Controversy in reading: Soft porn and Spiritual Reading amongst Russian bestsellers
March 14, 2014
Bookmate, Russian subscription-based digital library, summed up the results of online reading for 2013. The first list shows the most favorite books that readers managed to finish. The top 5 in descending order are:
E. L. James. Fifty shades of grey
Archimandrite Tikhon. Everyday Saints and other Stories
E. L. James. Fifty shades darker
Yevgeny Zamyatin. We
Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby
A combination of ‘soft porn for house wives’ and stories about Christian Saints looks quite peculiar (however the result coincide with Book Industry bestseller list for December, 2013 ), whilst the success of The Great Gatsby can be attributed to the Australian-American blockbuster of 2013.
Books that had been dropped somewhere half way down include Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage and Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman , Loneliness on the Net by Janusz Leon Wisniewski, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray and the Bible. Interestingly enough, the last three titles ended up amongst the top-5 mostly quoted books.
Bookmate has also traced the speed of reading. Their data suggest that the five books that have been read the fastest are: Ce matin j'ai decide d'arreter de manger by Justine and Marie-Thérèse Cuny, The Hunger Games . Book 1 by Susan Collins, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Special Tasks: Decorator" by Russian acclaimed author Boris Akunin and Events. Jokes. Aphorisms by the famous witty Russian actress, Faina Ranevskaya.
