Quotations Weblog

Virgil Griffith took the favorite books on Facebook and linked them to the SAT/ACT scores. In the end, he came up with the books that make you dumb!

• Books That Make You Dumb by Virgil Griffith

Here is some information from his Frequently Asked Questions file:

What are some notable things about the data?

• Harry Potter is the most popular book. The Bible is the second most popular book. At least among college students, Harry Potter is, like the Beatles, indeed bigger than Jesus.

• Although I had no idea at the beginning of this project, I was ever so pleased to discover that Caltech is the smartest school in the country (on average).

• The smartest religious book is the Book of Mormon. The dumbest religious book is The Holy Bible. I’m sure this pleases the Mormons immensely.

• The dumbest philosophy book is “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” and the smartest philosophy book is “Atlas Shrugged”.

• Erotica spans the entire distribution, being both the smartest book in the entire dataset (Lolita) as well as the dumbest (Zane).

• The top/bottom 20 books are remarkably stable. I tried 5 different weighting algorithms and their only variation was in the middle. The dumbest books were always at the bottom, and the smartest books were always on top. This is even further corroborated by the fact that the extremes change remarkably little.

I love to see people looking at different ways to group books. Should Harry Potter be at the top of the list of reading because almost everyone has read it? Should Lolita because it has been read by more smart students? This opens up a huge line of discussion about literature and I’m excited to see it!

Via: Using “favorite books” data from Facebook and the average SAT/ACT scores… kottke.org

I love graphic novels. Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Vol. 1 is the start of a series about World War II from alternate points of view:

• Unshelved comic strip – Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Vol. 1

Ennis reinvents the war comic for current sensibilities. Four long stories, each illustrated by a different artist, present World War II from various viewpoints. An exhausted German tank crew in the war’s last days tries to be captured by Americans rather than vengeful Russians. The “D-Day Dodgers” fighting in Italy are accused of cowardice for escaping the “real” war. Jaded veterans sent to reconnoiter a remote chateau on the German front discover a cache of Nazi plunder. The crewmen of a British escort ship seek redemption after they’re shunned as sole survivors of a brutal German attack. The stories are inspired by real events; Ennis’ meticulous research guarantees verisimilitude, while his forceful characterization gives them remarkable power.

The best part is that they are almost true! Don’t forget to read Unshelved every day!

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (True Adventures in Cult Fandom) by Allyson Beatrice sounds like an amazing read! Allyson was lonely in a new city, so she went online to find other fans of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. She found a life instead.

• Unshelved comic strip – Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (True Adventures in Cult Fandom) by Allyson Beatrice

To all of those people who tell fans to “get a life,” this book heralds the fact that it’s possible to do what you love AND get paid for it.

Well, Unshelved “Week” was a little of a misnomer. I should have called it Unshelved Month, except I didn’t have quite enough saved for a month. Hope you enjoyed the book recommendations and be sure to read Unshelved every day!

What is reality? That is the question you are faced with in Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.

• Unshelved comic strip – Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

In this clever SF thriller from Ruff (Fool on the Hill), almost everyone is a bad monkey of some kind, but only Jane Charlotte is a self-confessed member of The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons. Or is she? In a series of sessions with a psychotherapist in the Las Vegas County Jail nut wing, Jane tells the story of her early life in San Francisco and her assimilation into the Bad Monkeys, an organization devoted to fighting evil. Crazy or sane, Jane is still a murderer, whether she used a weapon like the NC gun, which kills someone using Natural Causes, or more prosaic weaponry. Still, nothing is quite what it seems as Jane’s initial story of tracking a serial killer janitor comes under scrutiny and the initial facts about her brother, Phil, get turned on their head. At times the twists are enough to give the reader whiplash.

How about a superhero book that is not a comic? That’s what Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel by Austin Grossman is:

• Unshelved comic strip – Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel by Austin Grossman

The realm of comic book heroes and villains gets a dose of realism in this whimsical debut from game design consultant Grossman. The story shifts between the perspectives of Doctor Impossible, a brilliant scientist turned world’s greatest menace, and Fatale, a lonely cyborg and the newest addition to the venerable group of heroes known as the Champions. Though he’s been out of commission for a while, Doctor Impossible hatches a scheme to knock the planet out of orbit. Meanwhile, Champions leader Corefire goes missing, and Fatale has to learn the ropes of superherodom as the conventional climactic showdown draws near. However fantastical, the characters are thoughtfully portrayed, with Fatale—stuck in a perpetual existential crisis—bemused over the Champions’ purpose, and Doctor Impossible wondering “whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life.”

If you are a fan of superheroes, you’ll enjoy this novel with a surprisingly realistic outlook (considering all the latex involved).