Seek Ye Out of the Best Books

OK, so quoting the D&C in my post title doesn't exactly mean I'm getting ready for seminary, but here's a little diversion. I've been looking up rankings on Goodreads.com lately to get some sort of outside ranking for all of the books I've read over the last few years. Personally, I refuse to rank books because each book is good/bad for it's own reason, and a simple ranking may ignore why that book is useful or good/bad for a specific audience. Still, I think they are fun to look at.

Note that the rankings are on a scale of 1 to 5, but it's almost impossible to get an average ranking below 3. The rankings are fluid, and the more popular a book is the more people will have given it a ranking. So it's not fair and I'm not saying I agree with every ranking, but it is interesting. Here are the rankings of all of the PVS book club books, as well as a few of the suggested books that were ultimately not chosen:

Homo Politicus 3.28 (Agreed, terrible book)

Why Men Hate Going to Church 3.41

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State 3.43

State of Fear 3.46

Nudge 3.52 (I enjoyed this one, but writing about politics won't get you very high on this list.)

My Life As A Traitor 3.57

The Quants 3.61

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives 3.65 (Maybe it takes a statistician to appreciate this.)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit 3.68 (I was disappointed this didn't rank higher.)

Getting at the Truth: Responding to Difficult Questions about LDS Beliefs 3.77

John Barleycorn 3.78

A Study in Scarlet 3.86

Twilight 3.87 (OK, so no one even suggested we read this (though Paul referenced it in a post), but I thought it gives perspective. One caveat is that almost 400,000 people have ranked this book as compared to <250 that ranked David O McKay.)

Year of Wonders 3.89

Outliers 3.97 (The highest of all of Gladwell's books.)

The Road 3.97 (This was left out of the original list.)

The Nine 4.00

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance 4.01 (I liked Complications (see below) so I found the 'sequel'.)

The Third Policeman 4.01

The Nation 4.05 (I'll kick off the discussion in another week, and then Jesse will have a turn to add to this list.)

A Town Like Alice 4.06

Complications: A Surgeons Notes on an Imperfect Science 4.11

Dirk Gently and the Holistic Detective Agency 4.16

Mountains Beyond Mountains 4.23

Omnivore’s Dilemma 4.23

David O McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism 4.30

East of Eden 4.32 (Impressive considering I think the site has a slight bias against older books some people were forced to read.)

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and The Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen 4.37

The Hunger Games 4.57 (Second highest ranking (after the Book of Mormon) out of the last 200 books I've read.)


In light of these rankings...
...I wish I had chosen Born to Run this month.
...I don't feel bad for skimming some of the books chosen.
...I do feel bad for only watching the movie of East of Eden.
...I think it's obvious that my book choices have been way better than Peter's.