm getting a glimmer of a suspicion that this article was written by an algorithm, or worse yet, the person who wrote the algorithm.

In case anyone out there is unaware that some news articles are written by algorithm, here's an article from Forbes about it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolema...

[Janet]

My highest rating was a Harry Potter, no surprise there.

While my lowest rated books don’t surprise me – 2 reviews for a tai chi philosophy book and a book on the bonsai collection at the Montreal Botanical Garden -- I was sorry to see that David Sutton’s Figs: A Global History only got 10 reviews. It’s part of an “edibles” series published by Reaktion Books, which I think of mostly for its art books, but they do publish other topics; the books in this series are beautifully designed with quite interesting text.

What really surprised me was Jane Stevenson’s wonderful Good Women: Three Novellas which came out in 2006 and still only has 65 ratings. One of its novellas -- “Garden Guerrilla” was a memorably wicked read.

[Jess]

Most rated was also Harry Potter

I have three books with under 100 ratings

Moses in Chains - This book was written by a friend of mine. It is very good but only has one rating (and not even mine oops). Would highly recommend
Confession - 25 ratings - an okay book for fans of the Brontes
Sound Mind - 52 ratings - This one was bad, don't read it.=

[Dorottya]

Most rated: surprise, surprise, it is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Least rated: quite a bunch of Hungarian books with 1 rating - mine (I'm not going to list all 97 of them :D)